No one outside Iowa seems to have a kind word about the caucus process, but having read about it at ABCNews, I’m actually quite envious: it sounds like a marvelous, participatory democratic institution. I’m sure, though, that it’s harder to get much participation if the caucus weren’t early and disproportionately influential. Some later primaries have quite low turnout.
As readers of this blog have probably picked up on, I don’t think either Kerry or Edwards are the right stuff for the presidential nomination. Kerry, in addition to his gaffes, has a demeanor fit for a Massachusetts Senator but which on the national stage comes across as, well, a chronic case of windbag-ism (he’s still waxing oratorical in the wrong places, as William Saletan notes in Slate). Edwards has a nicely honed stump speech about Two Americas and a positive vision for our country, which sounds fine until you look at exactly what he means and it seems to be piddling tax credits.
All that said, their dual victory in Iowa is exciting. Exciting because it means the race is up in the air and may well be for some time - I’m even expecting a brokered convention of some sort this summer, as apparently, too, are others (like Calpundit). Usually by the time of the Massachusetts primary, things are pretty much decided.
It’s exciting, too, because it’s deflated the Howard Dean Ponzi scheme at least a little. When the only reason supporters were giving to vote for him were more or less complicated versions of “because other people are voting for him,” something had gone wrong. I had to try to remember what made Dean so attractive to begin with - the sense that he was the only one who got it, the wonderfully powerful stump speeches he could give, the ability to focus on the bigger picture. But amid all the baseball bats and blogs and “regenerating the party”, that big picture got lost. And while other candidates were learning from their mistakes, Dean’s limitations (like his dubious take on economics - he claimed that because of his protectionism, “prices will go up at your local Wal-Mart.”) became more obvious. It’s possible he’ll recover and refind himself after the Iowa defeat, but I suspect his window of opportunity has passed.
But whatever happens to Dean’s campaign, I think the biggest news that came out of Iowa was a story about the news media: they wanted to call this race too early. I don’t say that in any judgmental way, that’s their job and often they ARE able to call it early. Only this year’s not following the script - public opinion is not gelling around candidates, conventional wisdom is getting overturned then turned back again, and candidates’s fates are impacting one another dramatically. Instead of media coverage crystallizing opinion around one frontrunner, what we have is a multivariable feedback mechanism.
All of this points out the danger of using past rules to predict outcomes, when political parties and the historical context have changed. This does not mean the past has nothing to tell us, but a proposition like “no Democrat in the last 30 years has won the nomination without first winning either Iowa or New Hampshire” has predictive power only if we know why it was true in the first place and can assure the right conditions hold this time.
Which leaves the question, who am I supporting? Right now, I’m leaning toward Clark. In a future post (soon), I’ll outline some of the reasons.
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