Edgewise

Took the words right out of my mouth

Over at Not Geniuses, Nico Pitney has reprinted Damian Carroll's Where We Stand, and so will I:

January 29, 2004

I was forwarded this message with none of the author's contact information - but it is an amazing piece for doubtful Deaniacs...

(Oh, and before you read on, can I just ask - is it me, or is there something incredibly fishy about Drudge not having a SINGLE negative Kerry article up in a week and a half?!?)

WHERE WE STAND

My fellow Dean supporters,

We are hearing a lot of different "takes" on what the New Hampshire results mean for our campaign * some positive, some negative. Many of us are left wondering who is selling reality and who is hyping false hope or despair. For what it's worth, this is my best attempt to state precisely where we stand and what is ahead.

First, let's state the obvious: Dean is no longer the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. This is both a matter of public perception and a matter of odds. At this point it is safe to say John Kerry is the likely Democratic nominee. He won both Iowa and New Hampshire, a rare political feat for a non-incumbent. Thus, if your only reason for supporting Dean was that you thought he was going to win the nomination, there's a good choice you'll be disappointed by what comes ahead. We are now backing the underdog, which is a less fun job but in many ways more worthy. Ours is a movement of principle, not political expediency.

Still with me? Good. It's now worthwhile to ask, what are the goals of our movement, and have they been met? Here's how I see them (in no particular order), and my thoughts on our progress so far.

1) Encourage the Democratic party to be a true opposition party, forceful in standing for our principles and values, and bold in our denunciations of Republican policies.

So far, so good. Certainly all the leading Democratic candidates have adopted not only Dean's pointed criticism of Bush's record, but his style of speaking and in many cases his exact language. Unfortunately, there is always a danger that establishment candidates like Kerry will revert to their old tactics of appeasement and "Bush-lite" politicking if left to their own devices. For that reason, our movement must continue even if Dean fails to win the nomination.

2) Revolutionize fundraising and Internet-mobilized ("from mousepads to shoeleather") activism.

Here we have also made amazing progress. Our campaign has proven the ability of the "net-roots" to find a candidate with an inspiring message and deliver him/her a nationwide grassroots apparatus and fundraising prowess. But beware: the media, the DLC, and the Republican establishment will try to use our defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire to downplay our success. They hope to discourage us from mobilizing for candidates that they haven't fully approved of or vetted. This would be a disastrous mistake for our party's future. Even if our candidate doesn't make it to the White House, there is no reason to discount or discard the important steps we have taken. We must make ourselves available for the benefit of future candidates who share our vision. Our movement is bigger than a single election, and we must continue to grow into a consistent force for progressive Democrats.

3) Elect Howard Dean to the Presidency.

This is getting tougher, but I believe we must continue to work toward this goal. I'll discuss strategy below.

4)Defeat George W. Bush in 2004.

With the ascension of Kerry as the frontrunner, this is also getting tougher. The question is, what role does our movement play in making this happen? I'll discuss that as well.

WHAT'S COMING NEXT?

Here's the straight dope: the election is now John Kerry's to lose. Even if we play our cards perfectly from here to the convention, we will only succeed if Kerry falters. I think there is a decent chance this will happen, and I hope it does * I'll discuss why in just a second. But I want to make it clear that at this point * despite what you may have heard from Joe Trippi - Kerry has the momentum, not us. Losing New Hampshire by 13 points does not constitute a "comeback." It allows us to stay in the game. Mind you, that's not what I'm telling the undecided voters I talk to * you've got to put on the smiling face for the public. But between you and me, our current position can best be described as stable. We aren't moving up * yet.

Why aren't we winning? Good question. As best I can tell, it seems Democrats are focused on who can beat Bush, and they've been convinced that Dean can't do it. Remember that the GOP, the media, and the other Democrats have *all* been saying Dean can't beat Bush, for their own reasons. No matter how big our movement, it's hard to counter such an avalanche of doubt.

