is that significant??? i'im guessing when over 60,000 people vote, this isn't much of a surprise. but i truly don't know.
another thought about dropping out if a candidate can't win a state: isn't the test really the delegate count? it's possible to win the nomination merely by consistently coming in second in a lot of states while the remaining candidates perform erratically. i'm not saying lieberman can even accomplish that much, and i assume that the financial reality will soon occur to him and he'll be forced out, but such a strategy could still work for dean. all he needs is consistent strong second place finishes, while Kerry, Edwards, and Clark split the rest of the states. BTw, i also read last night that all of the campaigns are basically broke at this point, although obviously kerry's going to get a bunch of money now. dean apparently only has about $5m left of his $40 war chest. he spent $35m on Iowa and NH???
From what I hear, that's essentially true. Nobody has the resources to mount an organization-driven effort in all of the 2/3 states. It will be media and phone banks from here on out with certain campaigns spending more in a particular state--Edwards in SC for instance. It also looks like the guy with the best organization in Missouri (at least as of this hour) is Clark, as he sent a chunk of money there right after Iowa to corral a bunch of Gephardt staffers. Gephardt's Iowa Director is now Clark's in the Show Me State. I expect this advantage to last until maybe tomorrow, as Kerry will hit the state hard today and pour in what he can afford with much more to come later in the week. Like I said last night, I think Kerry has to drive a stake into Dean on Tuesday. I don't think he can allow Dean even one win... Dean can raise money, he has people, and he gets press coverage. Thus, I look for AZ to be the most contested state this week. If Kerry wins MO and AZ while keeping Dean without a win, he can then easily pick off the survivor from Clark/Edwards assuming one of them doesn't run the table on SC, OK, DE, NM, and whatever Dakota is in play.
btw, command-post.org is looking for people in those states to help cover the 2/3 primaries. go to http://command-post.org/ and look for the link at the top of the page.
and try slate's electability whack-a-pol: http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=2094189& i was left w/ kerry...
Everybody gets beat down and is one away from death (Dean got whacked earlier) until the spending cap issue, which raises Kerry above the fray.
nice article on what should be kerry's strategy now from techcentralstation.com. love the atwater quote: http://www.techcentralstation.com/012704G.html -- Shooting the Wounded By John Ellis Published 01/27/2004 The turning point of the 1988 Republican presidential nomination campaign came just after the New Hampshire primary, where then-Vice President George H.W. Bush had bounced back from a humiliating third-place finish in Iowa to defeat Sen. Bob Dole by 9 percentage points. In the days that followed, a debate raged within the Bush campaign about how to allocate its remaining resources. Campaign strategist Lee Atwater argued that the only thing to do was dump everything into South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states that followed three days later. "Shoot the wounded," said Atwater at the time, "that's my view." Atwater's view prevailed. The Bush campaign buried South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states under an avalanche of money, organizational muscle, surrogates and media advertisements. When the votes were counted, Bush had run the table, sweeping all but the states of Washington and Missouri, and the race was over. Something like that moment exists right now for Senator John Kerry. He has his rivals on the killing floor. Governor Dean, after two defeats in two states ready-made for his candidacy, is finished. General Wesley Clark, whose candidacy was conceived to provide Democrats with an anti-Dean, has been rendered meaningless. Senator Joe Lieberman is done; you can't raise money when you run out of the money. Senator Edwards remains, but diminished by New Hampshire. Iowa's Big Mo has been replaced by the nagging sense that the youthful senator is not yet ready for the Big Show. So the question is: will Senator Kerry pull the trigger? Let's be blunt about John Forbes Kerry; he's a cold fish and coldly calculating as well. Former Massachusetts State Senate President William Bulger (D) once said that the initials "JFK" stood for "Just for Kerry." Bulger's view is widely shared at the national level. In Massachusetts, Kerry fans are hard to find. To know him is not to love him. And the more you know him, the more you understand why. More important, Kerry is not a constituency politician. He's self-created and actualized. There is no safety net beneath him, as there was for Reagan when he falterd in Iowa, as there was for Mondale when he lost New Hampshire, as there was for George W. Bush when he lost New Hampshire four years ago. Kerry has a base, but it's psychographic, not demographic. If he begins to slide, aging yuppies will not be the only ones to cut him loose. So he needs to be the winner, because everybody loves a winner. And in order to be the winner, he has to make sure that no one else wins. And that is why the decisions he makes today will largely determine whether or not he leverages his success in Iowa and New Hampshire into becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, or whether he lets his remaining rival, Senator Edwards, back up off the floor. Strategically, Kerry has to throw every dollar, every organizer, every surrogate and all of his paid media at South Carolina, Oklahoma, Missouri and (to a lesser extent) the others. He has to shoot the wounded everywhere they twitch. If he does, then it will be over next Tuesday night. If he doesn't, then the game goes on. The longer it goes, the better it is for Sen. Edwards. "This isn't complicated," Lee Atwater said to me years ago, talking about the Bush-Dole fight in South Carolina. "When you got 'em by the throat, you take out a damn howitzer and blow their brains out."
Actually I agree with you. I was still thinking in the past when Dean had a real chance. Even though Clark distanced himself, I didn't really buy his denials. But I do agree with everything else you mentioned here. It looks like the 'real' Dean showed up a day before the primary and made a great speech after the primary. Too bad that it's all too late. If that Dean had been around the whole time things would have definitely been different. When I was younger I hoped like crazy that one day the fiery junior senator from Mass would be president. I had lost my passionate support for him, and merely had a favorable opinion, because he seemed to become more establishment recently, but if he is the nominee I won't complain. It's been a long time since a guy ran for President that actually had a favorable opinion of. Usually it's been 3rd party candidates for me, or the lesser of two evils.
According to AP, two write-in candidates got enough votes in the Democratic primary to be counted: George W. Bush, with 112 votes, and Hillary Clinton, with 54. Bush beats Sen. Clinton by more than 2 to 1 among Democrats and independents.
"Let's be blunt about John Forbes Kerry; he's a cold fish and coldly calculating as well. Former Massachusetts State Senate President William Bulger (D) once said that the initials "JFK" stood for "Just for Kerry." Bulger's view is widely shared at the national level. In Massachusetts, Kerry fans are hard to find. To know him is not to love him. And the more you know him, the more you understand why. " I wonder what his fellow soldiers (specifically the soldiers he saved from death) would have to say about that.
