Interactive Electoral College Map

Don't know how long it will be up, but check out this interactive Electoral College map on John Edwards' website. You can see how states have voted in the past, and see how this year's EC will shape up under different scenarios.

Talking Points: A Defense of Same-Sex Marriage

What exactly is the intellectual argument against same-sex marriage? Let's take a look at how President Bush articulated – and I use that word loosely – the issue in coming out for a Constitution amendment to ban same-sex marriage:

Bush: "The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honoring — honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith."

It may be true that the literal “union” of a man and woman is the most enduring human “relationship,” but is “marriage” really the most enduring human “institution”?

But OK, let’s concede simply that marriage is an enduring institution. The reason marriage has endured is that it has been allowed to change. The concept has been refined and redefined over the ages and still has different meanings in different cultures. Among the changes in most cultures, for example, women now have a say in whom they will marry and are no longer considered chattel. Marriage wouldn’t have endured had it not changed over time.

In our culture, we recognize and embrace diversity based on the concept that all persons should be treated equally under the law and that all persons should enjoy the same rights and privileges as citizens of the United States. Because of these core beliefs, it is impossible to argue rationally that two persons of the same sex who want to marry should not be allowed to do so in the eyes of the law. The argument seems to be that we shouldn’t allow same-sex marriage because less enlightened polities throughout human recorded history haven’t allowed it either.


Bush: "Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society."

What this statement has to do with same-sex marriage totally escapes me. The legality of same-sex marriage has absolutely zero bearing on my commitment to love and serve my wife and to raise my children to be respectful members of society.

This sentence is really nothing more than a reflection of the ignorance of and discrimination against homosexuals that is at the root of opposition to same-sex marriage and, for that matter, anything that comes under the rubric of “gay rights.”

The statement clearly implies that, contrary to the commitment of a man and a woman, the commitment of a same-sex couple to love and serve one another would somehow not promote the welfare of their children and would contribute to the instability of society. It’s an ignorant, shameful statement, implying that same-sex couples should not raise children and that a society that allows same-sex couples to marry will somehow become unstable, rather than stronger in its commitment to diversity and freedom.


Bush: "Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society."

And, finally, to conclude the President’s ringing defense of marriage, he argues that a society that embraces diversity, equal rights, and personal freedom by extending the right of marriage to same-sex couples will somehow be worse off.

Forget Civil Unions: The Issue is Marriage

Heading into the 2004 campaign, nervous liberal politicians thought they had a sufficient answer to the gay marriage issue, which everyone knew would be the cultural wedge issue the Republicans would use this year.

How many liberals have you heard giving the pat answer, “I’m not for gay marriage, but I support civil unions”? I suppose even that answer would have been considered to be a fairly bold one prior to the recent clarification by the Massachusetts Supreme Court that same-sex couples should be afforded full marriage rights. And so the issue has been rather rapidly redefined. The nonsense of the pro-civil unions/anti-gay marriage distinction has been exposed.

Here’s what John Kerry says, he being our quintessential liberal for 2004, according to the New York Times:

"While reaffirming his opposition to gay marriages, Mr. Kerry also reiterated his support of civil unions between same-sex partners.

'I think marriage gets in the way of what you are really fighting for, which is rights,' he said, saying that he thought same-sex couples should be entitled to the same spousal and civil rights accorded partners in a heterosexual marriage."

So there you have it: Same-sex couples would like marriage rights, but actually giving them marriage rights gets in the way of giving them marriage rights. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

(OK, in fairness, I haven’t heard a better answer from John Edwards on the subject. In fact, he wants to emphasize "states rights.")

What liberals need to do in this campaign is tell the truth on the issue, not worry about the public backlash, and move on to the broader issues they want to talk about.

Alas, Bush has made it easier to do just that by kow-towing to the cultural conservatives and supporting a Constitutional amendment to deny same-sex marriage. It’s a nasty, mean-spirited response to the issue that liberals ought to exploit. We don’t tamper with our Constitution to enshrine the denial of rights to a subgroup of our citizens.

There are a lot of people out there who may express opposition to same-sex marriage when they’re talking to a stranger on the telephone asking them poll questions, but as they increasingly see the human side of the issue – and they are seeing that right now – I think public opinion is going to continue its trend toward support for same-sex marriage and certainly against taking the extreme step of amending the Constitution.

Bush lands his first blows

I thought the president’s first real foray into campaign rhetoric was pretty good. He spoke Monday at a Republican fundraiser, defended his record, then turned his attention to Kerry:

“The [Democratic] candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions. They’re for tax cuts and against them. They’re for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They’re for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They’re in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that’s just one senator from Massachusetts.”

And, speaking of the Democrats later in the speech, “They now agree that it’s better that Saddam Hussein is out of power. They just didn’t support removing Saddam from power.”

Ouch.

Kerry’s response: “The American people haven’t forgotten this president’s failed record because they have to live with it every day.”