Ironically, it seems Kerry's campaign, not ours, was the beneficiary of a "perfect storm." Kerry was stuck in last place while criticism piled on Dean and Gephardt, and escaped unscathed because nobody saw him as a threat. Kerry was like the salad in a cafeteria line * not exciting, probably not even all that healthy, but also non-threatening. Had he done better to begin with, and faced the same scrutiny as Dean and Gephardt, he would likely have come up short. Instead, he timed his ascension perfectly * or more likely, he simply lucked out.

I don't know why Iowans decided Kerry had the best shot at beating Bush. Perhaps if Clark had run there, the doubters would have jumped to him. As for New Hampshire, I suspect that state went for Kerry simply because he won Iowa. Nothing makes one look like a winner more than winning. But now Kerry is the front-runner, and he will face the same scrutiny, if not more. The media only knows two games: boost a man up, and take a man down. We've seen the results of their Kerry-boosting effort, and we are about to see their effort to take Kerry down a notch. In the next week, here's what you'll hear:

1) Kerry is a Massachusetts liberal with a record far to the left of the mainstream.
2) Kerry is a pompous elitist who doesn't understand the common man.
3) Kerry can't win in the south.
4) Kerry will say and do anything to become President.

It will be up to Kerry to see how well he can weather this criticism. It will come first from Republicans, then picked up by the national media. If Kerry can successfully counter this message, his momentum will continue and he will win the nomination. But if he struggles, his claim to "electability" will crumble. If that happens, Kerry's voters will go somewhere else.

Where will they go? If I'm right, voters are flocking to Kerry simply because he is winning. If they leave Kerry, they'll jump to another "winner." Thus it is crucial that we rack up some wins on February 3. We must above all else promote the image of Dean as a winner. Our competition for this crown is John Edwards, who has a decent shot of winning the closely-watched South Carolina primary. If Edwards wins South Carolina, that helps set him up to be the Kerry Alternative. (After all the disgusting talk of an "Anti-Dean" I refuse to use that formulation.) But we have something that Edwards doesn't: 25%.

25% seems to be our threshold of diehard Dean supporters. By sticking with Dean, we can demonstrate at least 25% support in nearly every state in the union. We'll pick up a steady stream of delegates, and continue to challenge Kerry. If Kerry falls, that kind of support will start to look very enticing. In fact, even if Edwards catches on, he may not have enough delegates built up to pose a threat to Kerry. Dean will.

THE OTHER OPTION

I would be derelict in my promise of straight talk if I didn't mention the other option. That is, accepting Kerry as the nominee and throwing all our support to him now. There is a case to be made that giving Kerry the nomination "early" will keep him unscathed both personally and financially for the general election, and thus more formidable against Bush.

In my opinion, this is a foolish idea, for several reasons. First, the nomination is not ours to give. There are four other candidates challenging Kerry: Edwards, Clark, Lieberman, and Kucinich. At this point only Edwards seems to have a shot, but if Dean left the race the others * Clark, for example - could capture his support. Whatever Dean supporters do, this primary race promises to be a long one, leading perhaps all the way to the convention. Second, even if we could be kingmakers, I doubt many of us would give the nod to Kerry. His style of politics is precisely what we have been fighting against. Most Dean supporters I know prefer Edwards or Clark to Kerry. Third, our movement gives us political leverage. The longer we stay in the race, the more candidates will stay on message: standing up for Democrats, not ceding issues to the GOP. Win or lose, our effort will help the eventual nominee stand up to Bush. Fourth, any talk of giving up is premature. We have not yet seen how Kerry will stand up to media scrutiny. It is in everyone's best interest to make Kerry prove himself.

But most of all, I don't think Kerry can win. Kerry is Bob Dole * unexciting, unthreatening, and unelectable. Mind you, I'm eager to have Kerry prove me wrong. I want nothing more than to defeat Bush this year. And of course, if Kerry gets the nomination, I will work to help him win the election. But until Kerry shows some real spark, I think he is doomed to fail, and not worth abandoning our principles for.

OUR STRATEGY

With all this in mind, our strategy becomes clear:

1) Stick with Dean. Continue to show your strong support for Dean, continue to volunteer. If you can afford it, continue to donate money. Our stability is our strength.

