The Iowa veterans came through for Kerry, the only veteran in the race. He now inherits the media scrutiny that was focused on Dean.

The labor unions were split between Dean and Gephardt, which was unfortunate for both. Dean should not have run the negative ad, and hopefully will avoid doing it in the future.

Edwards and Kucinich had made a pact that they would automatically be the number 2 choice for the other, so Edwards got the Kucinich vote when Kucinich fell below 15% in a precinct.

And Gephardt just announced that he's dropping out of the race.

Apparently there were a lot of people showing up at caucuses and registering as Democrats right there (perfectly legal). My cynical side immediately asked if these folks could be checked for previous party affiliation. It just seems like a very Rove-ish thing to do, having fake dems show up to skew the results. Then the very quasi-poetic side took over:

Call me paranoid
"New" dems skew caucuses
Shades of Tricky Dick?

Gephardt is dropping out, and will also announce that Andy Rooney has agreed to be a donor for an eyebrow transplant.

I'm a late-breaking Dean supporter who's thrilled about everything he's doing to help build the Democratic Party. It's a very good thing in both the short and long runs.

If someone can beat him in a fair fight in the primary season, then more power (and my eventual support) to that someone. In that event, the Dean supporters will largely transfer to any of the three other credible candidates (Kerry, Edwards, Clark), just as their support will transfer to Dean, should he wind the nomination. That's a no-brainer.

(Winning this year is the important thing, which is why Lieberman's snarky Democrat-bashing puts him out, and Zell Miller's mere existence is an affront to humanity.)

But sneaky dealings in a brokered convention that do Dean out of the nomination if he comes in with a big plurality--bad mojo! That's the one that scares me, short and long term.

P.S. Do you know about this error message at the bottom of the preview pages?

MT::App::Comments=HASH(0x810ac18) Use of uninitialized value in sprintf at lib/MT/Template/Context.pm line 1187.

I've noticed it, too, and I don't know what's causing it.

"Apparently there were a lot of people showing up at caucuses and registering as Democrats right there (perfectly legal). My cynical side immediately asked if these folks could be checked for previous party affiliation. It just seems like a very Rove-ish thing to do, having fake dems show up to skew the results."

I'm afraid I don't put much stock in these kinds of imputations. Then again, I've caucused as a Republican--and Teresa was elected our precinct chairperson. (It was 1980, in Washington state, and the caucus in Seattle's University district consisted of 17 Anderson supporters and one rather brave Reagan guy.)

I tend to think you get to be whichever party you say you belong to, so long as you don't try to caucus or vote in both. There are plenty of alternate worlds in which the Republican Party of 2004 is the standard-bearer of justice, compassion, and intellectual integrity. (Just consider a world in which Kermit wasn't killed in WWI.)

Patrick,

I lived, sort of, in that world.

It was the Republican Winthrop Rockefeller who finally put out the deeply flawed Democrat Orval Faubus from the Arkansas governorship. And for all my dislike of the state's current Republican governor, Mike Huckabee, here in his last term he's taken on the thankless task of school reform, and getting battered for it. For all his failings, Huckabee seems to have matured in office.

The Hutchison brothers, who are just bad people, are more representative Arkansas Republicans, but we've had a history of decent Republicans in state office (even Frank White was just dumb, not evil.)

My main issue is, I want to know I've got someone who won't roll over for Bush. Of the pack, only Dean and Clark give me much hope of that -- and for Clark I'm having to impute that confidence; I am not totally sure yet.

There's kind of a primate thing going on right now with the electorate at large. The alphas are beating their chests and flinging feces, and most of the rest of us monkeys have been either showing throat or hiding, for quite some time.

It's really got to stop, and I'm going to get behind whoever wins the nomination, but we need a truly inspired and inspirational leader to get folks to stop voting their fears and start voting their beliefs.

I'll stop ranting now. I should be in bed anyhow. G'night Gracie.

-l.

I'm really pleased to see people registering. I'd like to see more of it.

Mostly, though, I'm really pleased to see that Maureen Dowd is going to have to scramble to start a catfight with the new candidate for sheriff.