Seems a little tepid to me.

Edwards keeps getting "Big-Footed"

Chris Matthews made a big issue of John Edwards getting bumped off of the “networks” (really, what he was referring to was simply the three cable news networks – big deal) last Tuesday when, just as Edwards was getting into his Wisconsin near-victory speech, Kerry “big-footed” him by coming out to give his actual victory speech. What that means is that the news networks, being the fair and balanced group that they are, dutifully went to Kerry’s speech because he was the real winner. Apparently, this is some kind of time-honored journalistic rule that must be followed.

Never mind that all three of our estimable 24-hour cable news networks actually HAVE 24 HOURS to fill and they could have taped and run both speeches along with Howard Dean’s – all in their entirety. Who cares which one was live? Instead, we were treated to talking heads – including the “Hardball” panel talking about whether it was fair for Kerry to have big-footed Edwards.

But my point – and I do have one – is that Edwards has been big-footed this entire campaign in terms of overall media coverage. His very surprising showing in Iowa was big-footed by Kerry, whose showing wasn’t quite as surprising but was greater than Edwards’, and by Dean’s scream. Then in New Hampshire, it was all Kerry and Dean. After the next week’s series of primaries, Wesley Clark, by edging Edwards by 1500 votes in Oklahoma, got to share the spotlight and march on to the next week’s primaries in Tennessee and Virginia. Had Clark lost Oklahoma, he would have dropped out, and Edwards might have actually won Tennessee and Virginia. Again in Wisconsin, Edwards’ surprising showing was stepped on not so much by Kerry’s speech but by the whole story of Dean’s demise. This past weekend, when the main story could have been whether Edwards was gaining any ground on Kerry, it was all Ralph Nader. Now, the president’s campaign has turned its attention to Kerry, thereby stoking the perception that the general election campaign is set, right at the time Edwards finally has Kerry in a two-man race.

Random thoughts on Ralph Nader

Maybe all those people who were for Dean but didn’t actually manage to cast a vote for him will also support Nader.

The more I see John Kerry, the more I … no, never mind.

Which Democrat is the most electable?

Is there anything more to John Kerry than that he is the flipside of Howard Dean?

After months of incessant attacks from all fronts (opposing candidates, Republicans, media), support for Dean in Iowa collapsed, and panic-stricken Democrats there rushed into the waiting arms of John Kerry, who in a last-ditch effort to save his campaign, had worked Iowa assiduously. Kerry, we were told, had the resume to unseat the president. That, and he wasn’t so boring any more, nor so arrogant. He had actually started listening to voters rather than scanning the room to see who else he could talk to. These were the kinds of things being written about Kerry at the time. The basic theme was “He’s always been an arrogant jerk, but he’s making nice now.”

Whatever, I thought at the time, let’s have another look at this guy. He rode the momentum wave fairly well for a week or so, but then started reverting back to his natural state (dreadfully boring, full of himself, and lacking a succinct message).

Then it hit me: the electability thing is a crock. John Kerry only looks electable when compared with Howard Dean!

As Noam Scheiber writes in The New Republic,

"It's a phenomenon that's actually very similar to what goes on in the stock market. Less sophisticated investors just pick the stocks whose prices they've heard are going up. More sophisticated investors actually do some research about the companies they plan to invest in. Up until yesterday, Kerry was that tech stock that the girlfriend of the cousin of the guy down the street said was a can't-miss opportunity, while Edwards was the unheralded stock of a company with a little-known but solid product." Emphasis added.

So even though Edwards’ “surprisingly strong” second-place finish in Wisconsin is in all likelihood too little, too late, after a few days of contemplation, I have my hopes up:

The Case for Edwards

1. Even before the Wisconsin results were known, Edwards was doing nearly as well in trial heats against Bush as Kerry is, despite the huge difference in media attention the two have received since Iowa.

2. Edwards polled better than Kerry among self-described independents and even Republicans who voted in Wisconsin’s open primary, despite the fact that he focused on trade issues during the weeklong campaign. What this says to me is that Edwards may well be more attractive to swing voters – Wisconsin is, after all, a battleground state – than Kerry. At the same time, the Democratic base, in poll after poll, has indicated that it will rally around whomever is the nominee.

3. Edwards political record, or lack thereof, would admittedly be a weakness in the General Election, particularly his lack of foreign policy experience. But Kerry’s long record may be even more of a weakness. We'll have to pick our poison. Remember, Kerry has a two decades-long voting and campaign-finance record to defend. He makes for a huge target for the $100 million plus of AMD (Ads of Mass Destruction) that Bush will drop on him.