2) Promote Dean's electability, specifically versus Kerry. Dean is a centrist on budgets, the death penalty, gun control, and foreign policy. (Remember, Dean supported the first Iraq war * Kerry did not.) Dean can challenge Bush financially. And Dean can stand up to harsh attacks.

3) Win some early states. It doesn't matter which * New Mexico and Delaware seem like good bets. Certainly Wisconsin, Washington, and Michigan are worth fighting for. We need voters to see Dean making some victory speeches.

4) Work hard for our 25%. Keep building our delegate count, state by state. Demonstrate our fortitude and dedication to the campaign.

And most importantly:

5) Be ready if Kerry falls. Kerry stole plenty from Dean's campaign this year, but it's worth stealing one thing from Kerry. It's called the Kerry Umbrella, or Kerry Net. The idea is to prepare our forces to "catch" voters who jump off the Kerry bandwagon. Kerry did this very well to our soft votes in Iowa. We must be ready to do the same in California and other states. This means having our voter apparatus in place, continuing to promote meet-ups, keeping Dean visible with bumper stickers, buttons, and face-to-face conversations, and looking confident. If/when voters sour on Kerry, we want them to take a second look at us.

I got into this campaign because I believed in Dean's message. Today that message is just as important, and our work for this campaign is just as valuable. I urge you all to continue your honorable work for the Dean movement.

Damian Carroll
02:54 AM

Two races

Looks to me like we now have two races: one for president and one for veep. A sort of consensus is emerging. The nominee is going to be a northeastern liberal with some crossover appeal, the vice-president will be from the south. The ticket will probably include one veteran and one populist.

In the Kerry/Dean faceoff for president, Kerry clearly has the edge at this point, the momentum of his proven victories. Edwards vs. Clark is trickier to handicap, but Edwards seems to have the momentum there. Just playing the percentages, a Kerry/Edwards ticket seems the most likely, although this leaves the wired constituency without a champion. Alternately, Kerry/Clark pushes the military angle but loses the populism appeal. The two longshot possibilities left Dean/Edwards and Dean/Clark offer either a geographically balanced populist message or an Internet ticket (and with the value of early Internet organizing under heavy scrutiny, and just by the numbers, that last choice seems the least likely now).

I think any of these four combinations could take Bush, with some luck. I realize the veepstakes usually reaches outside of the nomination fight, but this time around things are so much more contested than in recent elections, and it seems to me that the final four have each earned a second look before we reach elsewhere.

Who you gonna trust -- the pundits or your lying eyes?

There's a simple scenario where someone-not-named-Kerry still pulls it out: come Feb 3rd, victories are shared around. For example, Kerry wins Mo., Edwards wins SC, Lieberman wins Delaware, Dean wins NM and mebbe AZ, Clark wins OK. North Dakota abstains.

That's it. That's all it takes.

If Dean and Edwards get past Feb 3 without Kerry running the table, this election heads into Big State country. And it's anybody's game.

Sure major-media's ready to nominate the ice man (aka JFK 2). But they wanted to call the win for Dean 2 months ago. And they called the win for Bush 10 pm election night (and then for a tie and then for Gore and then for a tie and then for Bush), lo those many moons ago.

The pundits: I'm sure they're nice people and all. But it's not like they have a particularly impressive track record.

Why start believing them now?

Count the votes

Do the math: allenjj points out why Democrats need to win more states next time than commonly thought.

You heard it here first

By the way, want to hear my new counterspin? The "yeeeagh" battle cry will, it turns out, win the election for Dean.

Has everyone seen Dean Goes Nuts? People are using the net and their talkback abilities with personal media design (paging Marc Canter, to the multicolored courtesy telephone, please) to "remix" the story and challenge the ABCBMSNBCNNFox-NewsweekTimeWarnerAOL version of reality.

I just listened to the WMD remix and it's devastating. There's a spontaneous moveon.org-esque Bush-in-30 seconds-y fever to the remix phenomenon. The link above is mostly Bush and administration people saying lies, with music, but when they mix in the "Yeeeeeagh" it's amazing! If you listen you'll see what I mean. Dean is becoming like Paul Bunyan.

