RALEIGH — Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has had a good and surprising couple of months in the Democratic presidential race. He’s beating expectations in next-door New Hampshire. He’s giving Dick Gephardt a scare in his strategic home base of Iowa. And he’s venturing into other, sunnier climes to establish campaign operations in key early-primary states from South Carolina to Arizona.
Yes, Dean’s been the flavor of the month — really the political flavor of the summer. His has been a compelling story for the news media, who’ve been bored and who always relish a good plot twist to keep the audience interested. But judging by the only real data available so far, the expressed sentiments of Democratic primary voters, they are still scanning up and down the case.
OK, that may be a bit of hyperbole. There isn’t much misty glass down at the end, where the Kucinich Crunch gives way to the Measley-Brown. And despite the hype, few are asking for Clark bars. Still, it is simply way too early to be predicting a victor in this race.
I still think that John Edwards, sometimes senator from North Carolina, has a (small) chance, and the current environment is consistent with the 4-3-2-1 Edwards strategy I outlined in a previous column. Dean, Gephardt, and John Kerry are also in the running. Joe Lieberman is fading fast, I think, and the other candidates are either comic relief or spoilers (or Veep bait, in Wesley Clark’s case).
Most of the early-contest states remain wide open spaces. I don’t mean necessarily that there isn’t a frontrunner. In each of these states, though, the second- and third-places are up for grabs — and since no candidate seems likely to win them all, that’s important. In New Hampshire, a new Zogby poll puts Dean (38 percent) well ahead of Kerry (17 percent), but everyone else is bunched up in the mid-single-digits. In Iowa, Dean and Gephardt are basically even at 25 percent and 21 percent respectively, with Kerry at 16 percent and Lieberman at 12 percent. In South Carolina, another new poll finds nothing more than a pack of unknowns with Edwards (10 percent), Dean (9 percent), and Kerry (8 percent) statistically tied.
All this polling news needs to be interpreted carefully. New Hampshire, in particular, has experienced such large swings in voter sentiment in a short time that it is likely few voters are really paying close attention or forming lasting attachments. In Iowa, there’s the added difficulty of predicting which phone respondents will be among the small group of Democrats who will actually participate in the caucuses.
The lack of movement in August does put Edwards in a predicament. He’s begun major media buys in all three states as well as an extensive travel schedule. If he doesn’t rise to double digits in Iowa, to 4th place, and in New Hampshire, to at least a tie for 3rd, in the next few weeks, the senator will have to decide whether to press forward or reconsider.
These are low bars to surmount, I know, but doing so would be enough to get Edwards the obligatory spate of “why you weren’t looking, there’s been a new development in the campaign” stories that reporters and pundits love to write, read, and repeat. You can already tell that Kerry and Lieberman are boring the chattering classes to tears. That’s what all the weird talk about Wesley Clark is about. The political pros still expect a Southerner to play a role on the Democratic ticket, and for something to happen to early-peaking Dean.
On this one, I think the pros may be on to something.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.