Kerry Death Spiral - Part II



The big news in Iowa is John Edwards' sudden momentum. Getting the endorsement of the Des Moines Register, among other things, has given Edwards a real shot at overtaking John Kerry for third place in the Iowa caucuses.

The big news in New Hampshire is Wesley Clark's momentum -- he has clearly overtaken John Kerry for 2nd place in the polls, and it increasingly looks as if Dean and Clark are going to have a close race in NH, as opposed to the 20-point blowout that the Dean folks have been anticipating.

What is not news in either Iowa or New Hampshire is John Kerry. Kerry's campaign is now merely a signpost for the media to track the progress of other campaigns. If Kerry does finish third in Iowa, it will have been a mighty struggle to simply hold off Edwards -- and the story will be "Edwards almost passes Kerry with late surge", not "Kerry finishes a strong third." And the news coverage of New Hampshire will be dominated by the face-off between Dean and Clark.

Very few books are written about losing presidential campaigns, and fewer still are written about candidates who never won a single primary. Which is a shame, because we could learn something from studying the Kerry campaign. How could a candidate with so many advantages go so quickly from front-runner to also-ran? This is a bigger phenomenon than just the eyebrows, or the repeated narcissistic references to his resumé.

My early entry in the Kerry post-mortem is to lay the impending defeat on Kerry's unique ability to both pander and condescend at the same time. The Charlotte Observer, in an article yesterday about Edwards' rise in Iowa, quoted a voter who very succinctly summarized John Kerry as a presidential candidate:

"I gotta tell you: We just came here from Cedar Rapids, where we went to hear (Sen.) John Kerry. He's good, but this guy (Edwards) has got the energy, the vision, the personality, the youth. ... And he's the first one, honestly, that I've heard who actually talks about issues instead of just saying, `Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it.' "

(emphasis added). At the moment I can't think of a more fitting epitaph.

UPDATE - according to Zogby, Kerry seems to have stabilized in third place in Iowa over the last 24-48 hours. But it won't matter -- Kerry's third-place finish in Iowa won't be enough to punch through the chatter on the "real" news going into New Hampshire, which is the Dean v. Clark showdown.

Posted: Tue - January 13, 2004 at 05:22 PM        

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