Make him deny it

Who am I to say whether George W. Bush went AWOL in the '70s or what drugs he may or may not have been taking in those days? There's no way I can know and there's no reason why General Clark or any other Democratic politicans should have to distance themselves from a thorough investigation of the allegations. Let them spin it? Deserter? How dare you impugn this fine upstanding WASP iconoclast, you rapscallion you! He was merely away without leave, failed to muster, marked absent, no explanation still extant in the files, fancy that.

But, no one asked Republican politicians to distance themselves from those who called Clinton a draft-dodger (instead of what he actually was, a Presidency-lusting weasel).

Breaking news: Cecil Vortex's heart endorses Howard Dean for President

Until this last week, I've been a classic, pragmatic on-the-fencer. There were weeks when I was inching toward Clark. Days when Edwards had me won over. But I was never a big Dean booster. I had a lot of respect for him, but there was something about his style that I couldn't see working as President.

Now one of two things has happened. Either (1) I've developed a classic case of Democractic root-for-the-guy-who's-gonna-lose-itis. Or (2) Christian's got a point (see below). And this elaborate Jedi mind trick has worked. Because the more I watch Dean this week, especially in long-form interviews like the one C-Span's been airing, with Peter Jennings, the more I hear extended dub-remixes of the whoop, the more Dean gets an opportunity to confront people's concerns about him, to show a little more humility and humanity, well the more I like him.

update: a diary up on Kos pointed me toward this interesting video -- the Dean Iowa speech, as seen from the crowd. All that crowd noise puts a bit of a different spin on things.

Dean grows the Democrat pie higher

Weird thought: maybe Trippi really is a Jedi. After the crazy-train moshpit reality show the night an insurgent candidate came third in a field he himself had probably grown by at least a third. (In the words of President Bush, "he grew the pie higher" ... next maybe he'll show he really does understand how hard it is "to put food on your family" in this land where "wings take dream" but let's not got there.)

Maybe this "angry red face" meme had to be exploded in a big way, and maybe Dean needed more of a narrative than "raised the most money via the Internet." For all the meme junkies out there, Dianne Sawyer even showed the Gennifer portrait. A key failing or weakness nearly bring our protagonist low but he grows through the adversity. Better story than "geez, he really is nuts" or "don't they understand broadcast media at all?"

I'm not saying Trippi (by which I mean the whole team around and including the candidate) didn't make a serious mistake in how they handled the TV moment. They did let Dean be Dean" and since that moment of misjudgement about how something would read to practiced TV watchers (something the Dean household is not) cannot be recalled, as you cannot unring a bell, the best way to deal with a raging bull is to seize it by the horns and leap over it like a Minoan.

Over on Kos, after Iowa one poster felt emboldened finally to object to the once-popular Trippi is a Jedi tagline/sig sported by a Deanster, saying something like, Can I now admit that I never though Trippi was a Jedi? And despite criticisms of Trippi's own advertising company getting the TV work, maybe they are now handling the media with some aplomb, the triple-appearance last night: sober, homey, and able to laugh at oneself feeding the media just enough English to turn a corner that looked impossible just a day ago.

Atrios called the Letterman appearance an inverse judo flip. Think of it. If they can ride out the media moment and embrace the multimedia remixes coming from the Internet's creative commons, the Governor comes out of it inoculated against one of his supposedly worst vulnerabilities going into the general election: too angry, unstable, finger on the button.

These are not the memes you're looking for.

Kerry's tin ear

Look, I'm an anybody-but-Bush Democrat this time around, so I'll get with the program if Kerry can sustain his lead, but something William Saletan wrote in his review of the State of the Union memes and countermemes from the two parties struck home:

8. The unofficial Democratic response. ABC and NBC interviewed Kerry, effectively anointing him the party's true spokesman. His debut was unpromising. With a face devoid of energy and passion, he pledged to campaign "with all the energy and all the passion that I have." He reeled off platitudes from his stump speech. When pressed to clarify his positions on the Iraq war, the Partriot Act, and gay marriage, he descended into endless nuance, going on for so long (and ending up somehow talking about race and judicial nominations) that Peter Jennings blinked with fatigue. The best line Kerry came up with was, "There are just two Americas: the America of the special interests and the lobbyists the president defends, and the America [in which] other people ... are living." It's such a good line, in fact, that John Edwards has been using it for more than a month.

