I can quit anytime!

But I choose to talk about primary politics again. John Kerry swept the small state primaries and caucuses Tuesday, as expected, and by margins that show no movement for Edwards. Looking forward to Super Tuesday next week,polls in California and New York don't show much movement either. Even if Edwards closes in the final week, he doesn't seem to be close enough to win any of the big states, and Kerry is getting the endorsements in the small states, too. Edwards got bumps from big newspaper endorsements in Iowa and Wisconsin, but that's unlikely to happen with the biggest newspapers in New York and California. So the only revision to our prediction last week is that Kerry is now likely to win them all, including Georgia, where years of Civil Rights service are serving him well in a state where African Americans make up about half the voting Democrats. California and New York are secure, and Ohio seems so now. Minnesota voters may remember Kerry's kinship with Paul Wellstone in the Senate. Edwards isn't even on the ballot in Vermont. Where's he going to win? Massachusetts?

In other news, the Secretary of Education who called the National Education Association a terrorist organization said he was just kidding. Officials of the NEA now residing at Guantanamo could not be reached for comment.

Simple, Effective and Forbidden


Let's take a break from the campaign trail and talk about something that is apparently too radical even for Ralph Nader.

A big issue this year that is likely to get bigger is jobs. The U.S. economy has not been creating jobs at the rate of people entering the job market. In fact it has been losing jobs, so even modest job creation will not undo the damage for a long time. There will be people who need to make a living, who can't get jobs.

That's behind a lot of the anti-NAFTA rhetoric, and the furor over out-sourcing: American companies firing or failing to hire U.S. workers in favor of workers in other countries who are paid less, sometimes a small fraction of what U.S. workers would get.

It's also reflected in today's announcement that consumer confidence dropped significantly last month.

G.W. Bush's trickle down economics isn't working, which is hardly a surprise. The Democratic candidates have a number of proposals to encourage job creation, reduce outsourcing and reform trade agreements to build in fair wages as well as environmental standards, which would as a byproduct make some outsourcing economically less enticing.

John Kerry has proposed combining the meeting of environmental and even national security needs by jump-starting a larger scale alternative energy industry, to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases, lessen dependence on foreign oil and create jobs. He estimates half a million jobs. That in itself is not a lot, but a new industry can have a synergistic effect. It's a good idea.

So is attacking the problem from another direction. Kerry believes that creating a better health care insurance system that takes great financial burdens off both workers and employers is part of the solution. He talks about this in terms of cutting costs, and he's right.

But this approach suggests something else-a much simpler and, in our current politics, much too radical solution, that some thirty-five years ago was talked about as just about inevitable.

Even more than thirty-five or forty years ago, people who thought about economic and social trends, and thought about the future, saw a major problem emerging in the rapid development of technology, especially that part of it which at the time was often called automation.

It was clear that although new technology would create many new jobs, it would also destroy many jobs. It would at the very least redistribute jobs and wealth. There would be winners and there would be losers.

What should be done about the losers? That was the question. Future-oriented thinkers looked at how much wealth was being created and would be created, and the trend towards expanding the purview of social justice, and they concluded: because the losers weren't themselves responsible for their plight, since they were victims of technology and global economics, society owed them the living they were going to be denied.

From this sprang the idea of the Guaranteed Annual Income. In most scenarios, it was very simple: everybody would be guaranteed an income sufficient to meet their basic needs. It was so clear that society would be able to afford to do this that the debate moved on to consider long-term social and cultural ramifications. But by the late 1960s, many influential economists and even some politicians assumed it was going to be necessary.

Besides the social responsibility to those who lost out through no fault of their own, there was a second reason for the GAI. This was an idea that crossed political, economic and social lines, as evidenced by the two men who did the most to put it into practice: Henry Ford and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The idea is simply that if people can't afford to buy things, the economy collapses. Henry Ford paid his workers better wages than he needed to, and said quite clearly that this was the reason: he wanted people to be able to afford to buy his cars. FDR was persuaded to enact those New Deal programs that directly paid millions of individuals for various kinds of work that became defined as being in the public good, because people can't spend what they don't have.

Since World War II, the U.S. has fostered a predominately consumer economy. The high consumption lifestyle is spreading with globalization. As it is now developing, that economy is unsustainable simply on environmental grounds. And not even a Guaranteed Annual Income will work until the economic addiction to manufacturing need and greed is dealt with, probably by being diverted. But even so, it's quite clear that an economy that is based on consumption, but concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, is headed for disaster.

So the GAI seemed like a sensible way to both guarantee that people weren't penalized for job losses that weren't their fault, and to guarantee that money for consumption would still flow. Guess what? It still is.

It works for those who lose their jobs because of outsourcing, which is in its way a byproduct of technology. It works to ease the economy through periods of transition. And it can have numerous other benefits, such as freeing people to do work for the public good. We're still living off of some of those "make work" programs of the 1930s that supplied us with so much public infrastructure, began conservation and left us a legacy in the arts that's as close to a golden age as America has seen since Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman were chums.

There are a few proposals currently making the rounds that go about this in a piecemeal or partial fashion. There's the proposal that companies that outsource devote a percentage of the profits they derive by doing so to support workers they displace. There are proposals for various forms of national service that guarantee an income in exchange for public works. Even these health insurance proposals, if they in fact cut health care costs for all citizens, wind up being guaranteed additions to income.

But of course you never hear political figures propose a Guaranteed Annual Income anymore. It's just one of those sixties fantasies of the future now. The kind of thing you'd expect from Marshall McLuhan, say, or Buckminster Fuller, who proposed that the government pay people (like him, for example) just to think. (And he was pretty persuasive that the government would end up making a profit on it.)

On a day that the current president proposes a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, it's not hard to figure out why. In many ways things are changing way too fast, but in other ways, change is much slower and more fitful than anyone would have believed a generation ago. They not only expected we'd have the equivalent of universal healthcare and the GAI by now, but we'd have colonies on the moon and spaceships headed for Jupiter.

So we torture ourselves with complicated half-solutions to problems, admittedly more complex than they appeared in the sixties, but still subject to much simpler solutions. The Guaranteed Annual Income is such an idea. In terms of need, its time has come. But we are so far from it that to even mention it is politically suicidal, and intellectually forbidden.

Lies and Body Bags

So G.W. Bush is beginning his campaign early, trying to stop the bleeding. If the bit we saw on TV is a preview of his campaign, we can’t wait. Poorly delivered same old same old, as if he doesn’t actually want to be president anymore…

Just as we predicted, Ralph Nader put the interests of the nation ahead of himself and…unh, never mind. But the reaction’s been interesting: Democrats are ANGRY with him (seems to be the mood all right) and the pundits seem almost unanimous that he is either not going to have much of an effect in 04, or could actually help the Democratic nominee. Perhaps by adding to the assaults on Bush policies, perhaps by making the Dem nominee look moderate in contrast, or perhaps (the weakest argument, and it’s his) by giving disaffected GOPers someplace to go if voting Dem makes them barf. And as we did sort of predict, Howard Dean immediately issued a statement cautioning his supporters not to throw away their vote, but stick with the Democrat who can beat Bush.