"They've been the guys who talk as if this Administration really is a threat to our future, not just as a piece of speechmaking boilerplate, but rather a threat to the basic quality of your life just a few years from now."

The trouble is that even if this is true, most Americans don't believe it. And trying to convince them of it will be difficult. What will be easier is just convincing people that Bush isn't the best person to be president, and they should vote for the other guy. No scary predictions needed, and the outcome is the same.

Right, just like it worked in 2000. No, wait...

The repukes switched over, voted Kerry. They think George is close enough to get skull and bones dirt on him.They are downright scared of Dean as well.
Negative ads do not work? 'Spose that is why the PR nazis of Rove resort to it as their first, last, and middle option. Kerry proves that works. he has bashed Bush every possible chance, more so than atatcking other candidates.
Attack ads are not what Dean needs- attack talk is. Drive it home every point. Notice the anti-Dean media. "No vision"- he comes out with plan to get health care for all. So now the emphasis must change to "Meanie"- Al Gore was a big ol' debate meanie and somehow this trivialized real issues and allowed the press to overlook ENRON's shrubya acces per day in Texas.

Kerry was doing war protests as a vet who served his, Bush was a male cheerleader. This is like comparing a man to a boy... fishing in a barrel. The press wants someone who Bush bashes for headlines and soundbites...they have him now.

See which way the Labor vote goes- Gephart had union support and backs out gracefully, having perhaps secured a bid for his kid as a future Rep/Senator in the process. A class act across the board.That crossover may seal his north/northeast votes.
Dean was pro Nafta-free trade, the Gep backers went to Kerry it appears. Clark has yet to battle, may be trying to secure a post under Kerry, both are anti war, Clark is anti-trade man who is wading through a Druge report smear.
Do not doubt him, he has media friends backing him(www.michaelmoore.com) and measures up well/better than Kerry on foregin affairs which seems to be the jist of voting spin.
War in iraq was third on exit polls as an "issue"- proof repukes crossed over.

"Mr. Murder", do you have any evidence for your claim that Kerry's Iowa success was because "the repukes switched over"? I ask because charges like that often follow primaries and caucuses in open states, and they rarely seem to have much basis in fact.

If more than a few Iowa Republicans caucused as Democrats in order to support a candidate they think is more beatable in November, I'd be very surprised, because not that many voters are generally motivated enough to behave in quite such a Machiavellian fashion, certainly not right in front of people who are liable to be their neighbors.

If, on the other hand, more than a few Iowa Republicans caucused for Kerry because they think he should be President, that's a point in Kerry's favor. If someone as liberal as Kerry is attracting Republicans, that's news.

Personally, I'm all for attracting the support of Republican voters, and I don't much care for deriding them as "repukes" or other such silly names. I'm not opposed to slangy or contentious political language, I'm specifically opposed to confusing our vehement opposition to this Administration and the modern Republican power structure with, on the other hand, hatred and loathing of regular people who identify as Republicans. Plenty of those people are simply mistaken, not evil, and they deserve to be reached out to, not insulted.

Remember, the current American political landscape, in which the two major parties actually strongly correspond to different ends of the ideological spectrum (or corners of the ideological square, if you're a fan of those why-you-should-be-a-libertarian grids), is a recent development. There are plenty of people alive who are Republicans because, when and where they were young, being a Republican was the more just and progressive alternative.

From Bryan:

"The Iowa veterans came through for Kerry, the only veteran in the race. He now inherits the media scrutiny that was focused on Dean."

Since the GOP has shown that slandering a disabled veteran is All Good Stuff, it will be interesting (if disgusting) to see what the GOP does to Kerry. His war record is a danger to them, for obvious reasons. What will the veterans' groups do?

"The Iowa veterans came through for Kerry, the only veteran in the race."

I'm confused. Who is this "General Wesley Clark" fellow I keep hearing so much about, then?

-David

Uh, David, he didn't compete in Iowa. I'm sure that's what Barry was referring to.

It was actually Bryan who originated the quote. Which I think is somewhat ambiguous in terms of what he meant. But it's not at all important, so no big deal if I was misreading him.

