The Crystal Ball Speaks
Larry Sabato was a popular professor two decades ago (gasp!) when I attended UVA, and has since gone on to become a cable news fixture and one of the country's most widely-quoted political gurus. The halls outside the seminar room where he taught were usually filled, I recall, with unenrolled students listening in. I missed many of the classes I actually registered for during my sophomore year, but found time to attend several of his lectures.
Naturally, I've been curious to find out his take on the Democratic field and the prospects for 2004. In a nutshell: Dems should stop bickering over who they should nominate, because it's beside the point. The election, like any election involving an incumbent, is ultimately going to be a thumbs-up or thumbs-down for GW, specifically in relation to the three key factors in American presidential elections: the economy, war and the presence or absence of major scandal.
If voters are mad enough to throw the guy out, Dean will be as electable as anyone else. If they're not, it won't matter. In a gray-zone situation, with voters moderately unhappy but not downright furious, all the main contenders have a roughly equal shot. Dems tend, when they don't have an incumbent candidate or a clear front-runner, to anguish over the nominee, but it's needless. The idea that there's a magic candidate out there who possesses unique Bush-beating powers, Sabato argues, is a myth. One which, by the way, I have promoted in various bouts of ranting and kvetching here on this blog, so I stand rebuked!
I continue to believe that 2004 will be an election very similar to other modern elections involving an incumbent president. The results will be a referendum on the incumbent...the Democratic nominee is secondary to the results. Yes, some serious candidates will get a few points more and others will do a few points worse in November. But whether Howard Dean or John Kerry, as the nominee, can get back to the center is far less important than how Bush is rated on his overall job performance, and especially on the economy and Iraq. A lot of the hand-wringing by Democrats about the identity of their nominee is overwrought.
If he's right, his analysis vindicates Dean supporters, who have been complaining indignantly about efforts by party know-it-alls to undermine their candidate on grounds of supposed unelectability. It supports Mark Hoback's eloquent plea to the would-be nominees to stop providing film clips for future use by Karl Rove, and it suggests that -- feuding aside -- Dems are doing what they should be doing: hammering away at Bush on the economy and Iraq and trying to generate outrage over his misleading statements.
Sabato also suspects Wesley Clark is a flash-in-the-pan with an outsized ego and little relevant experience, feeding off Dems' recurring "none-of-the-above" tendency. More on all this here and here.
9:15:11 PM 
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