Nader spent Monday on a parade of TV shows. Best question was asked by Jim Leher: who is cheering today? Who is supporting you?

Over the weekend there was a very edgy exchange between the Bush people and the Kerry people, over a Georgia GOP Senator’s warning that Kerry was vulnerable on defense because he’d voted against every weapons system, etc. Max Cleland, who this senator beat, went after him for criticizing a war hero when he’d gotten out of the draft with a trick knee. That seemed a bit over the top, even from an amputee veteran. But Kerry’s response, while similar, was nuanced enough to indicate that he was aware of the underlying message in this attack---that he was soft on defense and hence wouldn’t protect America and hence didn’t love America, etc.---and that he was going to play hardball too, to fend it off. His statement that he didn’t know what Republicans who didn’t serve had against Democrats who did, was not justified by the literal meaning of what he was attacked for (as noted in the White House response.) But it was a return of fire with the weapons he had, showing that if the underlying message was to question his patriotism and willingness to defend the country, he would reply to that underlying message, regardless of what the literal message was, since it was smokescreen. This is pretty sophisticated stuff. It’s live ammo, and it’s dangerous, but it’s powerful, and shows an awareness that’s been missing from Dem campaigns of the past.

On the styles of Kerry and Edwards: it’s become conventional wisdom among the media bobbleheads that Kerry is a stiff and Edwards is the personable, dynamic one. Two things wrong with this. First, if it’s based on recent weeks, it turns out that Kerry has been under the weather, but emerged healthy after finally taking two days off, energizing crowds in Atlanta, bantering with people at a town meeting (Woman in crowd: “Hi, My name is Doris, and I’m a recovering Republican.” Kerry: “I’ve got a one step program for you: vote for Kerry.”)

When he simply showed up for services at Martin Luther King Jr.’s church the congregation was ecstatic. So there’s charisma there that voters are finding, even if the media can't.

Second, the media is still stuck on the Clinton model. Edwards looks and sounds and acts more like Clinton, therefore he’s a better campaigner, the kind people are comfortable with, and want to have on their TV screens for four years, etc ad naseuam. We don’t buy it. Apart from our feeling that Edwards image doesn’t wear well, there’s this to consider: styles change. What attracts people changes, and something different is usually part of the attraction. Plus, and this is the major point: we already elected this folksy nice guy, and where did that get us? Why is the Dem who reminds you of Bush going to be attractive to voters who want more than anything to get rid of Bush? They want the anti-Bush, and that may well extend to style as well as substance.

A couple of other weekend stories: on the extent and power of the Democrats’ anger at Bush (even stronger, some pundits say, than the antipathy of GOPers against Clinton), and one on Republicans who are turning against Bush. (If we were good little bloggers we’d have the URLs for you, but we didn’t record them. Sorry.) The most telling comment of why these GOPers turned against Bush was the most succinct: “Lies and body bags. Bad combination.”

Darth Nader

So focused on beating Bush are some prominent progressives and (progressive media) that they are begging Ralph Nader not to run for president in 2004. This is the Lesson Learned from 2000, and part one of What We're Bitter About (in terms of it surfacing, not in importance or bitterness, for part two is Florida Disenfranchises Black Voters and part three is the really big Scalia Appoints the President.)

The Nader nattering is happening now because Nader has used it to get himself booked on Meet the Press on Sunday, which has replaced the press conference in the old home town or even Larry King Live as the place to announce your candidacy. He says he'll announce his decision then and there. Those who claim to be In the Know say he will announce he'll run as an independent (not Green Party) candidate. We're not so sure. Last time we saw an actual statement by Nader he said something like he'd decide based on grassroots support, but that he hadn't detected much so far. That was not more than a week ago. The grassroots are no Greener this week. So he might not. (But then again, we thought Colin Powell would prevent Bush from launching a stupid preemptive war on Iraq.)

Could Nader strip enough votes from Kerry---ah, sorry, the Democratic nominee---to throw the election to Bush? The Big Nightmare of 2004? (Or one of them.) Some say he won't get nearly as many votes in 04 as in 00---there just isn't going to be much of that Gush v. Bore, they are all the same horseshit. Well, that's probably right. But then again, Pat Buchanan isn't running, and the votes he took from Bush in 00 and won't take in 04 might make up the difference. So yes, Nader could cause trouble, maybe even enough to...no, we can't even SAY IT.

There are people out there who see the president or even the Candidate as some sort of hero-god; they love Him and if he Fails somehow they are Crushed. They're so pure they won't vote for anybody human unless they're vegan. (Vegans are usually human, except the ones from Vega.) They are therefore always setting themselves up for 1) Disappointment, and 2) exploitation. Ralph Nader is a crusader. He's succeeded by being relentless, if not fanatic. I don't know if he's a raging egotist at this point, but sometimes he acts like one. That's the other side of being relentless and fanatical. And so invested in purity. He should probably just take Holy Orders and start a monastery of Nader's Pray-ers.

Nader might believe that the time is right to absorb angry Deaniacs, now that John--I mean--Howard has gotten out of the race. And he might attract some , especially the Vegans (the ones from Vega who don't understand earth politics and have a culture that worships emotion and thinks logic is bad.) But if Nader does announce, Howard Dean has to get out there RIGHT AWAY and gently but firmly tell his supporters that their campaign was about defeating George Bush, and not to take their eye off the ball. They would be subverting everything they accomplished in making the Democratic candidates bolder and more aggressive. Eventually Dennis the K has to do the same thing, for his following is easily as fervent as Dean's and Greens.

It will be best for Nader and certainly best for the country if Nader announces that he's not running. But even if he does, there's a long way to go...We're likely to see at least two major shifts before it's over. At some point before the conventions, Bush's money is going to start wearing at Kerry's image, then the Dem convention will give Kerry a bounce, and then the GOP convention will give Bush a bounce, and then we'll see who takes the momentum. Of course, this year has been so unpredictable all that may be bullshit. But there is a decent chance that Kerry is going to win by a margin no one is predicting at the moment, and Nader won't matter. But even so, getting in the race gives the Bushies hope. And we hate to do that.

Early polls in New York and California show Kerry 40 to 50 points ahead of Edwards for Super Tuesday. But this is not a "comfortable" lead, in that this is no time for Kerry to get comfortable. But it's also hardly reason to worry. Kerry's been up and down on the stump, but when he's good---as he was in his interview this week with the PBS Newshour---he's excellent. He inspires confidence. Suggests to us once again that when he's engaged, he can outshine Edwards in the debate forum that Edwards wants desperately to use to boost his candidacy.

Bush is losing credibility like air from a punctured balloon. This week, two reports signed by Nobel scientists said his administration is distorting scientific facts for political gain (wonder where he got that idea?) and Bush himself had to disavow the prediction for job growth that he signed off on a week ago.

And so far the usual rabid right techniques haven't even begun to work. The rumors of illicit romance fizzled--it was supposed to be an intern naturally---when the woman not-involved denied it, and incidentally, denied she'd ever been an intern, and her parents declared for Kerry--and the incredibly damning photo showing John Kerry and the wicked witch of the right, Jane Fonda AT THE SAME PODIUM IN 1971! turned out to be a fake. Not only that, but the actual photo of Kerry alone at the podium was taken by a guy who is now a PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM ETHICS, and guess what? He's really pissed.

