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wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams - |
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Posted on 01/09/2004 3:07:04 AM PST by billorites
UNLESS SOMETHING dramatic happens in the next few weeks, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean will win the New Hampshire Democratic primary. And he will likely go on to claim his place among the line of previous primary winners like Gary Hart, Pat Buchanan and John McCain. In other words, Dean probably won’t win his party’s nomination and therefore won’t be elected President.
Conventional wisdom says that New Hampshire is a great place to hold the nation’s first primary. The hand-shaking “retail” politics that is required to win here gives everyone a good idea of how most Americans would view the candidates if they were to meet them face to face, they say.
Maybe.
But look at the last few primaries. Last time, McCain won a substantial victory over George W. Bush. Bush is now in the White House, leading America through its most dramatic era in 50 years. McCain is still in the Senate.
In 1996, Buchanan clobbered Bob Dole in the Republican primary. Today Buchanan is a cable TV talk show regular while Dole, who lost badly to Bill Clinton, is a popular ex-senator who makes money endorsing consumer products like Viagra and Pepsi Cola.
That same year, Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas won the Democratic primary over Clinton. Tsongas unfortunately died the year after the primary while Clinton went on to be a two-term President and is still his party’s standard-bearer. (In fact his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, is expected to run for the White House in 2008, largely as a result of her husband’s reflected glory.)
In 1984, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart beat out Vice President Walter Mondale in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, but Mondale won his party’s nomination.
Mondale lost to Reagan but retained enough favor to be tapped to run for the Senate last year as a last-minute replacement after Sen. Paul Wellstone died.
Hart, who received some attention after the 9/11 terrorist attacks for his work on a national security commission years before, is considered a fringe political player, even in his own party. In 1972, Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie won the New Hampshire Democratic primary, but South Dakota Sen. George McGovern was his party’s choice.
In 1964, veteran Massachusetts politician Henry Cabot Lodge won the Republican New Hampshire primary over Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, but Goldwater was his party’s pick.
Of the last 14 significant primary races, New Hampshire voters have picked their party’s eventual nominee eight times. That’s about a 58 percent record of accuracy, not exactly a strong sign that the state is a political bellwether for the country.
The problem may be related to timing. Right now Dean is winning the hearts of voters by his outspoken criticism of Bush’s foreign policy and general negativity towards the president. That taps into strong negative feelings some Democrats harbor towards Bush — and especially the idea that he somehow “stole” the election from their party’s nominee, Al Gore, in 2000.
But that’s ancient history to most Americans. They’ve accepted Bush as their leader, particularly after his reactions to the 9/11 attacks. And even other Democrats criticized Dean after he claimed that capturing Saddam Hussein did nothing to make Americans safer.
The problem with holding a primary at a time when most people are generally pleased with how things are going is that only the most devoted, most dedicated, most ardent political junkies get involved. They may turn out in droves for the New Hampshire primary, but they won’t be indicative of how the whole country — or even their national party — will vote.
On a recent forum of national radio talk show hosts broadcast on C-SPAN, one pundit predicted that when Democrats gather for their national convention in Boston next year, they would draft Sen. Clinton to run for President.
Of course it’s impossible to predict what will happen, but when you realize that some Democrats, imagining a Dean candidacy, have scary visions of another McGovern/Mondale-type debacle in 2004, it’s not so far-fetched.
Ray Carbone is a freelance writer who lives in the Lakes Region.
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wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams - |
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You are exactly right - the Cintoons do not like Dean and have been handing tar balls to the other little eight candiates to bring him down. It's obvious. And that they support that android Clark is no surprise.
Of course he is. In fact, all the dwarves will share the Dukakis Award.
The breathless excitement with which the so-called "journalists" report the latest dwarf poll betrays their obvious political bias and wishful thinking. It's so pathetic that you could almost feel sorry for them (if they were not such a worthless bunch of mendacious, meretricious, anti-American slobs).
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