And if you don't believe that, take a look at what Bush's chief polling and media strategists said in today's papers (in the braggadocio typical of political consultants):

"The beauty of John Kerry is 32 years of votes and public pronouncements," said Mark McKinnon, the chief media adviser. McKinnon suggested a possible tag line: 'He's been wrong for 32 years, he's wrong now.' "

Other tidbits: "The Bush campaign's biggest advantage,said Matthew Dowd, the president's polling director, is that Bush is a well-defined figure, even among those who are not supporters, while voters are barely familiar with Kerry's record. 'I don't think most of America has a clue about John Kerry," McKinnon said.'"

"The Bush ads will depict Kerry as a politician who says one thing and does another. This would echo criticism made by some of Kerry's Democratic rivals, who said he took conflicting positions on such issues as the Iraq war.

And for the most revealing comment of the day:

"Acknowledging that Bush has received major financial support from corporations, McKinnon said: 'The issue is hypocrisy in saying you're going to take on the special interests, not who took the most special interest money. You don't hear the president in the Oval Office railing against the special interests. You do hear John Kerry railing against the special interests.' The campaign has previewed this theme in an online video calling Kerry 'unprincipled' and 'brought to you by the special interests.'"

To all of this, Kerry is talking a good game -- “Bring It On!” -- but one of the ways a candidate inoculates himself from attack politics is by being likeable. And Kerry is just not very likeable. In fact, one Boston-area journalist-cum-blogger writes:

"It's important to remember that Senator Kerry is viewed from within his campaign pretty much the same way he is viewed by Mickey Kaus and Ellisblog. They think he's a stiff! They were surprised that he won Iowa (they thought the Edwards surge would catch them there) and they were amazed that he won New Hampshire more or less without a fight. And they've been stunned that the others have basically let him keep on winning. What they dread most of all is negative momentum, because (let's face it) the candidate has no strong base of support within the party. They're only for him because he's winning. Once he starts losing, he's a loser."

By contrast, and back to my point, the Republicans won’t know exactly what to do with Edwards other than to say he’s an inexperienced trial lawyer. But Edwards will take positions, he will articulate a theme, and he will come off as so damned likeable that it will take a lot more of that stuff to stick. Clearly, Edwards has the ability to confuse the enemy more than Kerry does. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Howard Dean: Delisted (but thanks for the help)

Finally, mercifully, it comes to an end.

The only reason Howard Dean had any impact on this race at all was because of the near-disastrous pre-campaign positioning of Sens. Kerry, Edwards, and Leiberman and Rep. Gephardt, who all set up their campaigns as though they were fighting the last war. As in 1992, a successful Democrat, they figured, would have to inoculate himself against the claim that he was weak on defense by supporting the war and base his campaign on economic issues.

It didn't work -- by this stage of the 1992 campaign, the first Gulf War was remembered as a military and diplomatic success, and more importantly, it was over. No sense in the Democrats getting plastered by Bush I for being weak on defense (although apparently John Kerry would have been had he run in 1992). This year, the unilateral war drags on, with no end in sight, its original rationale in tatters, costing us (and only us because of our failure to put together a coalition) billions per week, as casualties continue to mount.

Howard Dean literally salvaged this campaign for the Democrats when he forced the other candidates to take bolder positions against the war. It is entirely appropriate for the war to be a major issue in this campaign, but had the congressional Democratic candidates had their way, it would not have been.

To be sure, Dean was a less-than-perfect messenger, who freaked people out, especially the tastemakers in Washington, D.C., who really got alarmed when he raised so much money from outside the ranks of the political financier class. So for most of the fall of 2003 through the Iowa caucuses, we saw a concerted effort on the part of all the Democratic candidates and a good portion of the so-called liberal media to paint Howard Dean as some kind of extremist even though most of the field had largely adopted his anti-war position and several other themes, and even though Dean was certainly no more liberal, perhaps less so, on most issues than Kerry, Gephardt, or Edwards.

When Saddam was captured in mid-December, it sent a chill down the spine of many Democrats, who figured it would allow Bush to claim some measure of success in Iraq and therefore make the war issue go away, so this was used as an opening against Dean. Perhaps we were reverting to 1992 all over again; perhaps the war wouldn't be a key issue after all. Negative ads were hurled against Dean in Iowa by independent groups and by Dick Gephardt, who more or less sacrificed his candidacy in the process. A lot of the mud stuck on Dean and caucus-goers, blaming Gephardt, rushed into the waiting arms of the more-positive Kerry (and to a lesser extent, Edwards).

Dean was toast. He almost regained his footing the next week in New Hampshire, but the compressed schedule was too much for him. There was no Plan B, and so we've been treated to a rather pathetic three weeks of aimlessness that was painful to watch, and that actually helped John Kerry all but sew up the nomination by keeping the race a multi-candidate affair.

I'm trying to stop dissing Kerry. Really I am.