Just as Kerry lengthened, and drained the snappiness out of "Don't send them a message, send them a president," Kerry has expropriated Edwards' "Two Americas theme" and has somehow flattened it and disimproved the rhetorical flow by saying "there are just two Americas" as if Kerry is uncomfortably aware of the origins of his slogans and can't resist tinkering with them to personalize them, qualifying everything with nuance until it is the same flavorless pablum Democrats have gotten used to doling out.

Somebody close to Kerry, tell him to stop using more words where fewer will do, please?

Can we really be stopped so easily?

To my fellow Howard Dean supporters, a little perspective:

One of the great people I've met as a campaign volunteer wrote me this morning, "Hi Christian, got your info about the ... [tactical details omitted] ... outreach. I think that is a good approach. However I'm concerned about the events over the past two days, i.e. Dean's 3rd place showing in Iowa and his speech to his supporters that has gotten so much negative press. I fear that Dean won't be able recover from all of this. Do you see any "rabbits in the hat" possibilities?"

I knew I need to think about and consider my reply carefully, and here's what I ended up writing back after putting some thought into why I'm working for Dean and what I hope to accomplish:

There's no doubt that our job just harder, but I'm not willing to give up at the first sign of a problem. Think about all the Kerry supporters and Edwards supporters and Gephardt supporters and Sharpton supporters and Moseley Braun supporters and even Lieberman supporters who kept their heads down and just did the work when their candidate was being written off by the media and politically savvy people like us.

I think this is like Bill Clinton's Gennifer Flowers moment, when he and Hillary went on Barbara Walters or whatever and made a personal appeal to the nation's livingrooms, in a calm, dignified setting. It sounds like Howard and Judy Dean are doing something similar tonight or soon?

Plus Dean is on Letterman tonight, so maybe he will show that he has a sense of humor and he can roll with the punches. Remember they elected a "pro" wrestler, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, as governor of Minnesota. Our governor is an old-school, graeco-roman wrestler, not a showboat. He takes his opponents down by stealth and by using his intelligence. It's not as easy a road as the glamor-boy, Beatles/JFK appeal that Edwards has or the Viet war hero/Nixon enemy appeal that Kerry is showing, but I don't think the game is over yet.

I'm not a pollyanna, by the way. If Dean can't pull a good media storyline out of New Hampshire, we are down to a series of last-stands at the Alamo, state-by-state, and that will be almost impossible to survive, win, and still be popular enough to beat Bush.

I think we'll know soon if Dean still has a chance or not, and if not, I may just volunteer for the Democratic party till there's a nominee, or help out wherever I can. One thing about "It's not about me, it's about you" is that even if they can beat Dean (or Dean beats himself), we don't have to quit the race.

Cele-bray-yate

There's a lot of heartache out there right now, I'm sure. A lot of Dean folks wondering what this all means for their guy. Some Clark folks feeling like things may be tilting the other way. Lieberman and Gephardt folks grinding their teeth.

But then there's this:

In the last 24 years, when have we had a Democratic contest this completely contested? When has it been less clear who will win out? Sure, it's come down to two candidates plenty of times before. Carter v Kennedy, Mondale v Hart....

But four legit candidates, each with a semi-sane scenario for victory?

None of them perfect, but each of them impressive. Not the seven dwarves we saw in 1988, but 4 strong leaders.

That's unusual. An embarrassment of riches.

And it's worth taking a moment to celebrate.