The Day After

A day earlier than expected, Howard Dean dropped out of the presidential primary race, saying he would support the eventual Democratic nominee, and will dedicate his organization to defeating G.W. Bush in November.

A USA Today poll showed John Kerry with a double digit lead over Bush among likely voters. For the first time, another Democrat—John Edwards—also is shown beating Bush, though only Kerry polls over Bush among “all voters.”

Edwards is getting a bump from the coverage, though some question whether that’s because the pollsters stopped polling too soon, and his “surprise” showing was more a story about the polls than about him. The coverage also invites more scrutiny, and while many agree he is an attractive candidate, they question his credentials. For example, NY Times columnist Richard Cohen begins his Thursday column this way: “In his stump speech, John Edwards talks about a girl ‘somewhere in America’who ‘will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today, because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm.’ That wan and pitiful child, a creation of Edwards's vivid imagination, has been on my mind a lot lately. I can see Edwards tucking her in. But I'm not sure he knows what to do with her once she wakes up.”

The Wisconsin stats also show that despite Edwards’ appeal to the jobless and poor, Kerry carried the vote of voters in the lowest socioeconomic categories.

The talk continues to be that Edwards will essentially bypass California (where one byliner felt his star quality would help him) to concentrate on Ohio and Georgia, and either New York or Minnesota, depending on the story, and perhaps Maryland. Of the ten states on Super Tuesday, we still think California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont will go big for Kerry; Minnesota, Maryland and Ohio will go to Kerry but perhaps by under 10 points, and Georgia is a toss-up. But of course there are still 13 days to go. Kerry will probably stagger endorsements throughout the period so there's a news hook every day for him. So far Edwards has only demonstrated that with a concerted effort, outspending on media and with lots of personal campaigning, he can surge towards election day and...come in a closer than expected second, except in the state where he was born, which he won (and where Kerry did not exert maximum effort to defeat him.) His best shot, say the pundits, is the debate. That shouldn't be terribly comforting to his supporters.

What happened in Wisconsin

John Kerry won the primary with about 40% of the total vote. John Edwards got about 34%, with Howard Dean getting only about 18%. Edwards' better-than- expected second place showing (of course we called that part) was probably due to a set of conditions and situations that won't be repeated for the rest of the primary season. (Which is not to say that he won't do well or even win some other states.)

Wisconsin allows voters to choose which primary-the Republican or Democrat-- they want to vote in, regardless of their party registration. That doesn't happen again, at least not in any of the big states coming up. Edwards got a lot of Republican votes and a sizeable number of Independents. Kerry did about as well with Democrats (nearly 50%) as he has in most other states, and his numbers in the various exit poll categories (by race, etc.) remained about the same.

Does Edwards' strength with non-Democrats say something about his appeal in the general election? Not necessarily. None of the media bobbleheads mentioned this, and we haven't seen geographical breakdowns yet, but we're guessing he got a lot of votes in Madison and Milwaukee from students and others who were voting to keep the process going---that is, to not settle on the candidate quite yet. Though Howard Dean might have expected to get that vote, probably it went significantly to Edwards. Edwards had the not-Kerry buzz in the past few days. (He was endorsed by the biggest newspapers in Milwaukee and Madison.) Kerry's percentage was down between one and five points from pre-election polls, but Edwards' was up considerably, indicating that he probably took more votes from Howard Dean than from Kerry.

Another factor clearly was his anti-NAFTA emphasis in the final week of campaigning. NAFTA is a weird issue. It resonates both with the anti-globalism left and with the Pat Buchanan far right, who couple it with being anti-immigration. As the only candidate on either ballot (including Bush) talking the anti-NAFTA talk in a state that has lost jobs, some to Mexico and other countries, Edwards was a magnet for disaffected voters of both kinds. Besides, with Kerry's string of victories and the fact that he is the presumptive nominee, voters are beginning to talk about casting "symbolic" votes, because they don't think those votes will matter, Kerry will win anyway.

The media bobbleheads were falling all over themselves early praising Edwards, salivating for a close race and a chance to dis Kerry, but by the end they had to admit that tomorrow's headline would be that Kerry won (which it is, in the NY Times and USA Today, with Kerry's picture on page one.) They talked about Edwards' appeal and eloquence as a speaker, which is frankly lost on us. As we said, he doesn't wear well. They dissed Kerry for giving the same victory speech as he has for weeks, and they were right to do that---he really needs to retire a good bit of it. But there were differences, he did emphasize jobs and trades more, earlier in the speech than usual. And Edwards isn't saying anything new really; they're just paying attention for once.

The political play of the evening was the order of after-election speeches. Howard Dean went first, and the networks covered his every word, just in case he might make news by dropping out, but he didn't say much new---just emphasized what his movement has accomplished and that it will go on, which suggests what some were saying today, that he's looking for a way to retire as a candidate but stay in it as head of a kind of issues oriented Internet Army movement.

But just as Dean was coming down the home stretch, John Edwards leapt on his stage and started talking and pumping his arms and grinning, and the networks abruptly abandoned Dean to cover what an Edwards aide had billed as the most important speech of his political life (for at least the second time so far). Apparently he had planned to speak long before this, when he was a good deal closer in early returns, but the room at his headquarters was half-empty and his people delayed his appearance until they could scare up more of a crowd from a nearby bowling alley. He got out one good line, that the message of the primary vote was : "Objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear."

But just as Edwards was getting started, John Kerry appeared on the stage of his headquarters, and every one of the networks and cable stations switched to him giving his stump speech (since by then he was clearly the winner), effectively erasing Edwards' "give me a second look" speech.

Edwards had probably started his momentum with his NAFTA talk and a moment in the debate when he caught Kerry talking like the nominee already, saying "I" will beat George Bush. "Just a minute, John Kerry," Edwards said, and with that became the "let the process go on" candidate. But the mishandling of the timing of his speech may have cost him almost as much as his showing gained him.

Earlier in the day, a distracted looking Kerry had said something to a reporter about candidates not cherry-picking one state or another to run in, that like him they should campaign in every state. He's said this before but in the context of the Edwards showing, some bobbleheads acted as if they hadn't heard it before. But he had a point in Wisconsin, because Edwards really did direct a lot of resources there. He spent more time there than Kerry, and even outspent Kerry on media advertising.

For that he gets the chance to reap some free exposure with media that have little else to report on for a couple of weeks until Super Tuesday, when Edwards' candidacy will be duly slaughtered. (Kerry will actually have a few more victories next week, in small states.) A lot depends on how much money this showing will inspire. But Edwards is still probably not going to be competitive in many of the Super Tuesday states, like California and Minnesota. He's apparently looking to mount special efforts in Georgia (the one Southern state of that day) and New York State (campaigning in the upstate industrial cities with his anti-NAFTA song); the test of his appeal will probably be in Ohio. If he can win an industrial heartland state, then he’s shown something.

