 
Future president John Kerry, left, smiles big after winning New Hampshire's primary yesterday with 39 percent of the vote. Former front-runner Howard Dean, right, came in second, with 26 percent. (Reuters photos)
Why Kerry? Why not Dean?
I think I had this pegged months ago. I know that sounds like a big brag, but please stick with me.
Back in June, the progressive online organization MoveOn.org had an online pre-Democratic primary in which I and tens of thousands of others enthusiastically participated. The idea, if memory serves, was to see if a Democratic candidate to field against "President" Bush would emerge early, so that fundraising and grassroots organizing could begin early, thus helping to ensure victory in November 2004.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean handily won MoveOn.org's online primary with 44 percent, or 139,360 of the 317,647 votes cast.
In second place was Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, with 24 percent, or 76,000 votes.
In third place was Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, with 16 percent, or 49,973 votes.
It is MoveOn.org's June online primary, I believe, that started The Cult of Dean. Dean was the clear winner of the online primary. Dean was, in the Internet left's view, the Democrats' clear choice. (A fatally flawed assumption -- more on this shortly.)
In the months between then and now, as the millions of dollars poured into Dean's campaign and his volunteers and supporters became innumerable, Dean was morphed, in the American consciousness, from the left's choice to the Democrats' choice. Nevermind that many of us intending to vote for a Democrat in November 2004 did not support Dean; he became The Front-Runner nonetheless.
Early on I knew that something was amiss with using the MoveOn.org online primary results to anoint a de facto Democratic candidate to field against Bush.
I need only point to Kucinich's standing in the MoveOn.org primary to show that the MoveOn.org primary results were not and are not representative of Democrats at large. While Kucinich, whom I like, was quite popular in MoveOn.org's primary, garnering 24 percent, he has never polled in double digits in nationwide polls of Democrats. Never. So it is clear that MoveOn.org's primary results were and are seriously skewed toward the left.
Those who followed MoveOn.org's online primary wrote Kerry off. He came in third place, after all. A loser.
But Kerry's third-place finish, I think -- and thought at the time -- was significant. It showed that even though MoveOn.org's primary results were seriously skewed toward the left, Kerry still ranked a respectable third. (John Edwards came in a distant fourth place with 3 percent.)
Kerry, seen by most as an establishment Democrat, a "Washington insider," as Dean likes to call them (when he isn't calling them "cockroaches" or "prostitutes"), was the left-wingers' third-place pick -- not Joseph Lieberman, not Richard Gephardt, not Bob Graham, who was in the race at the time. Not even Edwards.
While Kerry's third-place finish in the MoveOn.org primary represented a failure to most lefties, who would go on to coronate Dean as the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee, to me it meant that Kerry has a respectable showing among both lefties and moderate and establishment Democrats. I saw then that no other Democratic candidate appeals to a wider political spectrum than does Kerry, and that unless the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate appeals to such a wide spectrum, Bush's "re"-election will be a foregone conclusion.
On June 27, I posted a piece titled "Overall, Kerry Leads the Pack." In that piece I argued that
While Dean's performance in MoveOn.org's pre-Democratic primary is not insignificant, it is important not to overestimate its importance. MoveOn.org is representative of Democrats (and non-Democrats) who are markedly leftist. Dean is the Democratic candidate whom MoveOn.org's members would like to see get the Democratic nomination. Polls consistently show that nationwide, Democrats don't want Dean.
For instance, in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup national poll taken earlier this month of just over 600 registered voters who are Democrats or who lean Democrat, unfortunately the winner was Lieberman, with 21 percent; second was Dick Gephardt, with 17 percent; and third was Kerry, with 13 percent. Dean (along with Bob Graham) got only 7 percent.
In a series of national polls taken by different pollsters over months, Dean sees only single digits; he performs nowhere nearly as well as he did in MoveOn.org's vote this week.
Of course, in the several months after I posted that, the hype machine went into overdrive and Dean's poll numbers soared. But I don't think that Dean's poll numbers soared because those polled loved him so much (or could even tell you why he was their choice); I think his poll numbers soared because of the hype. Hype begets even more hype. Jumping on the Dean bandwagon was the thing to do, like getting a tattoo or getting something pierced. You do it because everyone else is doing it and because it's perceived as hip. You don't want to be left behind or left out. And, of course, everyone wants to support a winning team, and Team Dean sure looked like a sure winner.
Even otherwise intelligent people such as Al Gore, Bill Bradley, Molly Ivins, Arianna Huffington, Ted Rall and a bevy of governors, mayors, other elected officials, famous musicians and Hollywood celebrities got suckered into thinking that Dean's fool's gold was the real deal, and they climbed over each other to endorse him.