Horsetrading report from Iowa

Charles Eicher reports on his caucus experience in his blog, Disinfotainment. Specifically, he recounts an amusing little horsetrading bit of gamesmanship in which the Kerry supporters managed to screw themselves out of a delegate:

After an initial vote, any candidate polling less than 15% is declared unviable, and those persons must realign to a candidate or declare they are undecided. The only viable candidates were Dean, Kerry, and Edwards. Then everyone is given an opportunity to talk to other caucusgoers, to try to get them to come to their group. And here's where it got really interesting.

The Kerry group had enough votes to get 4 delegates, but the Dean/Edwards vote was tied, the remaining delegates would have to be decided by coin toss. So the Kerry people decided to screw Dean by shifting 3 surplus voters to Edwards, to make the apportion 4-3-2. When the final vote was called, the Kerry faction discovered that they had miscalculated, they should have only shifted 2 voters, and they lost their 4th delegate. The final split of delegates was 3-3-3. Suddenly the Kerry faction wanted a third vote. They were overruled by the caucus supervisor, but only after much shouting and bickering, and a call to the Democratic Party HQ for a decision on rules. The Kerry people outsmarted themselves, and screwed themselves out of a delegate instead of screwing Dean out of a delegate.

Early returns show Kerry, Edwards

With nearly a third of precincts reporting, the Des Moines Register shows Kerry with 37%, Edwards with 33%, Dean with 18%, and Gephardt with 11% (all rounded to the nearest percentage).

The Democratic Party's Iowa Caucus scoreboard shows similar numbers based on a third as many precincts.

So much for all the chatter about organization on the ground!

My (other little) pony in this race

As the day wears on, I find I have another pony in this race. To my surprise, I'm rooting for Edwards to have a strong showing.

I've been leaning Clark lately. Strategically an Edwards surge is bad for Clark -- it splits some of the southern vote (or at least the "he can get support in the South and therefore I like him" vote).

But to heck with strategy (at least for one night).

Edwards has a big brain, a good heart, energy, and charisma. He's good for the party and good for the country. And I wish him well.

The merits of Dean's tax-repeal proposal reconsidered

Via Altercation, I notice that Jonathan Cohn at "even the liberal" New Republic has taken a serious look at Dean's tax proposal, one that goes beyond handicapping the tactics:

Maybe advocating total repeal of the tax cuts really is political suicide. But, whatever Dean decides to do, there's another question that commentators rarely ask: In policy terms, is preserving part of the Bush tax cuts a good idea? Dean has said no, that, in the end, "middle-class people [would] get a better deal from President Dean." And he's almost certainly right.

Edwards + Kucinich > 15%?

According to WHO TV in Des Moines, the Edwards and Kucinich campaigns have agreed to combine their caucus support if either candidate isn't "viable" (meaning has less than 15% support). It's not clear if this is a caucus-by-caucus plan or something they plan to coordinate statewide.

It's also not clear what happens if both are below 15%: that is, which one gets the support then? This is a clue, though, that the Edwards people know that they don't have to ground game to convert his last-minute surge in the polls into comparable caucus votes.

My (little) pony in this race

So I've been thinking through the various scenarios, trying to puzzle out what I'd like to see happen in Iowa. And I've concluded that, whatever else goes down, the main thing I'm hoping for is a third or fourth-place finish for Dick Gephardt.

It's not that he's a bad guy. He's not. It's just that this field has been too crowded for too long. And Gephardt coming in third or fourth seems like the only sure-thing scenario for a post-Iowa drop out.

Wesley and me

On Wednesday (somehow I missed this at the time -- didn't seem to really get much press...), Michael Moore wrote an endorsement letter for Wes Clark, now posted on Clark04.com. This is new stuff -- not just a rehash of the Draft Clark era letter he wrote a while back.

It's a pretty short, fairly fascinating read, worth your time -- the progressive's case for voting pro-General.

Dean: up on the downbeat?

As Christian sez below, Edwards is doing pretty well in Iowa. So's Kerry. Gephardt's holding fairly strong.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Clark continues to close on Dean. Kerry's picked up a few points. Lieberman's making some late progress.

Really, pollwise, just about every major candidate 'cept Dean has some reason for renewed hope this past week.