The results out of Iowa are much more important. I'm on record (in the comment section of this blog, even) saying that nominating Dean would be a disaster. After watching Dean's concession speech, I feel even more strongly that he would lose in a Republican beatdown. What I saw last night was not the speech of a guy who can win broad support.

But I think a Kerry/Edwards ticket would be very tough. A Medal of Honor winner and a Southern Democrat? Two great tastes that taste great together in terms of electoral politics! By contrast, Dean would probably lose the entire South in a landslide.

Nominate Kerry and I'll probably vote for him. Get enough people like me, and Bush might be out of office.

-David

Will somebody please explain to me why getting shipped to another country halfway around the world so people can shoot at you and you can shoot at them is such an important qualification for being president? No really, I'm serious. Is it a guy thing?

It is perfectly legal and acceptable for people registered Republican or Independent to change their registration at the door of the caucus and participate. I met 2 lifelong Republicans working The Perfect Storm this week.

Had y'all seen Dean at the rally after the caucuses you would not have doubted his ability to win support. He certainly knows has to work an audience with enthusiasm and vigor.

MKK

Mary Kay -

It's not a guy thing, particularly, it's a question of obligation.

When you're president, odds are really good you're going to send people far away to endure awful conditions and do awful things that involve killing other people for the furtherance of some political cause, which is supposed to be the security -- NOT the prosperity -- of the United States.

So you should damn well have been the one subject to orders and awfulness before you do that, because unless you have been, it's all too easy for you to not be emotionally aware of what you're really doing or deciding when you make that decision.

This is not a perfect argument, but I think it's a compelling one.

Graydon, I don't know about that. The best president the country ever had, Lincoln, just barely served in the armed forces. The second-best, FDR, didn't serve at all. It's a qualification, not a requirement.

Having re-read my post above, I'm surprised no one called me out yet. Kerry received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and 3 Purple Hearts but not, of course, the Medal of Honor. Still a decorated war hero to be sure.

-David

Mary Kay, as you know I'm strongly inclined to Dean, but I really must point out that the ability to work a crowd full of people who are already your supporters is not the same as the "ability to win support." I'm not disputing that he has the latter, but rather suggesting that the former offers evidence in either direction.

Otherwise, what other people said. I don't think it's a "guy thing" to regard a history of honorable military service as a plus on a potential President's resume. It's not mandatory, but it's definitely to the good, for the reasons Graydon suggests, modulo a bit of Graydonesque overstatement.

Patrick: I knew when I typed that somebody would call me on it. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to leave it in.

I'm not sure I buy the military=good explanations proposed. For instance, in reply to Graydon: if a person hasn't the imagination and empathy to realize what he's doing in sending people to fight and die, I don't want him or her as President. (The current incumbent being an excellent example of lack of imagination and empathy.) And as adamsj points out some of our best have not been experienced military men. Yet Kerry having fought in Vietnam was enough to get the vets of Iowa on his side. I wonder how many of them knew he came back and protested the war?

David: I wondered but lacked the energy to go find out. Thanks for being self-correcting.

MKK

Mary Kay -

There's imagination and empathy, and then there's having had the experience. The usual version of describing the distinction is virgins discussing sex, but there's an equivalent distinction involving having had the guy standing next to you splashed all over you.

No amount of imagination really prepares you for that category of experience, and since it's one of the important things in the job description of a Commander in Chief to decide if and when to use military force, I do think it's a legitimate thing to regard as important in candidate resumes.

I regard the 'subject to orders' part as much more important; they surely don't have to have been military orders, but it seems very much like a good idea to have the person on top of the heap aware of what giving an order means from the recieving end, for the "can't get out of this, need this job" values of receiving end at the very least.

And yeah, Lincoln and FDR didn't have much military experience; on the other hand, Andrew Jackson did. (Though so did Teddy and Washington.)

As for Kerry, and protesting when he got back; most of the vets I know figure that if you've been, you get to have an opinion. They weren't Vietnam vets, but I can see something like that holding. Not reliably a pro-war bunch, your combat vetrans.

"Yet Kerry having fought in Vietnam was enough to get the vets of Iowa on his side. I wonder how many of them knew he came back and protested the war?"

I would be very surprised if any of them didn't know this, aside from the occasional individual who's simply feeble-minded. As I'm sure you know, as a class, veterans aren't actually stupid.

