A few random thoughts after New Hampshire

A snow day, and my wife's in South Carolina to cover the lead-up to that primary (weather sounds worse than New Hampshire), so playing in the snow slowed down the blogging today, or vice versa. But my thoughts from last night:

1. The result is obviously very different from what prediction/polling would have suggested two weeks ago, or even two days ago, when Dean seemed to be battling back. But it's almost exactly what one might have predicted a year ago: The two candidates from neighboring states on top, with Kerry winning, Dean second, Edwards with a decent following. You would probably have picked Lieberman to do a little better, but as I've said all along, he long ago, and by his own unnecessary choice, positioned himself in a niche where there are no Democratic primary voters, and certainly few in New Hampshire. (Even the independents are coming from a different place than the DLC/morality pitch. They tend to be more socially libertarian, and more fiscally conservative.) Of course, you would have assumed Gephardt would be in the race and Clark, probably not. Dean's second place, unfortunately, marks the end of his campaign, whereas in the year-ago scenario, it would have been a decent beginning, putting him solidly in the top two or three contenders. If Gephardt had won Iowa, Kerry New Hampshire, and Dean had come second in both, those would be the three viable contenders. The Iowa results, on the other hand, were not at all what one would have expected a year ago, so the fact that Kerry won both makes the NH result all the more significant for him.

2. I had a nightmare scenario -- and it was not one in which Howard Dean won the nomination. I was certainly worried about that scenario, and Dean's electability, but the far worse nightmare involved a prolonged contest between Dean and an anti-Dean -- Clark, Gephardt, Kerry or Edwards -- in which the anti-Dean ultimately prevailed, entirely on the energy of a stop-Dean movement, but Dean nonetheless came into Boston with a solid 35% of the delegates, all armed with a righteous conviction that they'd been robbed, perhaps by the Clintons, of something they had legitimately won. I've only been to one convention -- 1992 -- and the Jerry Brown delegates at that convention, who probably had less than 15% of the delegates (I can't find the exact number, but did find this evocative photo) managed to be an incredibly disruptive force. Even without the threat that he would run as an independent, I think that nightmare was one of the things that made some of the party establishment, such as it is, decide that it was wiser to join Dean than fight him. It now looks like that is a much less likely scenario. Even if Dean pulls back into some sort of contention and has a significant delegate presence, it will not be able to claim the "we wuz robbed" mantle. And in the very unlikely event that he comes back and wins the nomination, well, that would be a testament to political skill at the Bill Clinton level, and it would just have to be respected. But Dean has been humbled, appropriately, and his delegates will no longer be an angry, self-righteous force. And that's all to the good. As George W. Bush used to say, humility is a good thing.

Dean's grand mistake -- the mistake for which Joe Trippi deserved to get fired, despite his extraordinary genius -- was to believe that he had actually accomplished something before a single vote had been cast or a delegate committed. See my long-ago post, "The Trippy Scenario," for my first impression of this arrogance, and my mistake in thinking twice about it.

3. Clark: I'm disappointed and a little frustrated about what happened to General Clark. I like Clark not because he was an anti-Dean, but because I loved the way he talked about domestic issues. It's exactly what I've been looking for in a candidate: Clear statements of meaningful principles, not the programmatic language of Senators, and a deep understanding of and respect for public institutions, such as the one in which he'd spent his career. And, needless to say, he also had a wonderful power in talking about foreign policy issues, and could actually tell the story of how we went awry over Iraq, rather than simply opposing the war. Similarly, on Meet the Press last Sunday, he was able to convey doubts about whether the administration had taken al Qaeda seriously in a narrative context: all they cared about was missile defense, and so they ignored people who told them terrorism was the bigger concern. The only way to get voters to consider the possibility that the President didn't do all he could to prevent a terrorist attack is to tell a story in which it makes sense, and Clark does that far better than I've seen Kerry do.

I'd been hoping and expecting that Clark would click with New Hampshire's independents. What I didn't understand was that before he could do that, he would have to establish his credentials as a Democrat and even his right to run in the primary, in a way that McCain never had to establish his credentials as a Republican. Spooked by Dean -- unduly, it turns out -- he had to oversimplify his position on the war, and every minute he spent shoring up his not-very-believable left-of-center cred was a minute spent not reaching out to New Hampshire independents. I sort of wonder what would have happened if Clark had answered questions about party affiliation by saying something like, "political parties have never been that important to me. I've got my beliefs and values, and that's what I'm going to talk about. I've met plenty of Republicans who share my values, but they're not represented in this administration. On the most fundamental issues, such as a fair tax system, I agree with most Democrats, but I want to lead a country that's less partisan, where we work together to solve problems," etc. How many Democrats would be upset by that? Who's loyalty today is really to a party? And it would certainly help reach independents.

Clark got very good at staying on message, so good that he didn't quite know when he should step off message long enough to deal with something. The Michael Moore issue, and whether he should appear with Moore after Moore called Bush a "deserter," was an infuriating piece of bullshit to be dealing with in the last few days of the campaign, and one of the most egregious examples of press misconduct. "Who is this guy?" is always the deadliest question in politics, and Michael Moore is such a sharp contrast to Clark that he forced that question to the forefront. If I were Clark, I would have gotten off message long enough to say, "Like a lot of young men at the time, George Bush apparently didn't want to go to Vietnam. He was very fortunate in that he was given another way to serve his country. It's up to George Bush to tell the American people whether or not he actually fulfilled the requirements of that alternative service. The question is to him, not to me." But maybe that would have been inflammatory.

But still, the very idea that the New York Times treats Clark as if he made some mistake because "Bush's actions do not meet the technical definition of desertion, which is punishable by death" is offensive. No, Bush is obviously not a "deserter," since by definition he would have been shot by a firing squad if he was! But it's his actions that should be in question here, not Clark's or Moore's. This is one of those issues where it helps to turn the table and put Clinton in the same spot. Does anyone ever demand that Bush renounce people like Jerry Falwell who put out tapes accusing Clinton of being responsible for the deaths of 184 people? I think it's fair to say that Clinton's actions did not meet the technical definition of mass murder.

It is interesting to note that we now have a president who's been accused, with some cause, of desertion, treason (the exposure of Valerie Plame), and of leading the nation to war on a false premise. That's the Trifecta of crimes against your own country, isn't it? OK, the desertion charge doesn't meet the technical definition, and the other two, while we know that they occurred, we still don't have all the details about exactly who said what to whom. Still, not a record on which I'd want to be running for reelection, in a just world.