They're Out to Get Him

General Wesley Clark says that the Fox News Channel is part of a right-wing conspiracy which is doing everything it can to derail his candidacy. Okey-dokey.

Blaming Brit Hume for Clark's miserable debate performance is like blaming "the Curse of the Bambino" for Grady Little's disastrous management in Game Seven of the ALCS. It's grandiose, but it ain't true.

The Brooks Book on Kerry

David Brooks joins Ellisblog (scroll down until you get to the post about John K and affirmative action) and many others in identifying the great weakness of John Kerry as a political leader. He's all hat and no cattle.

Table for Two!

What would we do without Johnny Apple? He's got a classic process story about the Kerry Campaign in South Carolina, which no doubt enabled the great gourmand to eat well in Charleston. Unsurprisingly, the thrust of his story elides Kerry's major weakness as a Democratic presidential candidate.

That weakness is this: Kerry is the un-soul brother. He's the honkiest of honkies. South Carolina is important because it brings to the table the African-American community in large numbers (40%, more or less, of the primary voters will be black). Kerry's ability to engage African-American voters is, to put it politely, unproven. So that's Kerry's next challenge, not (as Mr. Apple asserts) to run TV commercials on local SC stations to prove his "commitment" to the state.

Played Out

Kerry has now officially peaked in New Hampshire (76% favorable translates into an E/P ratio -- estimation/personality, sort of an inverted price/earnings -- of about 200). Will he start repeating Dean's mistakes in Iowa?

Mistake number one was: The Parade of Endorsements. This is a popular mistake amongst front-runners because it allows them to easily fill a news cycle without having to do anything or say anything. It also assuages their ego needs. Voters see it as self-congratulation and are prone to punish it immediately. See Dole, Bob, 1988.

Mistake number two was: Prevent Defense. Front-runners often decide that a successful day is one where no mistakes are made. Don't say anything other than "Bush lied" and "Bush is bad." Kerry will be prone to this kind of mistake. See Dole, Bob, 1996.

Mistake number three was: "Process." The Deaniacs talked about their org chart and their "ones," just as the Reaganites did in Iowa in 1980. Both lost, badly. There is creeping process talk coming out of the Kerry campaign.

Who The Hell is Greg Abbott?

He's a strategery guy. He explains why Ellisblog doesn't understand the bigger picture. Ellisblog responds: Clark enabling Kerry to win New Hamshire by 20 percentage points isn't a strategy, it's a fantasy.

While You Were Sleeping

Mickey Kaus was working! I'll let him bring you up to date on how the situation in New Hampshire has changed overnight. There does appear to be the beginnings of an Edwards "surge" for second.

Wonkette

I spent about an hour yesterday reading Wonkette, which may be the best thing to hit the blogosphere in while. Here's her take on Tina Brown. Click here for her take on the Democratic debate.

No Negative Advertising

Is it really possible that the good citizens of New Hampshire will go through the last week of a presidential primary campaign with no negative ads on TV? What a bummer! Where's the fun in that? And since when did New Hampshirites become so sensitive and politically correct? Democratic presidential politics is beginning to feel like an Ashram. Please keep your voices down. Others are chanting.

Memo to Joe Lieberman

You're going to lose.

Q. So where's your leverage? A. New Hampshire.

Q. What to do? A. Endorse Kerry.

Q. When? A. Monday, for Tuesday papers.

Q. What's the downside? A. None. If the polls move tonight and tomorrow, you can sit tight and let it play out. If the polls remain the same, call Kerry on Sunday afternoon and offer the endorsement for Monday afternoon. Then wait until the 6pm Sunday deadlines. Then start calling your people. It'll leak (which is fine). But the story will be front-page on Nightly News Monday and papers Tuesday morning.

The Clark Brain Trust

I assume that stuff like this on the Drudge Report is being hand-delivered by the Clark campaign's "brain trust." The general idea being: "knock Edwards off in New Hampshire and we'll be the last man standing against Kerry." It makes a certain deranged sense, not unlike......... Clark's candidacy.

But let's say it works. Does Edwards get out? No. Will he run fairly well in South Carolina. At least as well as Clark. So what's the point? What's the endgame? I don't get it.

No Bump for Edwards

According to all of the 2700 tracking polls in New Hampshire, North Carolina Senator John Edwards hasn't gotten much of a post-Iowa boost. He's up some, but he's still running a fairly distant fourth.

On the night of the Iowa Caucuses, I wrote that the key decision of the Edwards campaign would be: NH or SC? (Yes, I know what it means when columnists start quoting themselves, but this is different, this is blogging!) The idea being that he (Edwards) could basically concede NH to Kerry and let the story be: Clark's Demise. Or he could try to ride his Almost Big Mo from Iowa to a second-place finish in NH and set up SC as a Kerry vs. Edwards showdown with homefield advantage.