At least I'm not alone -- a lot of reservations are being expressed about Kerry. Andrew Sullivan and William Saleton provide painful expositions of Kerry's debate performance Sunday night. Based on Kerry's tortured circuitous answers in the debate, Sullivan concludes:

"Kerry is pro-war, except when he's antiwar. He votes for war against Saddam but opposes financing it. He's for equality for gays, but against equality for gays in marriage. And his attempts to explain his having it every which way only confuse matters even further. Not a good sign for November."

Slate's Saleton notes that Kerry "never walks into a sentence without leaving a way out." Ouch.

Don't get me wrong. I'm ready to be pursuaded to Kerry's side, to circle the wagons, just as all Democrats are, but he still has the same problems as a candidate that he had several months ago when he was going nowhere. Perhaps the new "Comeback Kerry" was really just a temporary phenomenon on the campaign trail. Energized by his surge, Kerry became more clear and bold, but now is settling back into his actual persona. There is a saying that the true character of a presidential candidate ultimately shows through during the course of a campaign... .

Then again ... maybe I'm just reading too much commentary by political junkies, written by people who had wrongly written off Kerry six weeks ago and had already penciled in Howard Dean for the nomination. Or by journalists who have a professional interest in seeing the competitive race for the nomination continue. Or by journalists who have hung a target on John Kerry now that he's the front-runner.

Maybe the rank and file Democrats who have selected Kerry in 15 of 17 contests before today's Wisconsin primary know something the rest of us don't. I hope so.

Kerry needs to get his act together

OK. I can't help but say it again. The problem with the sudden John Kerry firestorm that has engulfed the Democratic party is that his candidacy has not been fully vetted, and he hasn't been forced to articulate a thematic purpose to his candidiacy, and I'm concerned that the Bush campaign, with upwards of $200 million to spend, will come up with all kinds of ways to do it for him.

The guy has been amazingly lucky to get where he is, as Democratic primary voters apparently are so united in their dislike of Bush that when Howard Dean started freaking them out, they rushed to embrace the best resume in the race.

So I didn't catch the Wisconsin debate Sunday evening, but I would have thought that it would be an opportunity for Kerry to really shine -- he could have figured that neither Edwards nor Dean would go on the attack because Edwards doesn't do that sort of thing and Dean has gotten the idea that there really isn't anything he can do or say at this point. (Dean is like a heavily favored basketball team that finds itself behind by 25 points at halftime. He's going through the motions, but is thoroughly defeated just waiting for the final buzzer to go off. He probably should have embraced a boxing metaphor and thrown in the towel after New Hampshire.)

But here is what Chris Suellentrop reports in Slate: "How bad was Kerry's night? It wasn't disastrous, but it's as bad as I've seen him. He sounded like the meandering, orotund Kerry of last summer. His answers to questions about diversity and gay marriage were muddled incoherence, and he claimed that it wasn't his fault that the Bush administration has abused the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the congressional Iraq war resolution. But if you vote for broadly written laws that are abused by the administration in power when you passed them, aren't you at least partly to blame for the consequences? You wouldn't let your 6-year-old drive the family car and then blame him for the accident. And you can be certain that if the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, and the war were popular with Democratic voters, Kerry would be taking credit for them."

I must have heard the same "incoherent muddle" last week on NPR when Kerry was asked about gay marriage.

There is still time for Kerry to hone his message, but the time to start focusing on November is now, while he is still mostly basking in the warm sunshine of the still-only-recently-crowned front-runner. As soon as Dean and Edwards go down, though, the going is going to get rough and I hope he's ready for it.

Howard Dean: Penny Stock

There is no explaining the Howard Dean campaign other than as a footnote to the great Internet stock market bubble of 1999. You remember when investors bid up the price of a slew of Internet stocks on the basis of the promise of, well, the Internet itself? Never mind the faulty business models; never mind that most of these companies never earned a penny. Finally, the bubble burst when it became clear that there was no money to be made by the likes of Webvan.com and Pets.com.

Then came Howard Dean -- an obscure, longshot running for president in the tradition of Jimmy Carter. After Dean dared raise his voice against the war in Iraq, the Internet frenzy began with meetup.com and all that. Soon Dean was deemed the winner of the "Invisible Primary," which goes to the candidate who raises the most money and sits atop the (meaningless) opinion polls in the year before Election Year. Inasmuch as the winner of the Invisible Primary usually gets the nomination, Dean's stock was soaring at the beginning of 2004.

But when it came time to actually win votes -- akin to when the time came for the dot.coms to actually start making money -- the votes weren't there, and Howard Dean's candidacy collapsed as quickly as tech stocks did in Spring 2000. Since then, he has been staggering about, largely incoherently, kind of like those young start-up would-be millionaires who ran the dot.coms, then realized that, as they had neglected to actually exercise any of their options, they were left with nothing. They cast about for a while, still holding on to their CEO titles, trying to figure out what to do next until finally, mercifully, they closed up shop.

That's Howard Dean today. He remains a candidate, largely from sense memory, as he has done nothing else for the past two years, but since the Iowa caucuses, he's acted shell-shocked, soldiering on for literally no good reason. Wisconsin should put an end to it.

