Post-Partisans

Mixed reviews on the first ten-person Democratic debate, but I want to focus for a minute on General Clark's answer to the first question: Brian Williams' Drudge Report-inspired call on Clark to account for his praise of Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc. in March 2001. There was a simple brilliance to Clark's response that no one I've read seems to quite understand:

Generalizing broadly, there are two big groups of voters that will make up a Democratic majority in 2004. There are people who never liked or trusted George Bush, and now are crazed with anger and frustration. That includes me, most everyone I know, and the entire Dean following. Then there are voters who might have at one point, whether they voted for him or not, thought Bush wouldn't be all that bad, or might even be great, and are increasingly dismayed, even shocked, by the economy, Iraq, dishonesty, etc. This is not the result of some great insight or public opinion polling -- it's mathematically certain that when a president goes from popularity in the mid-70s or higher (discounting the immediate post-September 11 when we all at least wanted to believe that this man was capable of leadership) to the high 40s, there is a large portion of the population that used to like him and no longer does.

Clark's answer basically said to the used-to-like-hims, "I'm one of you." And that's incredibly important to the election. Dean's boldness has him in good standing with the never-liked-hims, but there obviously aren't enough voters who never lapsed for a moment into thinking George Bush was maybe o.k. to make a majority. The used-to-like-hims include Republicans who voted for him as well as Democrats who didn't but weren't quite so unhappy that Al Gore wasn't president. And it includes a lot of independents.

You may protest that these used-to-like-hims don't vote in Democratic presidential primaries. And generally, that's true. But there's one place where they do vote, and sometimes decide the outcome: New Hampshire. With independents and Republicans free to vote in the Democratic primary, there's a thread of independent-minded voters, who at the very least are indifferent to charges that Clark isn't a good Democrat and at best might really take to his post-partisan, "I've served Democratic presidents and Republican presidents" appeal.

This group, which is concentrated in Southern New Hampshire and tends to vote late, is notoriously hard to poll accurately. New Hampshire polls depend on assumptions about the level of turnout by non-registerd Democrats in the Democratic primary, assumptions that can easily be off by an order of magnitude. In recent months, when the race was Dean vs. Kerry, those independent-minded voters seemed to be attracted to Dean. Polls that estimated a higher turnout of non-Democrats consistently had Dean higher. Not surprising: Kerry is seen as an establishment Democrat (not to mention that some of the independents are refugees from Massachusetts, usually with a reason), and Dean an outsider.

But none of them agreed to marry Dean, and there may be significant reason to think they could go over to Clark. Roll the clock back to 1999-2000. I was working for Bill Bradley at the time. He had a significant lead over Al Gore in New Hampshire and, like Dean, was drawing the independent-minded non-Democrats to offset his weakness among establishment Democrats. But as soon as John McCain became a real figure in the race, which was barely a month before the primary, those voters seemed to decide they were happier voting for the war hero, reformer in the Republican primary, and Bradley's bubble burst.

Ask yourself: If those voters could switch from the liberal Bradley to McCain, who holds Barry Goldwater's seat in the Senate and at the time a nearly identical voting record, doesn't it seem plausible that they could switch from Dean to Clark? It doesn't even require them to change the primary they'll vote in, and there's nothing happening in the Republican party.

If Karl Rove is really as scared of Dean as I heard he was a year ago, and as his leaks to Drudge suggest, then perhaps the best thing he can do is get McCain back in there to pull some votes back into the GOP primary. Then, when his usefulness is done, he can destroy him in South Carolina again, for old times sake.

Is this a prediction that Clark will win New Hampshire? No, and that's not an expectation that he should want to create anyway. Three other candidates are from New England. But that means a second-place or even a third-place finish in New Hampshire would be treated as a "better-than-expected," surely reducing the race to Dean and Clark. And then it's down to South Carolina, where the electorate is very different. African-Americans will make up a majority of the vote. My guess is that an army veteran will have a greater ability to relate to these voters than the ex-governor of a state that could put every African-American in the state on the public payroll without anyone noticing..