"If a person hasn't the imagination and empathy to realize what he's doing in sending people to fight and die, I don't want him or her as President."

I submit that it's not irrational for people to value the added security they derive from knowing that an incumbent President has some emotional grasp of what real war entails. I personally don't use precisely this moral calculus, nor do you, as you've informed us. But I don't think people who do deserve to be dismissed quite so briskly as you seem eager to do, nor do I quite sign on to the idea that it's all just--what was your phrase--a "guy thing." Goodness, that certainly made me feel invited to continue the conversation.

War service shouldn't be an essential in a president, just a plus. (I have heard people who think it is an essential claim that FDR's military service consisted of being Asst. Secretary of the Navy in WW1. Nonsense, of course: he was no sailor, he was a top Washington civilian bureaucrat.)

Lack of war service should only be a minus if you avoided it cravenly, and are now enthusiastic about sending the younger generation. What they call "chickenhawks."

But anyone who supports Kerry because they think a decorated war veteran is immune to the pecking of Republican chickenhawks should take a look at what happened to Max Cleland.

I still grind my teeth over Cleland. That was dirty.

Patrick: I don't think I was dissmissive. I asked a question, "Is it a guy thing?" It has been my experience in the world that there are in fact, guy things and gal things. Until relatively recently nobody but guys experienced combat. And, without exceptions, all the veterans appearing on tv for ads or interviews or whatever were male. It would be interesting for someone to do a study of male and female veterans and their voting preferences and the factors going into those preferences.

MKK

Mary Kay, as you know I'm strongly inclined to Dean, but I really must point out that the ability to work a crowd full of people who are already your supporters is not the same as the "ability to win support." I'm not disputing that he has the latter, but rather suggesting that the former offers evidence in either direction.

This is sort of tangential to the actual argument, but I'm really sort of mystified about the reaction to Dean's post-Iowa speech. People are going on about it like it was the most disastrous public appearance in politics since I don't know when, but I really can't see what was wrong with it.

They finished badly in Iowa, true, but he's not giving up, and still believes he can win, so it's entirely appropriate to give a rousing "We're not finished yet!" speach to his volunteers. What was he supposed to do, say "Golly gee, they whupped us good. Guess this whole thing has been a mistake from the beginning..."?

OK, the "Yaaah!!!" at the end was a little scary, but really, what did he do that was wrong?

But then, what do I know-- I thought Gore mopped the floor with Bush in those debates back in 2000.

Chad, the Yaaaah! at the end was not very Presidential. Also the line right before it where he listed the upcoming primary states just...didn't sound too good. It wasn't the text, it was the tone. I thought he sounded close to tears, personally. YMMV.

Actually, I think it's when Presidential candidates start worrying too much about whether they sound or look "Presidential", that they turn into utter stiffs.

When JFK let out those pictures of him playing football with his family, people sniffed and called it "unpresidential," yes they did, actually and truly. Likewise Clinton playing his sax.

I think if Dean is smart he'll laugh off all the mockery surrounding that speech. According to my mole at Dean HQ in Manchester, NH, that's what he's been doing, in fact.

I actually live in Iowa and I can't see what all the mystery is.

Why Kerry won instead of Dean is simply that there is no 'youth vote' in Iowa. Everyone in the state is an old fogey and Kerry, despite being a Massachusetts blue-blood, has a look and accent that seem very midwestern. And he has a long distinguished antagonism to Republicans in the Senate.

The Dean campaign's theory of bringing in people who don't or haven't participated before failed because there is no youth vote in Iowa and because anyone who is too shy about voting in a primary is going to be a hundred times shyer about walking into a caucus and standing up and talking to a bunch of intimidating old people who talk about this stuff all the time.

And Edwards is just the kind of young boy scout old fogies like to vote for.

So where's the mystery?

No kidding, Alan. I’ve been trying to imagine how as a thirtysomething second-generation bicoastal ex-Midwesterner I could have gone out to visit my relatives in Shenandoah and try to talk them and their friends into voting for Dean — assuming any of them are Democrats, something I’m really not sure of — and I just can’t come up with a picture I can believe in.