Kerry is probably kicking himself for not spending more in Wisconsin but the challenge should energize him and alert his campaign. (Maybe even inspire them to write a new speech.) It should also alert his voters, that this is no time for symbolic votes. His fundamentals in Wisconsin were undamaged---the 50% of Democrats, the 80% of all voters who said they would be satisfied with him as the nominee, including 70% who voted for Edwards. At this point Kerry is still likely to win most of the Super Tuesday primaries and enough delegates to be within mathematical striking distance. It gets a little tricky the week after Super Tuesday with a slate of Southern primaries, but he may have enough by then to wrap up the nomination even if he doesn't win several of these states outright.

Several things to watch in the next week or so: more talk of Edwards as v.p.? More media coverage of his campaign? And especially, do the expected endorsements of Kerry, by the AFL-CIO and politicians like Governor Rendell of Pennsylvania, materialize on time? One thing the media will watch because every story has to have an ending: what Howard Dean decides to do on Thursday. But whatever he does is unlikely to be much of a factor at this point. He's very unlikely to endorse anyone if he drops out, and Kerry will benefit as least as much as Edwards.

One other potentially interesting decision will be CNN's candidate debate (moderated by Larry King, as he so often reminded us for the past couple of weeks of primary coverage): they may decide to not invite Al Sharpton or Dennis Kucenic, which according to the rules they could (because they haven't gotten the threshold percentage of votes). If Dean has dropped out by then, it could be John Edwards' fond desire: a two-person debate. That would be pretty interesting, and not at all certain that it would really be so good for Edwards. But they are two very smart guys, both of them former trial lawyers, so it could be fun to watch.

A brief word on a subject that deserves longer treatment, but it does cut to the chase: the debate this week raging among the media bobbleheads and in the august pages of various Times about G.W.'s service record during the Vietnam war largely misses the point. The element that makes this an important consideration (though not an "issue") is that G.W. Bush supported the war in Vietnam---he thought it was morally right and good policy for the U.S. to be fighting in Vietnam---just as long as it wasn't his ass on the line. He had, as Cheney described his own absense, "other priorities." He got his congressman father to jump him over 500 or so applicants ahead of him to get into the National Guard, well known as a draft dodge in 1968, and he got promoted to second lieutenant with lightning speed, for no apparent reason. That is, he avoided participating in a war he supported, and used influence to do it. It isn't that he didn't fight. It's that he wanted others to fight, but not him. That's what is so reprehensible about what he did. And why it is relevant to his fitness for the presidency now, when he has shown no compunction about sending others to die in a war of aggression he began on false pretenses.


Now, just before voting in Wisconsin begins, we risk our perfect primary record with another hunch: that John Edwards will get enough of a late surge to come in second to John Kerry, instead of third behind Howard Dean, as the most recent polls predict.

However, that said, Edwards is becoming a less attractive candidate every day. His one-note campaigning and slumped-smile demeanor isn't wearing well. We suspect his v.p. stock is also falling. So though it's likely he will be the last man standing whose name isn't Kerry, he may have a share in the spotlight for only a few more weeks, until he gets his two-man race on Super Tuesday, and doesn't do all that well.

There is also the possibility, however remote, that Howard Dean's genial demeanor at the debate did not, as the media bobbleheads concluded, signal his surrender, but was a clever play for a more sympathic image. Which might translate into votes in Wisconsin.

The day before Wisconsin...

Howard Dean's campaign chairman let it be known yesterday that after Wisconsin he would announce his support for John Kerry (he'd worked on a Kerry Senate campaign.) Today he is no longer the Dean campaign chairman, which seems to indicate that Dean is going on in some way, even after his defeat tomorrow.

John Edwards got another newspaper endorsement in Wisconsin, and people are pointing out that the poll numbers for he and Dean put together would make a competitive candidate. But he's running third in the latest polls. Will he and Dean strike a deal? Only if the deal is for Dean to pull out and support him. It will never go the other way.

We just saw C-Span coverage of a rally in Madison in which Teresa Heinz Kerry spoke. Stories about her have split, some emphasizing her outspokenness and eccentricities, others rhapsodizing her skills as a campaigner. In Kerry's victory speeches she's just been this little figure to the side in the front row on the stage, seldom in one of those waving embraces that usually characterize the shots of the Political Couple. But hearing her speak, and watching the audience, it's obvious why they say she is such a great campaigner. She speaks in a soft, accented voice, yet her audience was utterly rapt. She is not packaged, she's alive up there, cogent and eloquent. Her theme was, no more cynicism. Allow America to be the living symbol of possibility again, as it was when she grew up in East Africa. She's funny and feisty, intelligent, and you sense this individualized combination of sensuousness and elegance and a touch of wildness. She's real. And she must have that power of presence, because that audience---assembled for a rally, and therefore pumped up---hung on her every word, and was totally with her in feeling. It was something to see.

Ted Kennedy spoke next. He's 71, and has weathered well. He's slimmed down, looks healthy, sounds on top of his game, and looks pretty happy. Apparently his relationship with both Kerrys is more than political. He and his second wife befriended Teresa when she moved with Kerry to Boston. So the Kennedy continuity, a very real element that will become more important as the campaign goes on, is a living one. The Republicans can paint Ted Kennedy as the liberal devil all they want, but on President's Day in the U.S., the Gallup organization says that when asked what President in U.S. history they admire the most, it's a two way tie: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

Within the past few weeks, both John Edwards and Howard Dean declared Wisconsin a must-win state for their campaigns. They both backed off that stand, but if neither of them gets even a quarter of the vote, which now looks likely, they may have to avail themselves of at least a semi-withdrawal from the race. Look for Dean or Edwards or both to announce they are "suspending" their campaigns but not releasing their delegates. This gives them that remote possibility of a collapse of the Kerry campaign, or actually it would have to be a collapse of Kerry, so the convention has to turn to another nominee.

Dean is the most beleaguered. His staff is in virtual revolt, and it's likely that he will have to replace key staffers with volunteers if he is to continue his campaign in any form. John Edwards left the campaign trail to attend fund-raisers several times in the last week, so there's a real question whether he can afford to go on. Clearly neither has the money, or will get the money, to even begin to be competitive in the ten states voting on Super Tuesday, which include California, New York and Ohio.

On Saturday John Kerry won the caucuses in Nevada and in D.C. D.C. had previously given Dean his only "win" in a non-binding caucus. This however was the real one. The candidate's debate today in Wisconsin was notable for Dean backing off the opportunity to hit Kerry on special interest money, after the Bush campaign made it the subject of its first official ad (though Internet only). The Washington Post congratulated the Bushies on their nerve, for the amount of special interest money from major corporations and wealthy donors flowing into the Bush campaigns, and the obvious payoffs to past contributors, is a major Bush vulnerability. Meanwhile several public interest groups agree that when all special interest contributions are added up, Kerry ranks 92nd out of 100 Senators. He has taken less lobbyist money in this campaign than Dean, Edwards or any other Democratic candidate. Even if the total amount featured in the Bush ad is correct---$640,000 over 12 years for Kerry---it pales in comparison to Bush who took in $6.5 million in 2003 alone.

Kerry, the media bobbleheads all agreed afterwards, looked "presidential."