Anyway, I concluded my June 27 piece:
So the overall picture is that Kerry is the only of the nine Democratic candidate wannabes who:
consistently ranks in the top three in national polls, consistently earning double digits, and
so far is one of the top two fundraisers and
was one of MoveOn.org's top three winners in this week's online vote.
So far, John Kerry seems to have the most auspicious combination of indicators as to who probably will win the 2004 Democratic nomination. Probably none of the other eight candidates poll as well as does Kerry with both far-left and moderate Democrats, and his ability to raise campaign cash is indisputable.
Practice saying "President Kerry."
Again, things changed significantly after I wrote that; Kerry's nationwide poll numbers dipped into the single digits and Dean eclipsed him and the other candidates in terms of fundraising.
But my central ideas -- that "John Kerry seems to have the most auspicious combination of indicators as to who probably will win the 2004 Democratic nomination" and that "Probably none of the other...candidates poll as well as does Kerry with both far-left and moderate Democrats" -- I think were right on target.
Don't get me wrong. I never saw Kerry as the inevitable Democratic nominee (that role had been taken by Dean). Just last month, when just minutes before it was to start at 7 p.m. and no one had showed up for the Sacramento Kerry MeetUp, my brother and I, who have co-hosted the MeetUps, were ready to pack it in and to make it our last Kerry MeetUp. But about five or six people came at the last minute and shortly after 7 p.m. and so we had the MeetUp. At that time I was pretty much resigned, as I think most Americans who were paying attention were, that Dean would get the nomination.
But then Iowa happened, and the dynamics I had written about in June kicked into gear when we went from theoretical voting to actual voting. (Those pesky, uncooperative Iowans!) The Deanies were sure that Iowans would love Dean as much as they do. Like other cult members, such as the Mormons, the Deanies surround themselves only with like-minded people. They get each other stoked up, ignore or attack anyone who disagrees with them, and over time come to believe that the whole world believes just like they do -- even though they have methodically shut out anyone and anything that contradicts their worldview.
When we don't allow feedback, when we become closed systems, when we surround ourselves only with people who are sympathetic and shun those who aren't, we become pretty ugly, twisted and dysfunctional. We become paranoid and defensive.
Shall we call it The Dean Bubble in which the Dean zombies had been living?
But in Iowa the bubble popped. Iowans don't love Dean as much as the Dean lemmings thought they do.
Dean, surrounded by thousands of admirers believing that he is the messiah come to deliver them from George W. Bush, also came to believe in his inevitability, I suspect, which is why he lost it when he came in third place in Iowa last week. It just wasn't supposed to happen.
Now that Dean didn't win New Hampshire and polls poorly (at fourth place or below) in key Feb. 3 states, perhaps most importantly in South Carolina, Dean is dead in the water. The Dean Bubble has burst. There's no way, barring a freak event, that he can win the Democratic presidential nomination now.
So that's where Dean and his lemmings went wrong. What did Kerry do right?
Several things. He has played the national security and military strength cards when it was crystal clear after Sept. 11, 2001 that the Bush regime would make these issues central to its "re"-election campaign. But Kerry is equally strong on domestic issues, on which he holds progressive views. And Kerry demonstrates that it's not an either-or proposition: You can have national security and domestic strength. The Bush regime would have us believe that we must choose one or the other (and, of course, it chooses national security, which, ironically, we don't have, either).
And Kerry has maintained a calm, self-possessed, stately, presidential public demeanor. The members of The Cult of Dean call Kerry "boring" and variations of "boring," but that's perfectly fine, because it's his "boringness" that won Kerry Iowa and New Hampshire. Pollster John Zogby noted of New Hampshire voters:
In the final analysis, voters raised doubts about Howard Dean. Through the second half of 2003, New Hampshire voters indicated that they were angry but overwhelmingly felt that President Bush was a shoo-in for re-election. But as in Iowa, the closer Democrats got to actually voting, there was a renewed sense that President Bush could and must be defeated.
In our final sample, just about half (49 percent) told us that Dean was unlikely to defeat the president (that is 15 points worse than his worst day in Iowa). At the same time, only 15 percent said it was unlikely that any other Democrat in the race could defeat the president. Howard Dean was the man of the year, but that was 2003.
In 2004, electability has become the issue and John Kerry has benefited by developing a sharper message, by his veteran status, and -- this is particularly significant -- New Hampshire Democrats tell us that he looks like a president.
...in the final analysis, New Hampshire voters have decided to nominate a possible president instead of sending an angry message.
Dean's temper and volatility, which the Dean lemmings mistook (and still mistake) for Dean being exciting (there's a big difference between being exciting and being excitable), killed him in Iowa and New Hampshire. Again, the Deanies thought they knew what the voters want. But the Deanies didn't know what the voters want, they still don't know what the voters want, and it's too late for Dean even if they did finally figure it out.
Kerry knows what the voters want, and therefore the voters want Kerry.
12:42:28 AM 
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