Edwards appears to have sort of split the difference -- he's campaigning in SC and NH. This is a mistake. He had to do one or the other. Last Monday, I was of the view that he should hit NH hard and come what may. But it's becoming clear that he would have been well-advised to write off New Hampshire and make his stand in South Carolina. Unless there's a dramatic shift in the templates, Edwards is going to finish well back in the pack in NH, which is going to diminish him in SC. Another homeboy who couldn't cut it up North.

The thing that no one anticipated (I certainly didn't) was the way Dean has hung around as a story. He's finished politically, but the People Magazine-ization of politics has enabled him to stay in as a journalistic force, a consumer of coverage. How else to explain Diane Sawyer's interview with Dean on ABC last night? When is the last time a network devoted prime time coverage to a primary candidate who everyone in the world knows is a goner? I got an email from a guy in Iraq this morning who asked me if I thought Dean would get out before or right after the New Hampshire primary. He's in Baghdad!

But there it is. The Rule of Two (the media can only organize their coverage in terms of two-person races) has prevailed again. It's still Kerry and Dean getting the ink and the airtime. The others wither from lack of attention. Edwards's decision to campaign in New Hamsphire and South Carolina this week may prove to be the major tactical mistake of the Democratic nomination process.

The Kerry Nightmare

Veteran reporters and commentators who watched last night's debate in New Hampshire agree that Kerry emerged unscathed and therefore the winner (in political terms). Clark was awful, Dean was qualudian, Edwards reinforced the idea that he's not quite ready for prime time and Sharpton was (and is) a fool.

So the take-away was Kerry is going to win the New Hampshire primary. If he does, then all the money will start flowing his way and it will be very hard to deny him the nomination.

This is a grim prospect for veteran reporters/columnists. I would venture to guess that 85% of them would vote against Bush in virtually every hypothetical (save Sharpton). But I would also guess that 85% of them can't stand Kerry. So their mood is sour.

Why don't they like Kerry? Because they think he's a pompous phony. The new phrase making the rounds is "Gulfstream populist" (his wife, Theresa, owns a private plane). And they're tired of the whole Vietnam schtick. They heard it in his Congressional race back in the seventies, in the race against Ray Shamie in 1984, in the race against Weld in 1996 and they're hearing it again in Iowa and New Hampshire. And they're just sick to death of it and of him.

The younger men and women of the political press corps, who haven't been through the Kerry grind for more than three decades, don't share this sense of "I can't believe I'm going to be stuck with this guy for another 300 days." They're chipper! The race, they say, is wide open. And maybe it is.

But the veteran scribes have that nagging feeling, based on years of experience, that if Kerry wins New Hampshire, then the game is over. And they will be consigned to a special kind of hell; writing about someone they can't stand personally running against someone they oppose (not that they're not objective!) politically.

It Isn't That He Lost His Mind on National Television

It's that former Governor Howard Dean isn't being aggressive enough in New Hampshire! So says blogger/journalist Joshua Mica Marshall. You can't make this stuff up. Here's the actual quote:

"I think Dean is in very bad shape. The issue isn't so much, or isn't exclusively, the loss in Iowa or the whole business with his speech. Rather, I have the sense that he's neutered himself in the final stretch."

I'd say that if someone goes on national television and appears to be stark raving mad, then that would be the issue, exclusively.

Kausfilers, Friends, Countrymen

1. You'll find the linked item below (scroll down a bit). Just for the record, I don't think the NYT "screwed" Edwards. They were just observing the rule of two.

2. You scratch my back.....Mr. Kaus has an excellent piece on the Shrumization of Sen. John Kerry (he's on your side!). For the record, and as someone who covered Kerry as a columnist for the Boston Globe, I think Mr. Kaus "gets" Kerry exactly right.

3. They key to John Kerry as a politician is the speech he gave on affirmative action back in early 1990 (if memory serves). Half of Harvard worked on the damn thing and the idea was that this "repositioning" on a major issue would help him stand out from the field of Democratic challengers to President George H.W. Bush in 1992. He gave the speech (which called for a rehaul of affirmative action programs) and predictably, various liberal interest groups squawked. Within days, Kerry basically recanted everything he just said. It was, and there is no other word for it, pathetic.

Then Operation Desert Storm happened and everybody forgot about pre-Iraq War politics. All the supposed marquee names (including Kerry) of the Democratic Party decided not to challenge George H. W. Bush. And Clinton emerged. Kerry did not factor in again until his sad little Vice Presidential camapign in 2000.