Making All Unions Civil

So now that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that gay couples can marry rather than enter into mere “civil unions,” it has become clear that, among other things, we now have a major battle of semantics on our hands. I tend to agree with the majority of the Court that to separate what the legal commitment of gay couples is called (a “civil union”) from what it is called for the majority non-gay population (“marriage”) is inherently unequal, and relegates the former to second-class status. That second-class status question (“Is there a legal difference between civil unions and marriage or not?”) could take years of costly legal battles to sort out, until eventually cooler heads will likely prevail, as more people will notice that Western Civilization hasn’t come apart at the seams because of civil unions and the older, more homophobic generation gives way to a much more open-minded younger generation.

(One recent poll reported that 67% of respondents between 18 and 29 agreed with the claim that gay marriage would improve society for the better or at least would have no negative effect, and 53% of those between 30 and 49 thought the same thing. Respondents over 50 had increasingly negative views of gay marriage.)

All that said, it is interesting that the divided Massachusetts court seemed to agree that one solution would be to drop the term “marriage” altogether as far as the legal institution is concerned, leaving it in its original form as something conferred in a religious context by a church or synagogue.

One thing that should be made clear by proponents of gay marriage in the face of what is sure to be Republican scare tactics: that churches won’t be forced against their will to “marry” gay people, just as those that don't wish to marry divorced heterosexuals are not forced to do so today.

Weekly Reader: The Strange Dr. Steinberg

“She's leading a normal, modern, middle-class-professional life. She has been married forever. She has two children. She likes camping and bike riding and picnics. She volunteers. She has work she loves, as a community physician--not, you'll note, as a cold-hearted status-obsessed selfish careerist user, as professional women are always accused of being.”

So begins an excellent piece by Katha Pollitt on the catty way that so-called liberal media and its conservative denizens like Diane Sawyer treated Dr. Judith Steinberg, Howard Dean’s wife, who chose to stay in Vermont and tend to her family practice rather than spend the past year and a half campaigning for her husband.

Pollitt wonders why “[n]o one reprimands Laura Bush for abandoning her career as a librarian and spending her life as her husband's den mother. No one asks Hadassah Lieberman or Elizabeth Edwards or Gertie Clark how come they have so much free time on their hands that they can saddle up with their husbands' campaign for months, or why, if they care so much about politics, they aren't running for office themselves.”

OK, Judy Steinberg is not going to be First Lady, but the article is well worth reading.

Bush and the Guard: The Dems Use the Press to Prepare the Battlefield

Should Democrats be pushing the President to get the full story about his Vietnam-era National Guard service? Or, to be more accurate, should Democrats, but not John Kerry himself, be prodding the President to tell the full story of his service, and cheering on reporters who are trying to get to the bottom of it?

It seems doubtful to me that there is any smoking gun in the records, or, as the case may be, formerly in the records (because there is a claim floating around that the record was “cleansed” of any damning material a few years back). But journalists and commentators remain considerably more dubious of the Administration's recent partial release of W.'s records and the sudden materialization of someone who actually remembers seeing him in Alabama. What does seem clear is that, while the President may have served honorably in the strict sense of the term, he didn’t serve very much. He can’t provide many details of what he did for the Guard during his stint in Alabama campaigning for a Republican Senate candidate, who no doubt supported the war, precisely because there aren’t any real details! I think we have the full story -- that George Bush’s National Guard service consisted of getting special treatment to enter the Texas Guard in the first place; then he got special treatment to go to Alabama to campaign; then he got special treatment to get out early to go to Harvard, while people like John Kerry, who probably could have gotten special treatment but didn’t, fought heroically in Vietnam.

That’s the story, and that’s also why the Democrats should want it emphasized now, rather than later or not at all. What Democrats gain from this issue being pressed at this stage in the campaign is that it softens the battlefield for the General Election. It helps diminish the “war president” theme that W. wants to run on before the President’s campaign has even gotten off the ground. The story is about reminding voters that they don’t have a real soldier at the helm, and that is perhaps why the Iraq war has been so badly bungled. And as Kerry defines himself, he will be able to contrast his Vietnam service favorably without ever even mentioning the President’s Guard service.

Check this out: Kerry Needs a Campaign Theme

Kerry's Big Quest: Single Clear Reason For the Race Ahead
Gerald Seib, Wall Street Journal February 11, 2004 (subscribers only site)

Gerald Seib notes today that:

“For a man who's rushing with remarkable speed toward a Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. John Kerry has an interesting problem: He hasn't impressed upon Americans a particularly clear rationale for his candidacy, other than the fact that he isn't George Bush.”

