Free Republic

February 04, 2004, 8:34 a.m.From S.C. to VP?John Edwards and THE LIST. By Michael Graham John Edwards's primary-contest record is 1-8. His margin over Massachusetts liberal John Kerry in S.C. — Edwards's home state — was about the same as his margin over Howard Dean in Iowa. Hardly impressive. And according to the latest polls, Edwards is trailing in every upcoming primary and caucus from Washington to Virginia. He's not even competing in Michigan this Saturday.So why is Edwards's position significantly different from that of Joe Lieberman, Howard Dean, or Wesley Clark — three other people who won't be the...

Northern strategy for Kerry-Gephardt Posted: February 2, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc. With the demise of Howard Dean and the emergence of John Kerry, the White House has seen its big chance for a blowout on the scale of the Nixon and Reagan landslides slip away. President Bush remains the winter-book favorite to win in 2004. Perhaps going away. After all, Kerry is a Massachusetts liberal who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, backs civil unions for homosexuals, voted to defend the infanticide known as partial-birth abortion and wants to raise the federal income taxes...

During the Iowa caucuses, union members' money flowed to Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt, while they cast their votes for John Kerry and John Edwards.Why the paradox? Government unions and service unions like the Service Employees International Union backed Dean. Industrial unions like the Teamsters backed Gephardt. Neither candidate was favored by the rank and file, but that mattered little to the union elite. All that mattered was that union members' dues money there for the taking, so the top brass spent it any way they saw fit.Most news media focused on the split between the different factions of...

The Crucible The long American presidential campaign is a crucible for the candidates — stressful, physically exhausting and demanding. That's one reason the outcome is not so predictable, despite an excess of polling and running commentaries. Howard Dean's candidacy might well have crashed in Iowa, not because of his third-place showing, but because of his reaction to it. His speech to his supporters was about as damaging a performance as I've ever seen. He gave the impression of a boy, hurt and disappointed to the point of tears, trying to hide the hurt with bluster, bravado and bombast. Unless he...

NASHUA, N.H. – The Iowa caucuses left Dick Gephardt without a political future and five Texas congressmen looking for a new horse to back. Reps. Chris Bell and Gene Green of Houston, Chet Edwards of Waco, Silvestre Reyes of El Paso and Max Sandlin of Marshall had all endorsed the former House Democratic leader, who dropped out of the presidential contest after Iowa. So far, none of the five has decided whether to endorse anyone else, according to aides. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat who has stumped for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire,...

WASHINGTON - Dick Gephardt, who abandoned his bid for the presidency, has freed his Democratic convention delegates to back another candidate but isn't ready to signal his choice.

<p>Twenty-five field operatives from Representative Richard A. Gephardt's organization in Iowa have signed on with the campaign of Wesley K. Clark, but only after being turned away by Senator John Edwards's campaign for budget reasons.</p> <p>Gephardt's campaign staff has begun to scatter following his defeat in Iowa Monday and abrupt withdrawal from the race the next day. His South Carolina director, Ike Williams, has signed on with the Edwards team in that state, which votes Feb. 3, a week after the New Hampshire primary.</p>

Organized labor is taking a hard look at its political influence and voter turnout operations after the two union-backed candidates that were to dominate the Iowa caucuses sank instead. Unions were to be the powerhouse in Iowa, with white-collars for Howard Dean (news - web sites) and blue-collars for Dick Gephardt (news - web sites). But in a stunning upset, they emerged battered in third- and fourth-place behind Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards. Leaders of industrial unions that formed a coalition supporting Gephardt, called Americans for Economic Justice, were to confer Wednesday to assess what happened in Iowa and...

The endless receding nightmare of the Iowa caucuses has finally produced something interesting: The Democrats have one hellacious catfight on their hands. After all the hoopla about Howard Dean's new mass movement of "Deaniacs," it appears that blanketing Iowa with self-righteous 20-year-olds in orange wool caps may not have been the ideal campaign strategy. Dean's distant third-place finish makes you want to ask him the question Jack Nicholson put to his down-and-out gay neighbor in "As Good As It Gets": "What happened to your queer party-friends?" At the behest of the Democratic Party establishment, the media dutifully destroyed Howard Dean,...

from a Chicago Sun-Times article from January 12, 2004: "Still blond and even boyish at 62, Gephardt has changed little in style and physical appearance. Although he joins obligatory criticism of Bush by calling him a ''miserable failure,'' he sometimes slips by referring to him as ''President Bush'' instead of calling him just ''Bush'' in the current Democratic style. The old pro-life, pro-tax cut (urging a 30 percent top marginal rate) Gephardt disappeared long ago, but he still evokes moderation and restraint."