Another interesting moment in the Wisconsin debate was after John Edwards made his usual somewhat disingenuous pitch that he "understands" the problems of working people better because he comes from a working class background, although he doesn't dispute that Kerry and Dean would be just as sensitive to the issues of jobs and poverty. Al Sharpton debunked Edwards simply by saying that good people are good people, it doesn't matter what race or whether they went to prep school or not. Clarence Thomas is black and comes from a similar background, but he and Sharpton come to completely different conclusions on the issues, Sharpton said.

campaign update

General Wesley Clark's endorsement of John Kerry just a few days after he dropped out of the race is something of a surprise. (It's scheduled for Friday.) Though Clark was polling in the teens for the Wisconsin primary, his endorsement probably won't end up adding much more than would have gone to Kerry anyway, likely to be half or more of those numbers. The endorsement comes as Clark is being mentioned more often as a v.p. candidate, and there's a report going around that Kerry isn't real interested in Edwards. On paper, Clark is a strong v.p. choice, just as he was a strong choice to do well in the presidential primaries, on paper. The problem is that he isn't on paper. Out on the campaign trail, on his good days he was great, and on his bad days he was alarming. The Kerry campaign doesn't need a v.p. who is as likely to be a liability as a help. We hope Kerry comes up with a better choice. (The fact that insiders are mentioning him could be a trial balloon, or just to compliment him and keep him motivated, but isn't a serious consideration.) Our bet is that Clark won't be the v.p. If Kerry thinks Edwards hasn't shown enough strength in the south to warrant being on the ticket, why would he pick Clark, who has shown less? It would have to be that Kerry believes Clark has what it takes to be president should that be necessary, which reportedly is a stronger consideration for Kerry than it is for people who like to speculate and don't actually have the responsibility for the choice.

Howard Dean is now running third in Wisconsin polls, and since those polls have come out he's again changed his public position on what he will do after the primary. First he said he would be out if he lost,then he said he would stay in until the end no matter what, but at least one reporter has him saying he will go home to Vermont and think it over. He's gone negative on Kerry and it's not helping. He's apparently angry over some ads in New Hampshire by a third party that he suspects the Kerry people had something to do with, though they've denied it. Angry enough perhaps to quit the race, and endorse John Edwards.

stats of the day

proportion of voters in Virginia Democratic primary
who believe John Kerry can beat G.W. Bush...........85%

proportion of votes in TV poll on the Lou Dobbs
Moneyline conservative cable TV program who believe the payroll records
released by the White House answer all the questions
about G.W. Bush's National Guard service...........5%

who believe they don't....................................95%



Wesley Clark gave the best speech of his campaign in thanking the voters of Tennessee, but he'd come in third, and was barely above 10% of the vote in Virginia, so Wednesday he will formally announce he's dropping out of the race.

Senator John Edwards gave a variation on his homily of last week, which was at once an extraordinary moment in American politics---like you'd imagine Jimmy Stewart playing him---and also kind of weird. He'd talk about the dire straits of a worker who had to tell his young daughter he'd just been fired, and his crowd would roar and he would smile that Jimmy Carter smile.

Senator John Kerry appeared more tired and more serious than usual, and wasn't as effective in his victory speech, which hasn't varied much, but that hardly mattered. He did make sure to include the lines that the media would transform into the soundbite of the night---that America had voted for change, in the east, in the west, in the north, and now the south. In Virginia he again got more than half the votes cast. Edwards was credited with a "respectable second," though he was thirty points behind Kerry. Edwards did about the same in Tennessee but Clark was about 10 points stronger there, and Kerry was in the mid 40 percentiles.

On to Wisconsin. It's possible these three candidates will be in the race until after the last primary, and possibly until the convention. Edwards is planning on a two man race but he was running behind Clark in this week's Wisconsin polls. He doesn't automatically pick up Clark's support (as he might in a southern state) so Wisconsin will be his last real test to take his campaign to the next level. Right now Dean is running second, and he's vowed to keep on going no matter the outcome. He may pick up some of the Clark "outsider" vote, but a lot of Clark's support will probably go to Kerry. Another 50%+ win is not out of the question. That they're contesting Wisconsin is good for Kerry. He's proven something different each week. Wisconsin is the first state so far to allow Independents and Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary. That will be the headline next Tuesday.

(There will be some tempted to suggest Clark as the v.p. on a Navy-Army ticket. Bad idea. Clark is still too much of a, if you'll pardon the expression, loose cannon. He can be incisive and very effective, but sometimes his competitiveness gets the better of him. )

Dean and Edwards can continue to pick up some delegates in Super Tuesday's 10 primaries, and if Edwards has surged into second place across the board, he may pick up more in the next block of Southern primaries in mid March. But nothing short of a revelation that John Kerry started out life as Johanna is likely to stop him, and victory after victory becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy that he's a winner.

But it's not true that voters are voting for him just because he won the previous contests. The exit polls show the voters overwhelmingly believe he is the one to right the economy, to right foreign policy. In a year that seemed to be repeating the recent trend of voters going for novelty and the "outsider" candidate, primary voters cite Kerry's experience as an important reason they're voting for him, and an important reason they believe he can stand up against and beat Bush. Defeating an incumbent president who has taken the nation to war requires a candidate with stature, and Kerry is now the only candidate in the field who qualifies.

These primaries suggest that another bit of conventional wisdom may be faulty: a Massachusetts Democrat can't win in the South. We believe that Kerry's performance in the primary puts Virginia in play as well as Tennesee, along with Arkansas, Louisiana and---above all---Florida, where the African American vote is going to be huge, assuming they are permitted to vote this time. (Media bobbleheads who claim a Democrat can't win Virginia should notice that Kerry was standing next to the Democratic governor of Virginia, who had endorsed him and introduced him for his victory speech.

The only fly in the ointment so far: apparently all this corporation bashing has cut into the soft money that the Democratic party wants to raise, to counter the upcoming onslaught of slick negative advertising the Republicans must already be putting together. So we'll see if Americans can still be swayed into voting against their own interests by fifteen seconds of slick deception, repeated a hundred times a day.

Waves

On the eve of the Virginia and Tennesee primaries that are likely to turn the rest of the Democratic presidential nominating process into a formality, it's worth pausing for a moment to look at the dynamics of the upcoming months of contention between John Kerry and G.W. Bush.

For Bush and the Republicans, the dynamic is quite different than it has been for the past two years plus. Two sorts of things have happened. The first could be called the chickens coming home to roost, or the reality catching up with the illusion. The rationale for the war in Iraq, and by extension the way the Bushies choose to run the war on terrorism, is at best now in question. Readers of AmericanSamizat will not be surprised by the "revelations" of the past weeks regarding WMDs, a war forced for political reasons rather than in defense of America, and so on. Neither will they be surprised that Bush economic policies have devastated lives all over the country, and threaten to do so for generations yet to come. The only news about all this is how and when these situations were revealed. No one could have predicted it would have been now.

