Primaries: Weekend notes

With a solid lead in Missouri, a good lead in two other states, and the potential to win all seven states on February 3, John Kerry is in position to be the only candidate with a realistic chance to win the nomination by accumulating delegates in the primaries.

Several candidates will stay in officially, and should. The Democratic message isn't going to get attention unless there's some kind of a race for reporters to cover. Joe Lieberman will have to leave the race before March 2, or face almost certain defeat in the primary in his home state of Connecticut. The race won't lose much if Wesley Clark gets out by March. At the moment he has a chance of winning Oklahoma on February 3, but the chance diminishes with each passing day.

John Edwards may win South Carolina, but even though he's said that it is a state he must win, he now may stay in the race anyway. Al Sharpton will stay in, and should, for his candidacy adds a lot to the process. There's no reason for Dennis Kucenic to drop out either, and the longer he stays in and gets media coverage, the more likely it is that he can help win his home state of Ohio, which is crucial to the Democratic nominee this year. Kerry is going to need Howard Dean's supporters, so even though Dean no longer has a realistic chance of the nomination, even at the convention (should something unforeseen happen to the Kerry candidacy), how he is handled will be important.

The hot talk among Republicans as well as Democrats is about the formidable but only theoretical Kerry-Edwards ticket. Edwards has said he wouldn't run as vice-president, but so far there doesn't seem to be any bad blood between him and Kerry, so with a realistic chance to unseat Bush, he might change his mind. Another possibility is Kerry-Gephardt, which could help in the industrial Midwest where the election may be decided. In terms of balance, both of these tickets are Washington and legislature oriented. A Senator Kerry- Governor Dean ticket is geographically unbalanced, and probably wouldn't work anyway.

Dark horses for v.p. might include the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, although Kerry’s wife Teresa is well known and loved in PA, where she campaigned with her late husband Senator John Heinz, so she can help win that important state. Florida’s Bob Graham is going to be mentioned, and older v.p.s seem to be in vogue.

One ticket we aren't going to see is Kerry-Hilary Clinton. Why would Hilary go back to the White House with less power than she had as First Lady?

Hope

In November, the editor of Governing Magazine, Alan Ehrenhalt, addressed the American Enterprise Institute. His politics are not known hereabouts, but since the Institute is a right wing think tank, we presume he's no leftist. According to a short piece in American Prospect, he told the tankers that the upsurge of the conservative movement since 1968 has peaked, although this is obscured by its dominance in Washington and its now-establishment institutions. He told them that Democrats have become "a party of minorities and people to listen to NPR, but that's not far from a majority." He warned the right wingers against the arrogance he saw in them. "To this the assembled conspirators replied with, well, arrogance," the Prospect said. They rejected his analysis.

The right believes it has won the battle of ideas, but it's possible to detect two problems they have: a dearth of new ideas, and a new-found ability of the people they attack to effectively counter their charges.

You can see hints of this in the 2004 Democratic primary campaign. In terms of ideas and articulation of those ideas, this year's field is superior.
John Kerry is very specific about the Bush foreign policy, what he will do in domestic policy, and who the enemies are. He uses rhetoric that would have been radical even four years ago, but it has the same power and directness as the conservative rhetoric of the 1980s. (He speaks of "Benedict Arnold corporations" who send their jobs overseas.) But he keeps rhetoric more familiar to Democrats (instead of "people working for the economy, we need an economy that works for people.")

Key to all this is understanding the appeal of the attacks and quickly repelling them. When George Bush I and his minions used racist code to attack Michael Dukakis, he didn't know how to respond. But last night Howard Dean pointed out that George Bush II used the word "quotas" several times in a single statement, identified this as a racist code word, and said on the basis of playing the race card alone, Bush should be defeated.