“I want to say a special thank-you to every member of every labor union in this country who has stood by my side throughout my career,” Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) said as he gave up his presidential campaign Monday night. “Your fight is my fight, and it will always be that way.” It’s no surprise that Gephardt, who had just finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses, reserved a special place in his concession speech for the unions. God knows he has owed them big time over the years. But this time, they couldn’t deliver. Media entrance polls revealed that only...

<p>January 21, 2004 -- THE negative ads of Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt succeeded brilliantly: They both lost Monday in Iowa. The winners - John Kerry and John Edwards - both abstained from negatives and won. The history of politics has always suggested that when one candidate attacks the other and the fire is returned, they both go down and the third - and fourth - candidate soars into the lead. Never has this been more true than it was in Iowa.</p>

<p>ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader and a 14-term congressman, said yesterday that he was abandoning his second bid for the presidency after a fourth-place showing in the Iowa caucuses.</p> <p>"I gave this campaign everything I had in me," Mr. Gephardt said at a news conference, his voice breaking at times. "Today, my pursuit of the presidency has reached its end. I'm withdrawing as a candidate and returning to private life after a long time in the warm light of public service."</p>

Even a bad primary weeds out the losers It took the voters of Iowa to make me realize what a heroic figure Richard Gephardt truly is. Until last night I had considered the beetle-browed congressman from the Show Me State a distillation of the many vices career politicians are heir to. It was only after his crushing, humiliating defeat in what supporters and commentators with expansive definitions of the Midwestern mindset had described as his home country that Gephardt began to receive the praise he apparently deserves. Erstwhile rivals and televised talking heads joined in singing his fundamental decency, his...

Democratic presidential candidates preach hate The Augusta Chronicle By: Herman Cain December 28, 2003 WHAT HAS HAPPENED to "united we stand?" Yes, as Americans, we can disagree and have the right to voice those disagreements, but destructive rhetoric about the war in Iraq for the purpose of self-promotion is demoralizing to our troops and the American people. Unfortunately, we can expect nothing more from the candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Their words and their actions are unpatriotic. Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri actually said, "The president is a miserable failure (on foreign policy)." In...

Gephardt Is History Faced with a crushing defeat in Iowa, Rep. Dick Gephardt is dropping out of the race for the Democrat presidential nomination, the Associated Press and Fox News Channel reported tonight. AP quoted a party official as saying Gephardt would quit. Fox News said the announcement could come Tuesday morning. The lame-duck congressman himself hinted as much during a concession speech. "My campaign to fight for working people may be ending tonight, but our fight will never end," he said. He offered congratulations to his rivals and admitted one of them would wind up with the nomination. Gephard...

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark (news - web sites) wasted no time in going after former supporters of Dick Gephardt (news - web sites) on Tuesday, a day after Gephardt's distant fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses pushed him toward abandoning the race. AP Photo Latest headlines: · Clark Moves to Court Gephardt Supporters AP - 2 minutes ago · Bush, Iraqi interim leader discuss election optionsAFP - 14 minutes ago · Delegates Won by Each Candidate in Iowa AP - 20 minutes ago Special Coverage   Gaining in recent New Hampshire polls, Clark scrambled to maintain...

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Richard Gephardt's poor showing in the Iowa caucuses on Monday brought an abrupt end to his White House bid and pushed the longtime U.S. lawmaker toward an earlier-than-hoped political retirement. "Well, this didn't come out like we wanted," Gephardt, who finished fourth with just 11 percent of the vote, told a tearful gathering of about 200 supporters, many of them from 21 international unions that had endorsed his populist bid. "Tonight I congratulate the other candidates for their strong campaigns here in Iowa," Gephardt said. "One of them will wind up carrying the banner of...

A lot of light was shed by the performances of five Democratic candidates after the Iowa results came in. General Wesley Clark pulled rank on John Kerry, insisting that Kerry as a military man was far lower in rank than he, and talking arrogantly and incessantly down to Senator Robert Dole, his opponent in the "conversation" they were supposed to be having on Larry King Live, as if Dole were not one of the bravest veterans the nation has known, and as if the senator's political observations counted for nothing. General Clark is very full of himself. Dick Gephardt was...

<p>It wasn't only Iowa Dems who voted. The liberal media have too. And to judge by the performance of Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on this morning's Today Show, Dean is dirt and Kerry's the man.</p> <p>"A pretty impressive showing," said Katie with a smile regarding Kerry's victory at the top of the show.</p>