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DECEMBER 22, 2003 – We were the
first to break the news that General Wesley Clark (ret.) had taken
huge leaps in the campaign, while Senator John Kerry’s (D-MA) inept
campaign was on the way out, making it in essence a two person race
between Clark and media-dubbed front-runner Howard Dean.
Since then, many in the press have begun
to realize what we are saying, and from Slate, to the Washington
Post, to today’s Ron Brownstein column in the LA Times (Revitalized
Clark Campaign Is Advancing After Missteps) are, somewhat
reluctantly, beginning to admit that Clark is the only candidate in
the race – Dean included – who is climbing at the moment, and that
he is regarded as the only person who is truly a threat to Dean.
Now there is another story the press has
yet to begin to cover.
Until now, the story line has been Dean
holding strong, Clark on the rise, Kerry on the way out. Now, that
has changed again.
According to a recent internal poll –
taken even before the capture of Saddam – a Kerry campaign insider is
reporting that Iowa is now a tossup between three – not two –
candidates. In a poll taken two weeks before Saddam was caught,
Howard Dean received 23%, John Kerry 22%, and Richard Gephardt 21%.
Yes, this is great news for the Kerry
camp, but even more so it is bad news for the Dean camp and good
news for Clark.
Dean is counting on, at this point,
asserting his frontrunner status early and riding it on home from
there. Victories in Iowa and New Hampshire are essential for Dean,
who is in a much weaker position in many of the states that will
come into play in the second round of primaries to be held on
February 3.
New Hampshire was already looking as the
possible launching pad for a Clark victory if he were to get a
second or strong third place showing there – a state where, with
local boys Dean and Kerry duking it out, Clark was not expected to
make much of a show. Originally, the thought was that Dean would
take Iowa and New Hampshire, but Clark could get some notice and
momentum and then catch up on February 3 with wins in South
Carolina, Oklahoma, and some other southern and western states in
play that day.
Dean having a close battle with Iowa
favorite Gephardt was a sign of strength for Dean, showing he could
rise from nothing and stand toe-to-toe with the man who was supposed
to run away with both the labor endorsements and the Iowa title.
But now, with it being a three way race,
Dean is being seen, once again, to have peaked, while other
candidates seen as stronger on defense issues are rising. Kerry’s
jump in Iowa is a huge step forward and a huge momentum stopper for
Dean.
One might be tempted to see Senator
Kerry’s rise in Iowa and his still second-place stand in New
Hampshire as a truly positive sign for his campaign and be tempted
to write him back into the picture. His campaign, in fact, has made
some decent adjustments since Mary Beth Cahill took over following
his house-clearing round of firing.
But Kerry’s position in New Hampshire is
very delicate. Clark is rising while Kerry – who is already known
by most of the state being a neighboring son and having campaigned
there for almost a year now – has done nothing but lose ground
there. And so the real likelihood is that a Kerry win in Iowa would
be more a blow to Dean than a boost to Kerry. Followed up by a
second place showing for Clark, and frontrunner status will have
officially changed.
The problem with Kerry’s campaign, even
as it makes advances in Iowa, is that, according to insiders, it has
put its entire weight into the first two contests, thinking the
press generated from wins there would create momentum that would win
him the states in the next round. And so he has completely
neglected second and third round states, even South Carolina where
he kicked off his campaign in front of an aircraft carrier. As a
result, he is down near last, in low single digits, near Carol
Mosley Braun in the polls there, while Clark is in a statistical tie
for first.
Clark is also leading in Oklahoma and
statistically tied for the lead in at least two other second round
states, while Kerry is at the top in none.
Combined with the reality that Kerry has
been tasted and passed over by many in New Hampshire already leaves
Clark with a lot more growing room there than he.
The biggest story, though, is the
beginning of the end for the Dean campaign. The first blow was
landed by the Gore endorsement. Dean had painted himself, within a
party still resentful of the toothless, wavering campaign Gore ran
last election, as the anti-Gore, a straight-talker who wouldn’t sit
by and say, “I won’t attack,” as Gore did. Indeed, Dean’s people
went to great lengths early on to paint Kerry as the “Gore” in this
election, pointing out he had hired much of Gore’s staff and saying
he was prone to qualified double-speak as Gore often was.