For hard-core Kerry afficianados, the affirmative action speech (and subsequent disavowal of same) lives on as the signature of Kerry's real politics. As Billy Bulger once said, the initials JFK stand for "Just for Kerry." Steadfast, he is not.

Postscript: It appears I had my chronology wrong and that Kerry gave his "major" address on affirmative action at Yale University in April of 1992. Thus all that stuff about Kerry positioning himself for the 1992 campaign is not true. Not that he wasn't positioning himself for the 1992 race prior to Desert Storm (you can bank on that), but that he was using the issue of affirmative action to position himself.

At the time, I was on a fellowship at Harvard University and has fallen in with a nest of Kerry-ites, all of whom were dismayed by the Senator's flip-flop on affirmative action. So that part I know is true. But I should have checked the chronology before I just blathered off the top of my head and I regret the error.

New Hampshire, Post Iowa

The first really complete set of data is now available here. There has been no Edwards bounce as yet. If one does not materialize, then Kerry will almost certainly win New Hampshire.

The End of The Dean Campaign

Can be found here.

The Rule of Two

Generally speaking, news organizations like head-to-head match-ups, since they are less expensive to cover than multi-candidate field races. This is especially true at TV networks, where the cost of having a crew on four or five campaigns is, eventually, prohibitive.

So a major media bias is to reduce the size of the field, which is done by cutting off oxygen (coverage) to lagging candidates (thus the importance of polls). The front page of today's New York Times is a perfect example of this bias. The headline is "A Shuffled Democratic Deck Arrives in New Hampshire." The subheads are: "Kerry is Confident" and "Dean is Subdued."

Bad day for Mssrs. Lieberman, Clark and Edwards. The networks will pick up on the NYT theme (two-man race between Kerry and Dean) and organize their coverage accordingly. Oxygen denied to Joe Lieberman, Wes Clark and John Edwards for one important day. That's how the real winnowing process works.

Journalistic Ethics, Continued

It turns out CBS isn't the only major network that likes to barter its news division for ratings advantage. Sharon Waxman reports on how NBC negotiated with Michael Jackson.

Edwards, Part Two

A friend emails to say that folks in New Hampshire, who know Kerry well because of their exposure to Boston media, are not going to give him the kind of bounce one would expect after his impressive Iowa victory (and kudos to Michael Whouley on that). He predicts an Edwards surge after the Kerry mini-bump, on the Kausian theory that enthusiasm for Kerry is inversely related to proximity. The closer you are, the less enthusiastic you are about him.

It does appear, judging from this morning's reports, that Edwards has decided to campaign hard in New Hampshire.

Speechless Watching a Speech

Another email from a friend who watched the coverage of the Iowa caucuses last night:

It is not often that I am speechless...however, watching Dean's speech last night left me absolutely speechless. Watch out for Edwards...

Cliche Alert

In the spirit of Kausfiles, a contest. Predict which reporter/columnist will be the first to say that the Dean campaign was a dot.com and the bubble burst. Email your entries now. My guess: the one and only, R.W. Apple.

Postscipt: Change that to "in the spirit of James Taranto," who thought of it first.

PPS: We have what looks like a winner. And perfect symmetry as well!

Edwards

With Kerry now certain to get a strong bump in New Hampshire, the question for the Edwards campaign is this: NH or SC? Does he go hard at New Hampshire and come what may? Or would the wiser course be to basically concede NH (and let the story be: Clark's demise) and battle it out in South Carolina?

If Kerry wins Iowa and New Hampshire, can he be stopped? That's the question on the table for the Edwards campaign. They have about 2 hours to decide.

That Sound You're Hearing

Is the air going out of General Wesley Clark's campaign. If the early numbers from Iowa are correct (and there's every reason to believe that they are -- more or less), then Senator John Kerry is well on his way to front-runner status in New Hampshire. The tracking polls will mark the shift by Wednesday and by Thursday, Kerry will be even with or ahead of Dean.

And then, sometime around 6am on Thursday morning, the Clark campaign will be faced with a choice: go hard negative on Kerry or be done. The entire premise of the Clark campaign was to be the "not-Dean." But if Dean is "not," then what is Clark?

Postscript Make that: sometime around 6am on Wednesday morning.

The Des Moines Register Poll

It's always been a remarkably reliable indicator and it points to a very long night for the decision desk operations at the major networks. There are those of us who still believe that Sen. Paul Simon, not Dick Gephardt, won the Iowa Democratic caucuses in 1988. It seems possible to me that we will not know who really won the Iowa caucuses until well into Tuesday morning or later.

Postscript: Never mind.