What I wanted to get to was that I don't think there is any deep youth vote, or unorganized vote, anywhere. Youth, when they vote, tend to vote the way their parents do, or the way their parents would have at their age. And that is not going to be breaking toward Dean because he is addressing them as an unorganized constituency which will work only to help them define themselves in terms of who they would actually vote for.

Which comes to my second point,

I've thought for some time that Dean's appeal among a certain sort was that he seems to have many of the mannerisms of an Aspergers personality. The Aspergers person, as I think Patrick said somewhere, can come across as offputting because they put a lot of deep thought into something really fast and have to get the whole thing off their chests in one breath and lack a kind of spontaneous self-reflectivity that keeps the conversation of the ordinary population easy going. The more they feel about a topic, the less they can keep in check about it when the moment presents itself, which can give a rather over-stated impression --exactly like Dean's post-caucus speech, and exactly like his mistake in trying to develop a constituency among youth or non-voting populations.

The idea is right, but he overshoots the mark, reflexively, naturally, Aspergerishly overshoots it.

Voting for a Republican is worse than not voting at all. The 'non-voting' or uninvolved population that matters are those who might vote Republican.

John Kerry's exceptional calm is the very antithesis of Howard Dean's spontaneous overstatement and that is why people looked at him twice in Iowa.

"They’ve been the guys who talk as if this Administration really is a threat to our future. . . While it’s seemed as if the other group, Gephardt and Leiberman and Edwards and Kerry, really believe at the end of the day that people like Cheney and Bush and DeLay are just regular politicians and colleagues who can be negotiated with."

Patrick, you sound like the anti-Clinton frothers of the mid-90s, and most of the country paid no attention to them either, when it came time to vote. Your average American voter is not going to buy into the demonization of George Bush, and will feel put off (to put it mildly) by anyone preaching that line. The last time there was a serious attempt at that kind of McCarthyist politics was Newt Gingrich and the Moral Majority, and thank God they went down in flames. The American electorate has become too mature and too decent to swallow that kind of crap. Nor will they swallow "Bush=Hitler" and "Halliburton eats babies for breakfast."

And that's a good thing. I don't want to see demonizers and conspiracy-theorizers (whether from the left or right) get an upper hand in American politics.

The more Dean and Clark play it that way, the more their support will drop. As I said on another thread, voters want to know what you are for, not who you are against. You want them to question Bush, stick to facts and policies and respect their intelligence.

A fair and balanced rebuttal of Yehudit.

On war service:

I'm actually more impressed with a candidate who refused to fight in 'Nam and protested the war, ala Bill Clinton. It shows an ability to take a principled stance against the mainstream based upon moral integrity.

Someone who blindly runs off to fight some bullshit war and kill the "enemy" is just another casualty of propaganda.

That's why I'm so impressed by Dean and Clark, they both stood up for moral principles when they opposed the Iraq war. Now the media and Herr Rove are smearing both of them, and it looks like either Kerry or Edwards will face Bush. I suspect Herr Rove is very happy with this outcome, and that he smeared Clark and Dean because both put the fear of God into him.

It's bad enough that Kerry supported the war, but now he's trying to weasel out of it...what an asshole. That guy is mean, too, he push-polled against Dean, pushing that Dean performed abortions and beat his wife.

Chad, the Yaaaah! at the end was not very Presidential. Also the line right before it where he listed the upcoming primary states just?didn?t sound too good. It wasn?t the text, it was the tone. I thought he sounded close to tears, personally. YMMV.

The "Yaaaah!" was a little creepy, but hardly less Presidential than flipping pancakes for a staged photo op, or any of the other asinine "common man" stunts that candidates in New Hampshire and Iowa are subjected to. Honestly, there are days when I think that the primary process in this country is less a deliberative democratic institution and more a fraternity initiation.

("OK, man, if you want our delegates, you're going to have to shave your eyebrows and go to class with a pair of boxer shorts on your head...")

As for the tone, it sounded about right to me. My guess is that this is mainly another area where politics is harmed by the intersection of TV and reality. His delivery struck me as the sort of thing that would work very well in person, but not so well on tv. And more and more, it's how things look on tv that matters, not what you do in person.