The second thing is related to the first but not completely dependent on it. It is that the media and the media audience are now receptive to hearing the reality falling like a ton of bricks on the Bushies' manufactured illusions. In part this too was inevitable, though the timing could not be predicted. For years the media was acting as if hypnotized, and in a way they were. The media powers are located in New York and Washington, and any time we talk to people from there, it is clear how deeply traumatic 9/11 was, in deeply personal ways. That's the charitable reading of why the news media became the propaganda arm of the Bush administration. Feeling themselves under attack, they rallied behind their king to defend their country. They competed only to wave the flag higher than each other. But somehow, somebody counted to three , and they woke up from that hypnosis. They are appalled at what they did, and the extent of their loss of reason and skepticism is partly reflected in the power of their skepticism now, aimed at Bush. Now Time magazine has a cover suggesting there is a Bush credibility gap. And as usual when he is really under pressure, Bush is wilting.

That's part of what's happening with the media. There's also the nature of story: you can only go so long with the same plotline. There has to be a reversal at some point or the story becomes boring and no one will watch or read or buy it. The rise has to be followed by the fall.

Together these two elements created a massive wave that is now washing across the political and media landscape. By fortunes of timing, John Kerry is riding that wave. His rise in the primaries, his message at its high point of articulation, the primaries themselves and how the candidates are behaving, the behavior of the voters, have all contributed to an extremely fortuitous force. Now Kerry is the New hero, while Bush, the emperor of an hour ago, looks weak, without clothes.

But it's best not to entirely buy into the media bobbleheads' latest tune. Just a month ago they were saying Bush would ride easily to re-election. Now they are saying doom, for they don't believe things will get better in Iraq or the economy will generate enough jobs to blunt that growing issue.

But events could intervene. What would the capture or death of Osama bin Laden do to everyone's political calculations? What if Iraq pastes together an actual government in July that doesn't fall apart by October? It's widely believed that a significant terrorist attack on the U.S. or its allies would hurt Bush, but that's not necessarily so. It would give him the opportunity to look strong again. Why people bought that the first time is hard to understand, since it costs Bush nothing to act strong and he has plenty of people around him to pump him up. He's never in any real danger from terrorists or Saddam Hussein. He's in danger from Tim Russert and the voters, and he looks it.

The tide may continue to favor Kerry. He's good in ways Gore wasn't, and maybe he'll also stay lucky. Certain elements of this current tide are likely to keep building, like the jobs issue and particularly health care. Kerry is capable of making the deficit more of an issue than the bobbleheads believe, along the lines of the moveon ad that shows children working on the assembly line to pay for the Bush tax cut for the wealthy. That is, the future will be paying. He'll also point out the massive cuts in social programs and infrastructure that Bush has scheduled for after the election. If Kerry can tie in what's happening right now in states and municipalities, as they cut services and people lose jobs, this issue will continue to build. Kerry will also add new issues that resonate: energy and the environment.

The Bushies are counting on their huge hoard of campaign money to fill the airwaves with charges against Kerry that can't be simultaneously answered because they're made in ads. They'll go after him as a liberal, for proposing tax increases (which was obviously part of the whole idea of cutting taxes on the rich, so that when Democrats tried to get that money back Republicans could say they were increasing taxes). Perhaps they'll raise the "special interests" issue, or go after him for throwing or not throwing his medals in protest. (He's been criticized for throwing his medals on the steps of the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam war, but he threw his ribbons and kept his medals. So he's also been criticized for NOT throwing his medals, but the medals of other soldiers who asked him to.)

They'll try to do to Kerry what they did to John McCain in the 2000 primaries, and what Bush the First did to Dukakis. Why not? It's always worked before. In a way, we're glad they're thinking that way, because we believe there's a very good chance that this time it won't work. The voters are tired of it, they may not even hear it this time, and Kerry is very good at defending and counterattacking.

But the Bushies will keep doing it whether it works or not because it is all they know. They believe that perception is reality, that the photo op is more important than the duplicity afterwards. You can see it in everything Bush says---he just keeps repeating the same bald assertions and lies, even when it's clear he knows they're now falling flat, and being so obviously contradicted by reality. But they'll keep doing it---and hope that with enough stage managing, with the right pictures and music in the flow of their campaign ads, they'll get away with it yet again. It's the ultimate in cynicism. But this time it's old, and maybe it's too old to work.

That Bush was king especially to Republicans has thrown the party into confusion as his feet of clay are exposed. Their ideological differences are being revived by his more outrageous policies, and their identity is no longer quite so clear . They have nowhere else to go but Bush, of course, but at a time that Democrats appear to be energized and united, even some sluggishness could be costly, and a few well placed survivalist agendas could be disastrous.

There are lots that can happen to turn the tide, or to turn the whole process into a series of whirlpools and rocks. The biggest danger we see is that something happens to absorb the media, something big enough to get them competing with each other on a single story or a single obsession, so that what Kerry is saying and doing out on the campaign never gets covered. That's the truly scary thing about the media these days, even apart from deliberate control by a small number of conglomerate corporations. The media no longer feels a responsibility to cover the candidates for president, to print or show what they say on issues. They can fill their airtime talking to each other, debating their own self-generated ideas and scenarios. What's very sad about this especially is that the process hasn't yet reached bottom. You can go for weeks and months without seeing an experienced, intelligent and relatively sophisticated adult newsperson on cable TV, unless you really look for the few that have regular slots. But you see all of the surviving ones covering elections. It's like finding a tribe that was supposed to have vanished---where are they keeping them, we didn't know so many were still around. Try watching CNN's election coverage and switching for a moment to CNN Headline News and you'll see exactly what we mean. Headline News has become MTV News Lite. They even put one of their last remaining adults in a hockey shirt with USA across it the other day, to report the news. (He was wearing a shirt and tie under it.)

So the dynamic has changed considerably, and that's good for Kerry now---and of course we believe good for the country, the world and the future. Maybe this is just the beginning of a long term change that will last into the election and beyond. Our resident intuitives believe it will. Our resident skeptics aren't so sure. But our majority agrees on one thing: this particular wave will eventually break. Let's hope there's another bigger one just like it right behind.

Primarily Inside Politics

Stat of the day

annual increase
In U.S. health care costs.......10%

Annual increase
In U.S. health insurance
Costs...................................15%


John Kerry won the Washington state and Michigan caucuses Saturday, in each case with around half the votes cast. Today he'll likely win the Maine caucus. He is leading in preliminary polls in both Virginia and Tennessee, two sort-of southern states where John Edwards and Wesley Clark now appear to be fighting for second place on Tuesday. Apparently what's going on with them is an elimination bout to see who gets to be the last candidate standing, other than Kerry. Howard Dean, who got seconds on Saturday, will stake his claim on that role in Wisconsin.

That's how the dynamic has changed, and it’s not exactly a big change: it's for the right to be the alternative to Kerry. Edwards and Clark are splitting the non-Kerry votes (and attacking each other) in Tuesday's southern states. If he's second in both states, Edwards seems to have the money to go on and contest Wisconsin. Clark may not, and it’s unlikely that he will squeak a second over Edwards in both states. Unless he has a win Tuesday, we expect Clark will drop out of the race.