Contrast this with the rhetoric coming from the Republicans and the Rabid Right. They got plenty of air time thanks to their media minions repeating the charge against Kerry that he has a more liberal voting record that Teddy Kennedy, which makes Kennedy the conservative Senator from Massachusetts. But other reporters expressed doubts that this old "liberal" tag has the power it once did. That's probably partly because it is so old that it's become meaningless, and partly because it's hard to know what liberal means when the conservative government runs up the highest deficit in history. (And Teddy Kennedy doesn't scare people anymore. He's become a more universally cherished figure.)

So far the best that the Rabid Right can do in criticizing Kerry---which means attempting to demonize Kerry---is to say that he "looks French" (I'm not kidding) and that he went to school in England. The baseness of this is obvious, as is the utter poverty of ideas. Yet in their arrogance they think this stuff will still work.

Maybe it still will, but there are signs it won't. Another good sign besides the clarity of the candidates is the attitude of Democratic voters so far. They aren't floundering around, expressing general dissatisfaction with the field, or choosing on either strict ideological purity or superficial whim. The polls in Iowa and New Hampshire confirm that they like all the candidates but are voting for the one they believe is strongest in being able to defeat Bush: "electability."

Also, the candidates are so close on the issues that final unity should not be difficult to achieve, at least on that basis. If Kerry's big win in New Hampshire (YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!) is confirmed with three or more primary victories on February 3 (including Missouri), it is likely that the field will significantly narrow. They'll probably all stay in until February 5, but after that when there is no more money to go on, even winners in one state or another will drop out or scale back.

All that the Democratic candidate has to do is to win what Al Gore won and just another state or two. (Like Florida.) There is an additional factor: there will be no "Gush or Bore" "you can't tell the difference" between the candidates rhetoric. It's unlikely there will be candidates in most states either from the Green party or right-of-Bush parties. The Florida ballot should be much less complicated.

Defeating Bush will take skill, persistence and vigilance. There is no manipulation the Bushies aren't capable of, include interfering with voting and voting rights, and pulling some phony national security or terrorism-related surprise. But everyone has seen it all before, and that may be the key.

New Hamp Election Day Update

Because American Samizat fans are probably checking the site every few minutes, this bit of fuzz before the polls close in New Hampshire:

Since Senator John Kerry is expected to win, both the Dean campaign and the media are spinning expectations about how close Dean has to get to be the "winner" in second place, a NH tradition. But this year it doesn't work. When Bill Clinton came in second, he went on to states especially in the south where he already had a constituency. Even if Dean comes within 10 points of Kerry, it's hard to see where he does well next, and where over the long haul he will pick up support if he is not the perceived frontrunner. What he had going for him before Iowa was the perception of inevitability. He doesn't have that now, even if he were to win New Hampshire by a few points.

But a close second will keep Dean's campaign going, as it will keep the money flowing in. A third place finish, behind John Edwards, is possible, or a near-tie with Edwards: say, ten points between Kerry and Dean, and 3 points between Dean and Edwards, and there's real problems ahead for Dean.

The candidate in the absolute best position, apart from Kerry should he win by a big margin, is likely to be John Edwards. He's going into states he can win. Nothing but a bad 4th place in NH will likely damage him.

It will take a strong third place to keep Wesley Clark's chances alive, although he has the money to go on. It's possible he will learn quickly how to be a good candidate, but he didn't learn it in the past week. He just continued to demonstrate that he's not ready for prime time.

Forecast: a big Kerry win and a third place Dean finish makes this a Kerry and Edwards race. If Kerry and Dean finish close to each other with Edwards a strong third, it's a three candidate race for awhile longer, and the danger for Kerry is that while he and Dean are slugging it out, Edwards looks better to voters. Only if Clark or Lieberman do way better than expected will they be factors in the next round. Missouri will be the next key race.

We picked the 1-2-3 finishers in Iowa (yeah we didn't do it on the site so how do you know?) so this week we'll ruin our record and say, since the turnout is reportedly heavy, a big Kerry win in NH.