Seib essentially argues that Kerry owes his ascent to Howard Dean and Democrats’ intense dislike of President Bush. Taking a cue from Dean, Kerry fired up his criticism of President Bush and, as Dean came rather suddenly to be seen as unelectable, voters turned to Kerry as the only alternative with the sufficient resume and stature to take on Bush. Yet, in the firestorm of momentum, few voters really know much about Kerry’s rationale for being president, other than removing Bush. Thus, Kerry needs to hone a more coherent campaign message – a central rationale – for his candidacy.

Good article, and Seib concludes that there is still time. He’s exactly right, and I would go further to say that Kerry, as a person, isn’t that well defined to the electorate, either, and if he doesn’t define his candidacy more clearly very soon, the Republicans are going to do it for him, unloading their $100 million arsenal on him, probably by late spring. Kerry could take a cue – or get a clue – from John Edwards, whose thematic “two Americas”, writes Jack Beatty in The Atlantic, “is at once a moral X-ray of American society and a political cudgel to beat that son and symbol of privilege George W. Bush.”

Is that Kerry's Uncle Joe?

Who is the stone-faced middle-age man with the bushy mustache standing behind John Kerry every Tuesday night?

Dean Deflated

Howard Dean on the campaign trail looks as deflated as his campaign is. His suits look rumpled (maybe the campaign can’t afford dry-clearning); his hair is askew (no money for candidate haircuts?); and he just seems to be going through the motions. He and his campaign remain in the foggy Iowa-induced daze.

He isn’t even talking to actual voters any more. He spent yesterday in a classroom providing students with the insight that dog pee is cleaner than river water. I kid you not.

The Dean campaign needs to be put out of its misery.

For Now, Edwards Should Stay in the Race

Last night’s primaries in Tennessee and Virginia confirmed that, by staying in the race for an extra week, Wesley Clark, actually helped John Kerry take a bigger step toward the nomination than Kerry otherwise would have. Clark’s narrow win over Edwards in Oklahoma last week kept the general in the race. Had Clark lost Oklahoma he would have probably dropped out of the race and Edwards would have faced Kerry yesterday in what would have been essentially a two-man race in Tennessee and Virginia. Considering how Edwards fared yesterday with Clark remaining in the race, had Clark pulled out, Edwards might well have won Tennessee and run a very close second in Virginia. Then he could have more plausibly gone to Wisconsin and on through Super Tuesday as the main alternative to Kerry. And because Edwards seems to grow on people once they see him, he might have at least slowed Kerry’s momentum-aided sprint to the nomination by winning some later primaries.

But that’s what might have been. What is, is that Clark is only now withdrawing from the race, and, oh yeah, I almost forgot, there is also the matter of Howard Dean. Kerry should want Edwards to stay in the race at least as long as Dean remains, because if Dean gets Kerry into a two-man race, you can bet that the good doctor will go on the offensive against Kerry and Dean’s status as “last man standing” will be elevated in the media, thus amplifying his attacks on Kerry. With Edwards in the race as a more proven vote-getter and clearly the more preferred alternative, Dean is relegated to almost sideshow status (“Meanwhile, Howard Dean is still on the trail …”). For his part, Edwards continues to do his thing, which does not include any serious attacks on Kerry. So there is no downside for either Edwards or Kerry for Edwards to stay in the race for the time being.

There is, of course, some risk that Edwards could start actually beating Kerry, the way Jerry Brown won late primaries against both Bill Clinton in 1992 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 after the two future presidents had already sewn up their nominations. But more likely, Edwards will turn in respectable showings and will eventually step aside.

Indeed, Edwards is, more or less, auditioning for the future right now. He is leaving the Senate, so this is the only exposure he is getting on the big-time political stage. Assuming he doesn’t overstay his welcome, he could be near the top of Kerry’s VP list, or he could end up as a clear front-runner for 2008 if Bush gets reelected.

Memo to Dean, Edwards, and Clark: John Kerry Needs You to Stay in the Race!

Even though we'll probably not see all three remain in the race for very long, it's good for the Democrats to have someone nominally challenging John Kerry at least through Super Tuesday in March. First of all, Kerry has become the apparent nominee very quickly, and although he probably has been vetted enough that nothing will jump out of his past to bite him, he could still stumble by making a big campaign blunder. Not a likely scenario, but it doesn't hurt for the Democrats to have a potential alternative.

Secondly, and more relevant, by staying in the race, Clark, Dean, and/or Edwards serve the purpose of keeping the focus on the Democrats rather than moving it to the General Election. Assuming the three contenders continue to shadow-box Kerry while thrashing Bush, the Democrats get almost all good press out of a continued race. While the media focus primarily on Kerry, they will also cover the contenders, and when they cover the contenders, Clark, Dean, and Edwards will be seen and heard thrashing George Bush. And every Tuesday evening, the media focus will be on "Another Big Kerry Win" thereby continuing to fuel the Kerry momentum machine.