What's likely to happen we feel is this: Edwards emerges from the south with respectable showings but no wins, Clark fades into inconsequence with thirds. Dean fights for a win in Wisconsin but doesn’t get it. Right now the only question is whether Edwards can finish there ahead of Dean. If he doesn’t---if it’s Kerry, Dean, Edwards, nobody has emerged as the single alternative, and they all check their bank accounts and their agendas for their futures to decide if they want to go on to Super Tuesday just to be the last man losing.

That's the inside baseball. The significance of the primaries so far is this: turnout in every primary and caucus has been high, and in most it broke records; Democratic voters (and in New Hampshire, Independents who comprised 40% of the voters in the Democratic primary) are focused on defeating G.W. Bush. They are not demanding perfection on their most cherished issues, they are not nitpicking voting records (a strategy that Clark is trying, as are advance snipers of the Republican right guard, and a strategy that used to work...but it sure isn't right now.) The voters are voting overwhelmingly for John Kerry. He has won a major industrial battleground state in Michigan, a major industrial battleground border state in Missouri, a far western state in Washington, two small states in two very different parts of the country--- North Dakota (big state, small population) and Delaware. If he wins Virginia, he will add a state of the Confederate south. If he wins Tennessee, it will not only take all the air of his primary opponents, it will shake the confidence of Republicans in the effectiveness of their “northern liberal” tag for Kerry, which is the best they’ve come up with so far.

campaign junkie update

Shaping up as the states to watch over the next couple of weeks are Tennessee next Tuesday (2/10) and Wisconsin on February 17.

Both John Edwards and Wesley Clark are devoting time and resources to Tennessee, and both have something of a home field advantage. But as of now, John Kerry is leading in the polls. With another string of victories likely this weekend, he will be taking on the math of inevitability by the 10th as well as the air of inevitability. So two things could happen to slow Kerry's momentum, apart from voters who simply favor another candidate: voters who want to slow down the process, or voters who assume Kerry will be the nominee and doesn't need their vote, so they can vote for Edwards because he used to practice law in the state and is a southerner, or Clark because he shook their hand or something. But right now it looks like: Kerry, Edwards, Clark in that order. If that holds, Clark would essentially be finished (and it would probably be a great relief to him, because he's not very good at this and probably knows it by now, and he appears not to really have the stomach for campaigning over the long haul.) Edwards stays alive with a win or possibly a close second.

The last battlefield could be Wisconsin on 2/17. Howard Dean is making his last stand there. If he doesn't win it, he may very well get out of the race. Edwards has chosen Wisconsin as the place he needs to show he can win outside the south. If he doesn't win there, especially if he has not won another state besides South Carolina, he may concede. Kerry would go into March 2 Super Tuesday essentially unopposed. Again, voters in Wisconsin could simply try to keep the race going by coming out for Edwards or Dean. But it is highly likely that they will split that vote. Unless Edwards comes out of 2/10 with momentum from two southern victories (which is unlikely as of now) he probably couldn't be the focus of the non-Kerry voters, but he does have the best chance at the moment to survive. There's also the possibility that the Dean activists will pull out all the stops for at least a symbolic victory in Wisconsin, achieving at least some emotional satisfaction. But it is more likely that they will have their moment at the Convention when Dean speaks (as he certainly will.)

The problem for these candidates is that they need clear victories over Kerry, and that is highly unlikely. He is going to pick up almost as many delegates in these states, even if he is a few percentage points off the top spot. And he is going to be winning every other state in contention. Winning Michigan, Washington and Maine will be huge. And for the other candidates this is just a strategy to stay in the race until Super Tuesday. Wresting the nomination from Kerry is even more of a long shot. The only surprise since Tuesday so far is how much money these candidates claim they continue to raise. The Democrats are benefitting from this primary race in getting attention for their agenda and point of view. It's not certain that the money going to these campaigns would be available to the Democratic ticket anyway, but if it would be, there may be reason down the road to regret spending it now on candidacies that have no realistic chance.

Side note: we don't see Letterman much anymore but apparently candidates have been doing Top Ten Lists for him lately. John Edwards did "ten things you'll never hear candidates say." #3 was "Lady, that is one ugly baby." #1 was "Read my lips: no new wardrobe malfunctions."

The Results

John Kerry won primaries and caucuses in five states; in the largest and most important primary (Missouri) he got a majority of votes cast in a field of 7 candidates, as he did in the North Dakota caucus. In South Carolina, which John Edwards won by about 15 percentage points, he got a quarter of the votes cast, and more than that in Oklahoma, where Wesley Clark was the apparent winner, just a few hundred votes ahead of John Edwards. In addition to Missouri and North Dakota, Kerry won Delaware, Arizona and New Mexico. So he has won in every region of the country except the traditional south, and today he has shown strength among black and Latino voters, who were not present in significant numbers in New Hampshire and Iowa.

Apart from the total delegates that Kerry won, the most significant number of the night comes from the exit polls. Asked if Kerry was an acceptable nominee even if they didn't vote for him in the primary, 80% in 3 of the 4 primary states said yes. In Oklahoma, where he ran slightly behind Clark and Edwards, it was 70%.

Joe Lieberman dropped out of the race, while Howard Dean polled behind Al Sharpton in South Carolina. John Edwards' strong win in South Carolina, and his eloquent stump speech in victory (which moved the MSNBC panel to high hosannas), raised his campaign, which had staked everything there, outspending Kerry by 5 to 1. Senator Edwards of North Carolina was born in South Carolina, and used that to his advantage. Wesley Clark, as off-putting in victory as he is in defeat, claimed a great victory in Oklahoma, where he camped out since New Hampshire. Clark is from neighboring Arkansas, and was perceived as conservative because he's career military. Edwards did better than expected in Oklahoma, principally because he was endorsed by Barry Switzer, the famed Oklahoma football coach whose endorsement is credited with electing the current governor. (The source of this information was the Edwards campaign.)

Edwards' victory may result in a cash infusion. If so, he can mount campaigns in the next round of southern states, and then he is hoping to break out of the south with a win in Wisconsin. Clark will also need inspired contributors to mount any sort of challenge, although it's not clear where he will be able to challenge Kerry.

Kerry asserted that he was the only candidate to campaign in all seven of the Feb. 3 states, and is committed to campaigning in every primary and caucus state in the future. This is not only a good strategy for the frontrunner, it's an appropriate practice if the party is to test for its best nominee. Edwards is likely to be his final viable opponent in the weeks ahead. We've been saying since before Iowa that his "two Americas" theme is a winner. He is eloquent, intelligent and straightforward. But he may look a little too much like Jimmy Carter, a good man not prepared to swim with the sharks. Lack of experience has become a qualification, but maybe the tide has turned on that as it may have on many other knee-jerk truths from recent elections.

South Carolina was the first state to report, so Edwards got his media moment early in the evening. At that point the media bobbleheads were touting his chances based on the "domestic themes," of jobs, health care, education and so on, whereas Kerry's appeal as the war hero was as a leader on "foreign affairs," which they once again denied would be the deciding factor against Bush. But they don't quite understand Kerry's appeal as a war hero---because he is also an anti-war hero. His war hero image does reinforce his foreign policy experience as a U.S. Senator who has been very active in debating policies and making law in foreign and military affairs. His anti-war hero image does reinforce his ability to distinguish bad wars from necessary actions, and his resolve to not involve American young people in unnecessary military adventures, let alone kill the innocent of other countries in order to make wealthy people more wealthy. But his warrior in war and peace image translates to those domestic issues as well. He will fight for jobs, for health care, for education, and stand up to the very powerful oligarchy of corporations and entrenched interests.

