RALEIGH — An Associated Press story moved across the wires tonight depicting the change in venue in the Democratic presidential race from Iowa to New Hampshire. It’s worth reading in full, but you might first consider scrolling down to the bottom of the piece to read the last sentence:
Sen. Joe Lieberman. . . skipped Iowa for an early stand in New Hampshire.
Pretty much is the kiss of death for Lieberman, whose platform doesn’t really fit within the modern Democratic Party. Didn’t he say anything worth reporting on the day after the first real contest of the race? Don’t know, because apparently the reporter didn’t care. This is telling.
That helps to underline, in case it wasn’t obvious already, that there is now a four-way race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Let me just sketch out some initial thoughts I have about how these four candidates — Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, and John Kerry — match up at this point:
* Clark is, if anything, odder and more potentially self-destructive than the raving, gesticulating Dean. I may be completely wrong about this, but my gut-level reaction to him remains that he can’t pull this off. There are too many flip-flops, too many puzzling statements, too many lingering questions about his character and leadership from his days as NATO commander. He retains some strong showings in polls, not just in New Hampshire where he had a couple of weeks largely to himself during the Iowa homestretch but also in other early-primary states such as South Carolina, Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Virginia, and Tennessee. But I expect these positions to change over the coming days as Kerry and Edwards get a bit of a bounce.
* I like the way blogger and Greensboro News & Record columnist Ed Cone explained the Howard Dean phenomenon: he was an Internet bubble that popped. It wasn’t necessarily his 18 percent showing in the Iowa caucus that started the move to dump his political stock this week, though it was highly underwhelming given his spending, volunteer base, and expectations. What actually started the Dean bear market was his now-infamous Ric Flair impression televised across the country Monday night. If I had been a loyal and trusting Deaniac watching my candidate figuratively put a gun to his head and pull the trigger, I might have been tempted to substitute the literal for the figurative.
* John Edwards had the best speech of Monday night, the best round of press boosting on Tuesday, and has apparently become quite the buzz among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington political circles. Obviously, given what I wrote for Tuesday’s National Review site, I continue to believe that Edwards is a real contender for at least one half of the Democratic ticket.
But let’s calm down, everyone. Iowa was Iowa. Now the race goes on, to lots of places in just the next three weeks. And Edwards is taking a risk in choosing to devote attention to New Hampshire this week, where his prospects would seem limited, rather than simply focusing on the Feb. 3 contests in South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Missouri, where he might inherit Gephardt voters and score a breakout. Still, in New Hampshire his goal will be to bring Wesley Clark down roughly to his level of support, and if it works it will help Edwards a lot later.
* John Kerry had a much better Tuesday, as far as I could see and hear, than he had a Monday night — after the vote count came in, that is. He passed up an excellent opportunity to address a national audience as a victorious candidate, but instead managed only to bore. On Tuesday, he began spinning his campaign in New Hampshire to be that of an “underdog.” Dean also said he was the “underdog.” Clark and Edwards are the real underdogs, at least based on regional and polling factors, so perhaps they’ll make it official, too. But if New Hampshire is going to be the Underdog primary, will South Carolina be the Commander McBragg primary?
Perhaps the best news for political junkies out of Iowa was that the race is likely to go on longer than expected. But then again, even I’m going to get tired of these people before too long. Fortunately, I’ll probably get to that point at about the time that North Carolina political races pick up steam and the state legislature prepares to return to Raleigh. Oh, goody.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.