Finally, by staying in the race, the contenders put off the day when the Bush campaign's WMD are unleashed on John Kerry. In the meantime, Kerry can increasingly define himself to the broader electorate. If he can do that before the negative attacks begin, then it will be harder for them to stick. If, however, Kerry is still ill-defined to the electorate when the attacks begin, he will be defined just the way the Bushies want him to be: as an effete Massachusetts tax-and-spend liberal who flip-flopped on the war.

Ain't No Stopping John Kerry

Geez. Elections seem to be close these days, and even though John Kerry was the sweeping victor in last Tuesday’s primaries, the race for the Democratic nomination may well have changed significantly because of the outcome of the Oklahoma primary, where Gen. Clark eked out a 1200-vote win over John Edwards. A swing of a mere 600 votes or so would have given John Edwards his second victory of the evening and would have most likely blown Gen. Clark out of the race, setting up a two-man race between Edwards and Kerry this week in Tennessee and Virginia, where Edwards might have been able to topple Kerry. Then the race would have moved to a real showdown in Wisconsin and perhaps beyond.

Alas, Clark won Oklahoma and stayed in the race, thereby assuring that he and Edwards will split the non-Kerry vote in Tennessee and Virginia on February 10th. And because of that split, Kerry has a good chance of winning those states outright and really nailing down the nomination. This is especially true because Kerry had no competition over the weekend in Michigan and Washington, due to the complete collapse of the Dean campaign, and so Kerry's overwhelming momentum builds.

Kerry has been looking and acting like the nominee, focusing his attention on President Bush, while his Democratic opponents struggle in relative obscurity, enmeshed in a Catch-22. They, too, want to act more “presidential” by focusing on their message and on Bush, in order to demonstrate that they too are electable. But in order to topple Kerry, they need to take him on, and no one wants to do that, particularly since Iowans rendered their harsh verdict against the attack campaigns of Gephardt and Dean.

The Latest Polls: Kerry Poised for Sweeping Victory

Based on tracking polls in the four most significant states holding primaries tomorrow, it looks like Kerry will easily retain his front-runner status, and continue towards “unstoppable” status. In Missouri, the biggest prize, he has a commanding lead over Edwards 46%-15%, with Clark and Dean in single digits. As a fall battleground state, Missouri helps (re-)prove Kerry’s case that he is the most electable. The media might discount Missouri somewhat because it has only been “in play” for a couple of week’s due to the departure from the race of native son Gephardt.

Look at Arizona as sort of a back-up of Missouri, because it, too, could become a battleground state in November with the continued influx of Hispanics and West Coast liberals to the state. Kerry leads Clark 32%-21%.

In South Carolina, John Edwards leads Kerry 30%-23%, with Clark at 12% and Sharpton at 10%. If Edwards wins, he will try to stay in the race, although it’s doubtful that a South Carolina win will solve his money problems. But if Kerry finishes an easy and strong second to Edwards, it again helps him make the case that he can run well in the South because, after all, Edwards was born in the state.

Look at Oklahoma as sort of a back-up of South Carolina. Clark leads Kerry 25%-23%, with Edwards at 18%. If Kerry finishes in that ballpark or even a close third, it would help him make his case that he has vote-getting appeal (at least among Democrats) in the South.

I actually don’t think the Democrats need to win a single southern state in November, except for Florida, but by running well in South Carolina and Oklahoma, Kerry can help negate the arguments made by Edwards and Clark that the Democrats need a southerner in order to win in November.

And whatever happened to Howard Dean? He isn’t even competing this week in the apparent hope that by sitting on the sidelines, he can wait for Clark, Edwards, and Lieberman to leave the race so that he can stand mano-a-mano with Kerry later on. But this is a losing proposition, given the logic of the nominating process. Dean may indeed end up with some decent showings in later primaries, as Kerry-remorse sets in, but no way will it be enough to seriously affect the outcome.

But then, who knows in American politics these days? Here is a listing of all the anti-Kerry strategies.

Vetting Kerry: Not a Pretty Picture So Far

In 2003, Sen. John Kerry dropped like a lead balloon in the polls and was written off for dead by the pundits and the so-called liberal media (SCLM). His early campaign was a disaster and he was often characterized as a candidate who didn’t connect with voters. Amid Kerry’s descent, and partly responsible for it, was the ascent of Howard Dean, who became the SCLM designated front-runner sometime last fall. As such, Dean was targeted by other candidates for attack and “vetted” by the SCLM. Their joint conclusion: Dean was “unelectable,” especially after the capture of Saddam made Democrats fearful that Bush would no longer be as vulnerable on the war issue. (That view could be seriously called into question now that the administration’s rationale for going to war has been blown apart by David Kay.) Dean’s defense was to collect a number of high-profile endorsements, but that undermined the central argument that he was an outsider, and when actual voters started weighing in, they deserted Dean for the next guy on the list who looked like he could fill the bill as an electable nominee: John Kerry.