Which could turn out to be great news for the Dean camp. The better these other fellers score in Iowa and NH, the less likely they are to drop out of the race. And the longer this remains (deep breath) Dean v. Clark v. Edwards, v. Gephardt v. Kerry v. Lieberman, instead of straight-up Dean v. Clark, the more likely it becomes that Dean's hard-hard-hardcore supporters will carry him to victory, state after state.

It's a four-way race in Iowa

Looks like it's Edwards' turn to get the big mo'. His all-positive, all-the-time approach certainly read well in the last debate. Trapper John over at Kos points out that Iowa will still come down to GOTV (get out the vote efforts), and there's still the possibility that the Dean camp will bring in new, thus far uncounted caucus goers, but it really does look right now like it's anybody's game. Hard to imagine what Gephardt's folks will do if he comes in fourth.

Moseley Braun to endorse Dean

This primary race sure is getting interesting. Just the other day I was talking to Cecil and we were marveling at the Dean campaign's ability to orchestrate endorsements, like the Harkin one, that manage to change the media's short-term memory for the previous issue-du-jour. I suppose this news that Carol Moseley Braun is about to drop her presidential bid and endorse Dean, combined with the DC straw primary win, should help with the no African-Americans in Dean's cabinet flap.

Synchronicity

About 10 hours before I posted "To Ohio and beyond" (see below), the always excellent talkingpointsmemo.com featured a post making pretty much exactly the same point.

And that's odd, I think.

I mean, my observation wasn't particularly timely. It happens that yesterday's post popped into my head when it did. But it could have easily shown up any other day in the last several weeks.

Which is all just to say:

(1) It's a very small braincase we live in, and
(2) we all share one tightly wound brain.

To Ohio and beyond

There's a new poll out for Ohio, which holds its primary on March 2nd.
Like a lot of state-primary polls right now, it puts Dean well out in front (29%) with Clark in a fairly distant second (17%). If you're like me, you look at that, and you have to think: wow, that's one heck of a lead. Dean's got, like, a hundred times more support than Clark in Ohio. Give or take.

But then there's this:

Even with all the hype for Dean and Clark as the only candidates with a real shot, Gephardt, Kerry, Lieberman, and Edwards still combine for a whopping 39%. (Mosley Braun and Sharpton are barely a blip in this state, with less than a point each right now. And I'm factoring out Kucinich's 11% as favorite son support for the former Cleveland mayor.)

Which is all to say, roughly four out of ten Ohio-types are currently backing out-of-state candidates that the media has all but written off.

What's it all mean? I'm not altogether sure. But count on this -- at least two, and more likely three out of GKLE will be long-gone from the race before third-wave primaries like Ohio hit.

So the real questions are: (1) which if any of GKLE will be left standing? And (2) where will the other soon-to-be-ex-candidates' supporters go? That's what the next month is all about.

Hunkering data perv

The latest ARG tracking poll for New Hampshire shows Clark gaining 2 points per day over the past 5 days, for a total climb from 12% up to 20% and a very solid second-place showing.

Meanwhile in contrast, over the same period Edwards has shot up from 3% to, er, um, 3%.

Clark hunkers down

Looking at Clark's schedule on his campaign web site, it's clear that the general is hunkering down.

Hunkers he where?
No surprise there.
He's hunkering in
New Hampshire.

There are at least two things we can extrapolate from all this:

(1) it's yet still even more so, another interesting aspect of Web Election 2004 -- our newfound ability to closely track each campaign's movement (and therefore focus) from the comfort of work or home. (Edwards, for example, is splitting his time between South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Iowa, while his campaign pays special attention to New Mexico.)

(2) I like to say the word "hunker."

Big bump for Clark in new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll

A new national poll puts Clark at 20% (up from 12%), Dean at 24% (down from 27%), with a 5% margin for error.

National polls don't mean all that much right now, and Dean still has by far the strongest overall state-by-state numbers.

But as expected, this is another indication that the story now starts to shift from Unbeatable Dean to Rising Clark -- and it's one more sign that there will be some spark in this race before we're through.