Duck Season

One of the good things about blogs is that one can look in the archives and see the things other people said that were stupid or wrong. But of course the same applies to you if you have a blog.

Here's what I said about Wesley Clark in July about his electability:

His biggest appeal is that he would be the most electable Democrat. Can this get people to vote for him? Clearly he won't persuade any of the Dean Fedayeen, who despite their claims are not supporting an electable candidate. He might draw votes away from Kerry, but only after he has established himself as a viable candidate. For this he would need to get the DLC type votes that now support Edwards, Gephardt, and Lieberman. This is a crowded field, and though they might have control of the Democratic rank-and-file, they don't exactly command a controlling majority of primary voters. The only thing a Clark candidacy might do is to further split the moderate vote and enhance the chances of Kerry or Dean.

Another way for Clark to get votes would be for him to energize those who normally don't vote. But this is unlikely. His support would come from moderates, and these are the last people who would vote in a primary because they think that one of the candidates is more electable than the others. An undecided moderate won't spend their time voting for Clark in a primary if they haven't already decided that they're voting against Bush. And of course many of these moderates are unregistered and would not be able to vote in the closed primaries. Most of them happen to be in the South (including South Carolina), precisely the states in which Clark would really need to have a strong showing (the link shows the types of primaries in 2000 for Democrats; I don't know whether any of them have changed since then).

The only way Clark could win, it would seem, would be to draw away a significant amount of support from Edwards, Gephardt, Lieberman, and maybe Kerry. This isn't impossible, but it might be tougher for him to win the nomination than to beat Bush in the general election.

Well two new polls have came out since Clark declared, and both show him leading. Newsweek: Clark 14 percent, Howard Dean 12, Joe Lieberman 12, John Kerry 10, Gephardt 8. USA Today/CNN: Clark 22 percent, Howard Dean 13, John Kerry 11, Gephardt 11, Joe Lieberman 10.

So where did this Clark lead come from? Would he have had the same lead if he had entered the race two months ago? If not, what has changed since then? The most important is that Howard Dean has become the clear frontrunner. The emergence of Dean turns out to have been good news for Clark. Without Dean as the frontrunner, Clark would have been just another moderate in a crowded field, but with Dean in the lead, Clark immediately becomes the Anybody-But-Dean candidate. My guess is that in the next month or so a significant number of those who might be inclined to support John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, or Joe Lieberman will now favor Clark, since defeating Dean is more imperative than supporting the candidate whose positions they like the most, and there is a clear candidate for that role.

A second factor is Bush's dropping poll numbers. Approval rating: Newsweek 51%, USA Today/CNN: 50%. When Bush seemed unbeatable in the previous months, many liberals decided that since they were going to lose anyway, they might as well support their favorite candidate. Even though the polls had shown that Dean would lose by a bigger margin that any of the other candidates, that did not matter then. But now that Bush seems beatable, electability becomes much more important to Democrats.

Now the important question becomes: how will Dean get his momentum back? (Okay, my important question is: will Kerry quit before February and deny those of us in Massachusetts the chance to see him get slaughtered in New Hampshire?) It seems inevitable that Clark will siphon off support from the other moderate candidates and increase his lead. He also is taking away much of Dean's positive press. And it won't be as easy for the other candidates to attack Clark as it was against Dean, since Clark, unlike Dean, can't be attacked for being from the far left, and so far Clark has stayed above the fray.

Here's the strategy for a Dean comeback: first, keep leading in fundraising. Recently, Dean had raised much more money than his competitors by a wide margin. If he can keep it going, he'll assure his supporters that he's not going away. Second: wait for Clark to open his mouth. Reports are that Clark doesn't have the characteristics of a good campaigner, and that he's not really interested in domestic issues. Third: hope that the California recall is in October, not March. California has an open primary, so independents and Republicans can vote in the Democratic primary. If the recall is in March, many of those independents and Republicans will decide to vote in the recall, and they are more likely to support Clark than Dean.

All this, of course, is moot if Hillary runs.

MORE on Kerry in the next post.