So now, we have Kerry in a largely unstoppable mode as far as the nomination process is concerned. No candidate has ever won both Iowa and New Hampshire and lost the nomination. Add to that the fact that the process is so front-loaded that other candidates have no time to shift the terms of debate to whether or not John Kerry is indeed the best candidate for the party. No one took on Kerry in New Hampshire and this week, there has been a little soft punching by Dean, who otherwise seems to hardly be campaigning, and by Clark. Edwards is naïve to think that he can somehow rise to the top of the pack by simply smiling and rattling on about his “positive message of hope.” With three and a half serious candidates still in the race, by the time it winnows down to a two-man race (Kerry vs. the Alternative), Kerry will be way too far ahead for it to make any difference.

The problem now for Democrats is that the SCLM is now heading into full Kerry-vetting mode. It won’t be enough to stop his nomination, but it could very likely ensure that he doesn’t win this fall. Just read some of this stuff. Scratch the surface of John Kerry, and it just isn’t pretty. There don’t appear to be any scandals and his war record appears to be solid, but the picture that is emerging is of a longtime Washington senator who really hasn’t made much of a difference, who flip-flopped on the war, and who isn’t really a very likeable guy. More important, he’s a candidate running on his resume, rather than a rationale.

Michael Isikoff roasts Kerry on fund-raising in this week’s Newsweek. For all his railing about special interests, of course, Kerry has been part of the Washington insider fund-raising network for years, and Isikoff points to the connection between Kerry’s donors and the industries with an interest in the committees Kerry sits on. Nothing earth-shattering there, but not very flattering, either.

In fact, when I peruse through the vetting process being undertaken by the SCLM, I can find very little positive information about Kerry. Take a look at Micky Kaus’ mockingly titled piece in Slate, “Why the Long Face?” and the debate in The New Republic about Kerry. As Kaus notes in his piece, even the TNR writer who is defending Kerry says bad things about him. The clincher, for me, is The Atlantic’s Jack Beatty contrasting Kerry with Edwards. Kerry suffers from “terminal Senatitis,” rattling on and on about sponsoring this or that piece of legislation, speaking bromides about “special interests” and repeating, boringly, his mantra about the Bush administration, “We’re coming; they’re going; don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” He’s all resume, no humanity. Beatty says, Kerry reminds him of “a long line of Democratic bores—Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bradley, Gore—who lost because people could not bear listening to them.”

What to make of all this? This year’s process is so front-loaded that Democrats are being forced to make a choice before they have a chance to consider it. The SCLM is not apart from the process, it is a part of the process, and its role is to thoroughly “vet” front-runners, so it is only doing what is to be expected. But the impact is that just as Kerry cinches the nomination, the results of the media vetting will threaten his viability as a challenger to President Bush.

Take Missouri, for example. With the earlier-than-expected departure of Dick Gephardt from the race, Missouri all of the sudden is this week’s big prize. Rightly so, in some ways, because it is relatively populous, diverse, and will be a battleground state in the fall. But hardly anyone is really focused on the primary, which means most voters will fall back on the dominant story line, which is that John Kerry is going to win the nomination so that’s who they should vote for.

The “Prove It” Phase: Kerry Will Roll On

Now that we are finished with Iowa and New Hampshire, the campaign for the Democratic nomination has moved to the “Prove It” stage, whereby Sen. John Kerry must “prove” his widely acknowledged front-runner status by doing well in the seven states that hold their primaries on February 3rd. If he does that, then the nomination race will be over. And if history is a guide, he will do it. Since Iowa took its place alongside New Hampshire as a first-in-the-nation contest, no candidate who has won both of those states has ever been denied the nomination. (There have been several contests where no clear front-runner has emerged from Iowa-New Hampshire, but in every one of those cases the field has been effectively winnowed to two -- Bush-McCain in 2000, Tsongas-Clinton in 1992, Mondale-Hart in 1984, to name a few -- and in every one of those cases, the nomination contest was effectively determined in the next wave of primaries – always in favor of the best-financed candidate.)

Can Kerry win this week? I’d say he’s a shoo-in. Capitalizing on the media focus and new-found money that comes with his front-runner status, only Kerry can mount a national campaign, hitting all of the February 3rd states, and with Clark, Edwards, and Lieberman all vying for the moderate vote, Kerry is all but guaranteed to do well enough that he will at least maintain his front-runner status. In South Carolina, Edwards has to win, but Kerry, with the endorsement of the state’s most prominent black politician and former Sen. Hollings, is poised to do very well, and Clark will eat into Edwards’ support somewhat. A strong second place for Kerry in South Carolina will be enough. It is most likely Missouri that will really “prove it” for Kerry. The state is bigger and more diverse than any of the other states voting next week, and it is wide open now that Gephardt is out of the race. Most importantly, Missouri is also a general election battleground state. If Kerry wins Missouri, case closed on the electability question.