Most importantly to Democrats now, this peaceful warrior image means he will give Bush and the Republicans a fight to the finish, which is what voters dearly want. (A large percentage classified themselves as either "angry" or "dissatisfied.") In his evening interviews, you could see this quality: no criticism went unanswered, and he repeated that he looked forward to the fight for the nomination and the election.

Kerry is battle tested, in war, in the war against the war, and in the political wars. Kerry won a very tough election for the Senate against a very popular Republican Governor---and in Massachusetts you had to be very popular to be both Republican and governor--- Bill Weld. Here's what one of Kerry's Navy buddies told New Yorker reporter Joe Klein: "John's at his best under pressure, when he's being seriously challenged. He gets really cool, very calm. He really is a warrior---he just loves it. I took one look at him as he was walking into Faneuil Hall for one of the last debates and I thought, Bill Weld has no idea what's about to hit him."

That's what Democrats are looking for in a nominee. Not somebody who seemingly changes his entire personality from debate to debate, like Al Gore apparently did, giving the woeful George W. Bush an opportunity that probably surprised even him. Wesley Clark's basic message is fine with most Democrats. John Edwards message, eloquence and intelligence will inspire most Democrats, as did Howard Dean's. But Democrats want the nominee who will beat George Bush, and beyond the Democratic party (but including those in it), voters want somebody who is equipped to be President from Inauguration Day, who can deal with foreign challenges and get America back into the international community, while making sense of our affairs at home. That's why John Kerry won seven primaries and caucuses out of nine, and why he's going to win in Michigan and Washington state later this week. Kerry's campaign slogan, a nasty cooption of Bush posturing, is "bring it on." He means it.

More vice presidents from Speculation Central: John Edwards continues to deny interest in being the v.p. nominee, and who can blame him? Of course it is something he has to say at this stage, or no one would donate money to his campaign. If he is asked, and he does accept, he would be a strong v.p. candidate because of his eloquence, intelligence and energy. Coming from the south may not add a lot.

As we mentioned before, Kerry could choose a Midwesterner like Gephardt, to help win the crucial industrial states. Or Jennifer Granholm, the very popular governor of Michigan, a key battleground state. That she's a woman will also help, especially since the Republicans aren't going to be able to portray Kerry as a wimp (or as those Arnold clones on Saturday Night Live used to say, a "girlie man.")

Or Kerry could look to a southwestern strategy, and choose Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, a Latino, and former ambassador to the UN in the Clinton administration. Richardson himself is a proponent of such a strategy, so he wouldn't have to be convinced it's a good idea. Richardson mentioned the environment as an important issue in the west, and though this crucial area has barely been mentioned in the campaign so far, Kerry is very strong on environmental issues.

A musical note: One beat after Kerry finished his victory speech in New Hampshire, the ballroom speakers boomed with the Boss, singing "No Retreat, No Surrender," a great, great song. Tonight in Washington state, the same timing but a different song: native son Jimi Hendrix: "(Let Me Stand Next To Your) Fire."

(Reminds me of the best commercial I saw on the Super Bowl-a very young Jimi in 1953 chooses a bottle of Pepsi from a blue machine outside a music store, with electric guitars in the window (everything about the Pepsi bottle and machine were vintagely correct, but not the guitars.) He had passed on a Coke from the red machine across the street, also in front of a music store, but with accordions in the window. The soundtrack treated us to a few notes of "Foxy Lady" on each instrument. "Good choice" was the conclusion.)

(Yeah, I saw that, and most of the actual game, but during the infamous halftime show I was watching C-Span 2, and a fascinating interview with Franklin Toker-met him a few times in Pittsburgh---about Fallingwater. And I do not regret it, having already seen the Latoya model of the Jackson breast in Playboy. Same model, probably, from the same surgeon.)

the day before

National poll numbers today are shaking the assumptions of the media bobbleheads. The numbers show Bush more than vulnerable both on Iraq and on the economy---specifically on jobs. His approval rating has fallen below 50% for the first time, and John Kerry has a 7 point lead in a head to head matchup for November. This just after a weekend in which bobbleheads pooh poohed Iraq as an issue, and gave the economic issue to Bush. They also talked about the Democrats hurting each other on the campaign trail, but that turned out not to be so: because the media covers conflict, the Democratic message got repeated by all or most of the contenders, so it made an impression.

But here at Speculation Central we don't think the primary campaign is going to be all over tomorrow, and that's a good thing. Judging from Kerry's last two days of scheduling, he may have concluded that John Edwards is going to win South Carolina, and Oklahoma may go to Wesley Clark. Our barely educated guess is that he's looking at 5 outright victories out of 7, and will come in second in the other two. If Edwards wins South Carolina by 5 points or more, and shows a consistent second place in other states, he remains enough of a contender to satisfy the media, who will then keep covering the race. Howard Dean will need outright victories before March 2 to remain legitimate and not just an annoying spoiler. By the March 2 primaries it's likely that Kerry's opposition will be token, unless Edwards has run up some victories beyond the South. Right now, the national polls show him not as strong against Bush as Kerry. That of course could change as he becomes better known. But Howard Dean is unlikely to recover as a viable candidate. He is shown losing to Bush by a clear margin in the new poll.

Kerry is in striking distance in all seven states tomorrow. If voters are still strongly motivated by electability and they see these poll numbers, it could be enough to give him the additional two or three victories. But this may also be a time that voters want to pause and take a second look at other candidates. The frontrunner has the powerful appeal of a winner, but also the prominent position as target and symbol for whatever negative messages voters want to send. Our gut feeling is that he does not win South Carolina or Oklahoma. If he doesn't, it's not necessarily a bad thing, and doesn't really slow down his pace to the nomination. If he does, it's a strong message that voters are focused and powerfully motivated to get rid of the Bush.

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.

Stat of the Day
brought to you by ...The Bush Brothers

Number of votes G.W. Bush won the presidency by......1 (Scalia)
Number of votes G.W. Bush "won" Florida by
according to the Supreme Court..... 537

Number of primarily African American voters
illegally purged from the Florida voting rolls
in 2000, as ordered by Governor Jeb Bush ....... 91,000


Democratic candidates have won the popular vote for President in the last three elections. There are many good reasons that the Democratic candidate in 2004 should as well, with enough electoral votes to stop Bush from doing any more damage. But there is growing evidence of serious trouble in the electoral machinery, and growing suspicion that the subversion of the very process of voting successfully used in Florida will be repeated in various ways, in Florida again, but also in several other states. In particular, the new touch-screen voting systems, widely regarded as unreliable, adopted in several key states at the behest of the Pentagon, are coincidentally manufactured by companies with strong ties to Bush and the Republican party.

Now is the time for citizens to be aware of this, and to ensure the integrity of this last possibility for any semblance of democracy. If voting becomes corrupted on this scale, nothing can save the United States of America.