Then, Gore joined the Dean team, and
ever since then the weight of the double-talking loser has been
lifted off of both the Kerry and Lieberman campaigns. Ferocious
attacks by Kerry and others that simply point out Dean’s constant
knack for emphatically saying contradictory things are devastating
the man who would be the lone straight-talker. And Dean’s ability
to fight back against the people attacking him is completely
undermined by the fact he launched his campaign and rise in the
polls with a nasty flurry of personal attacks – in particular, on
Senator Kerry, painting him, as mentioned above, as someone who
contradicts himself.
In the meantime, Dean’s biggest asset
and the thing that earned Gore’s endorsement, the awesome,
ground-breaking campaign he is running, is become less and less
important. The reason, in fact, Dean’s tightly-run, highly-run
campaign was so appealing to people was that it represented the
opposite of Gore’s campaign. Fervent activists finally had a man
who not only would speak boldly, but knew how to make a campaign
that would have the ground troops and counterattacking swiftness to
be able to stand up to the Bush/Limbaugh machine.
But problem number two for the Dean
campaign is that the people who are just beginning to tune in now
are not the activist types who pay attention to such things. Now,
Democrats and Independents are tuning in simply to see the people
who are running, how they present themselves, and what they have to
say. And Dean’s uncharismatic nature, tendency to boldly contradict
himself, and his, for many American just tuning in, incomprehensible
stance with regard to Iraq, makes him simply seem unelectable to the
late tuners.
John Kerry had gotten the early bounce
and frontrunner status when people looked and saw the Democrats had
a veteran in their midst who was strong on defense but also had a
solid history of supporting Democratic issues domestically. Now,
John is getting that bounce once again from people tuning in for the
first time.
And then there is Clark, who is
neutralizing Dean’s other former advantage – outsider status. Clark
is just as much the outsider as Dean, and one with strong defense
credentials and far more charisma.
By all practical measures, this is
should now be a three man race for the top spot, but not the three
the rest of the press is reporting. No, don’t include Dean in
this. At this point, it should be a tight three way battle between
Kerry, who is in position to pull of an Iowa and New Hampshire
one/two punch, Gephardt, who has crucial Midwest support, and Clark,
who can make a big showing on February 3 following a nice launch in
New Hampshire.
That, as we said, is how things
should be, but two more things have to be considered: Kerry’s
anemic campaign, and Gephardt’s lack of appeal on defense issues.
This weakness for Gephardt is a fatal one.
So in fact, more and more this is
becoming what should be a two man race, between the two veterans,
one with more military leadership experience, and one with more
domestic and campaign experience. But, for some reason, what should
be Kerry’s advantage is his weakness. Clark’s campaign outshines
his vastly.
With all of this in play, the only thing
the Clark campaign needs to really get off the ground is a media
momentum builder. When the fundraising quarter closes on
December 31 and Clark shows he can just about stand toe to toe with
Dean fundraising-wise, even after such a short time in the race, he
will have that momentum.
How can we write off the Dean campaign
so early? Funny, somebody should be asking the rest of the press
how they managed to write him in so early.
If Clark can make his domestic agenda
case, he can win it.
If somehow the Kerry campaign – not the
candidate, but the troops – manage to get it in gear, he may make it
interesting. Even led by a revitalizing Cahill, they have a long,
long way to go to undo the damage the previous campaign staff has
done so far. But a few strides have been made in the right
direction.
If they can’t do it, and Wesley Clark
can stand toe to toe with the other Democrats on domestic issues,
then Clark will be the Democrats’ man.
Yes, it may seem shocking and absurd to
some, and I’m sure we will get a flood of comments from Dean
supporters who can’t imagine writing him off at this point. But
just remember, since we reported a couple weeks back that Clark was
the true number two, the entire media has slowly come along to
acknowledge we were right. You can write us to disagree if you
wish, but it might behoove you to wait a couple of weeks before
doing so. |
