Well, this is a surprise. Kerry 38%, Edwards 32%, and Dean 18%. Gephart drops out of the race, and everyone else except Clark should follow suit.
I don't put too much stock in the idea that whoever wins Iowa wins the nomination. It's just not true. Iowa sends a relatively small number of delegates to the national convention, and I really believe you have to run a 50 state campaign to win. Okay, maybe a 28 state campaign. More than one, though, that's for sure. George Bush the Elder famously said it was all about momentum after winning Iowa, and look what happened to him. He spawned the devil.
There's a part of me that is happy that Dean didn't win this one. I'm a little afraid of him. It's not just the truly, truly freakish smile, either. It's that dreaded issue, electability. I hate it, but it's impossible not to consider it. I'm just not sure enough people would ever vote for this man to make him president. I like a lot of things about him, but I'm not sure he could muster enough regular-guy support. You never know, of course; once there's a nominee, everything can change.
The faces on tv are attributing Dean's loss of support in the past couple weeks to the capture of Saddam. The theory is that Americans started to think of the war differently once Saddam was caught; that we started to feel safer and more secure in a positive result, and Dean's more vehement stance against the war hurt him, in particular his much criticized pronouncement that we were not in fact any safer. (Of course, he was right.)
It surprises me that people seem to, or at least are being reported to put so much stock in the capture of Saddam. I'm no expert in the prosecution of this war, or any war, but it seems to me that his capture is mostly symbolic. I'm sure someone would say that its symbolic value is enough, and that it means more than you'd think. I'm sure that's true. But it doesn't look to me like the kind of war that centers around one man. I don't get the impression that the insurgents are fighting for Saddam, or for the Baathists, or for anyone really. They're fighting against the U.S. From their standpoint, we are agressors, invaders, cultural-life-sucker-outters. I don't think they want Saddam in power, not most of them, and I don't think anyone in their right mind thought he was coming back to power even before he was captured. They do not want us in power, their goal is to get us out of there, and that's why it hasn't stopped.
Anyway, I could get behind Kerry. I don't know too much about him, but he's pretty liberal, his Vietnam experience (both fighting in and protesting against) is good, and he seems like he could win. He could get the big money Democrats behind him; the so called Republican wing of the party. You know, Lieberman and his ilk. If Dean were to be the nominee -- and again, I'm not saying he won't be -- I'm afraid there could be some infighting in the Democratic party, and anything like that would basically guarantee defeat in what could be an incredibly close election. Some of the Democrats are really not too far from the politics of the Republicans on many issues. If they're not serious Bush haters, and many of them aren't, they might come to the insane conclusion that 4 more years of Bush would be better than a Dean presidency. If we've learned anything from the last time, it's that every vote counts. Especially Antonin Scalia's.
I could also imagine, unfortunately, a landslide victory for the president. In our travels, Liz and I were confronted with the fact that there are A LOT of Bush supporters out there. They think he's one of them, and, sadly, he is. He's uneducated, reactionary, selfish, and completely convinced of his own greatness, just like all good Americans. Whenever I meet someone who says they relate to Bush because he seems like "one of them," I want to ask them if they think they're qualified to be the leader of the free world. Don't they think it's a good idea to have one of our best people up there, not just any old guy from down the block? It's a kind of important position, might take a bit of that, waddayacallit, book learnin'. At least some humility would be nice. Any humility.
I could get behind Edwards, too. He's pretty, and he's got that accent, so he'll draw some of the Southern vote. Kerry is, well, not so pretty, and he has that Boston accent, so he'll repell the Southern vote. Still, he's got that Kennedy thing going, and his status as a genuine war hero, properly spun, could do wonders.
In other news.
