The 2004 Election is Over, Now

Special to FreeRepublic ^ | 11 November 2003 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)

[Congressman Billybob]

The national press was all atwitter this weekend over the announcement that Howard Dean was going to skip public financing in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. However, the press was unanimous in missing one of the small but necessary elements within that decision, and they therefore missed the big picture – the real story.

The real story is that this election is now over. Howard Dean (or "James Dean," as a reporterette for Fox News called him once) now owns the Democratic nomination. George Bush now owns the general election. And once you've finished reading this column, you don't need to read anything else about this election except the long, or impressively long, list of states that Bush will carry in that election.

The included detail that the press missed was this: public funding comes with restrictions on spending. Total spending in any state is capped by a sliding scale based on the population of each state. And typical of bureaucratic rule-making, the cap on spending makes no allowance for the difference between small states like Delaware and Wyoming where no one in his right mind would campaign seriously, and small states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where every known human with a tangential interest in the presidency has spent much of his or her life in the last year.

Candidates have long developed creative ways of maximizing their campaigns in the early primary states while restricting direct spending. Staffers are routinely instructed to stay in motels and eat in restaurants that are just across the border in neighboring states, so those expenses don't count against the cap.

But, per the Supreme Court's ruling in the original campaign finance law challenge (the Buckley case in 1976), the government only has a right to place caps on spending in individual states, if the candidate voluntarily accepts public financing. Those who refuse the public financing and raise their own money are free to spend it as they choose, in accord with the First Amendment.

So the Dean announcement means two things. First, he and his advisors are satisfied that they can raise sufficient funds to conduct a successful campaign with no public money. Second, they want to bury all possible opponents (Hillary Clinton excluded) in the three early primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Each of his "real" opponents – which list excludes four of the nine dwarves – is planning on his own version of a fire wall, to beat or at least effectively tie Dean in a selected one of those three states. If Dean buries all of them in all of those states, the money will flow to him, the endorsements will fall on him like rain, and his candidacy will be unstoppable.

This is a proper strategy for any clear front-runner like Dean. In the "sweet science," boxing, it's referred to as finishing off your opponent when you have him on the ropes. In all other sports it's referred to as building a lead that will break the spirit of your opponents, so they're embarrassed to come out for the next quarter, inning, hole, chukker, whatever applies. Dean is about to beat each of his primary opponents like a rented mule.

There is a second reason for this strategy, which applies especially to Howard Dean. He needs to win before he self-destructs by making one too many exceptionally stupid comments in public, like his reference to seeking the votes of "guys who have Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." Did he stay up all night with his staff deliberately trying to find a comment that would alienate the black votes which he must have most of, while simultaneously alienating the white Southern votes which he must have some of? Had he done that, he could not have crafted a worse comment than what he did say, apparently off the cuff.

Dean is a son of Eli, a graduate of Yale. So are Joe Lieberman and John Kerry. So am I. I knew the latter two well, starting when we were surrounded by "ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls." One of the two, I respected at that time. But unlike the three of them, I am a Southerner who wears jeans, drives a Jeep, and knows how to split wood. Splitting wood isn't just an idle occupation here; we heat with wood, and would freeze to death come January without it. But I digress.

The bottom line is that the Dean strategy is to front-load his spending on his campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. And in the Democratic primaries in those three states, his strategy will work perfectly, even in South Carolina (but keep in mind that the Democrat voters there are only a third of the electorate, and Dean will only take, say, 60% of those who vote in the primary).

Three of the real opponents have suggested that they, too, will reject public funding of their campaigns. If they do this, that will prove that the Dean strategy is correct.

Consider the national and international poker tournaments now being carried variously on ESPN or the Travel Channel. The game is Texas hold-‘em, which I won't explain here. (I recommend those tournaments to readers interested in risk and mathematical strategy, and you'll quickly understand the game.) The relevance here is the betting process in those poker tournaments. They are "table stakes" games. That means any competitor can at any time go "all in." That means they bet every chip they have, on one hand or even on one card. All other players must then "see" or match that bet, which may be as high as a half million dollars, or fold.

Dean has just decided not merely to skip public financing in his whole campaign, he has decided to go "all in" in the first three states. If the other players (excuse me, candidates) go "all in" also, pushing their smaller piles of chips to the center of the table on one of those three hands in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, they will be recognizing the truth that this is the whole ball of wax. Their only chances of defeating Dean are here. And if they fail here, it is sharply downhill all the way for Dean to roll through the remaining primaries and take the nomination.

In short, Dean's strategy is to win the nomination with three knockouts in the three opening rounds. That will leave the Democrats nationally a minimum amount of time and space to reflect on whether they are acquiring another McGovern, Mondale, or Dukakis. Or if one wants to be bipartisan about doomed campaigns, whether they are acquiring another Goldwater or Dole (him).

Howard Dean has run, so far, an exceptionally open campaign. He has been more honest about who he is, and what he stands for, than your average politician. He has repeatedly described himself as representing "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." That is correct, and that is half the reason why he now owns the nomination.

The other reason is that Dean is a more interesting candidate. He is not as dull as his "real" opponents, and not as irrelevant as his other opponents. To understand the level of dull here, recall the civics teacher played to perfection by Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (It is one of the fifty most memorable scenes in American movies.)

In front of his totally non-responsive students Stein drones, "In 1930, the ... House ..., in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone? ...the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? ...raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone ...?"

The very reasons that now guarantee Dean the Democratic nomination also guarantee that he will be buried in the general election. His "Democratic wing" is the arch-liberal, high tax, large government, anti-war wing of his party. He will carry a strong plurality in all of his primary races. But he will win the nomination by earning a majority of a minority. His capacity to unify his own party is limited. His capacity to reach beyond it to a significant number of independents and a small fraction of Republicans is nil.

Dean will lose all of the South, much of the Midwest, part of the West, and part of the East as well. I will concede him the Electoral College votes of Vermont and the District of Columbia, all six of them. Beyond that, it will be catch as catch can for Dean in the general election, but mostly catching nothing.

It is unfortunately necessary to factor in the possibility that Hillary Clinton will "parachute in" and take the nomination away from Dean at the last minute. She will not attempt to do that until two conditions have been met. They are: 1. Dean has in hand almost, but not quite enough, delegates to the Democratic convention for a mathematical lock on the nomination. 2. All major polls agree that Dean is headed for a Dukakis-sized defeat at the hands of George Bush.

The pundits on TV and elsewhere have been considering this possibility on the basis that there are deadlines for filing to be a Democratic candidate in various states which therefore require Hillary Clinton to throw her hat in the ring no later than late November or early December. The pundits, as usual, are wrong. There is a wrinkle in the election laws which allow Hillary several more months to make her move.

When voters in any primary "vote" for a candidate for President, they are actually voting for delegates who are pledged to that candidate. And any candidate can "free" his or her delegates by withdrawing from the race. (This varies with individual state laws; in some states the delegates once chosen are bound to their candidate for the first ballot, regardless.)

Wesley Clark has already demonstrated that he is a stalking horse – or sock puppet if you will – for the Clintons (both of them). He has shown this by dumping his independent volunteers as major players in his campaign, in favor of Clinton-grown professionals. All it would take for Hillary to jump into the game very late in the day is a joint press conference with Clark. He announces that he's leaving his name on the remaining ballots but that he is resigning from the race for President in favor of Clinton (her). He offers, and she accepts, the support of all of his pledged delegates on the earliest ballot at the convention when they are free to change. Both urge all Democrats who want Hillary to be the nominee, to vote for Clark in the voting booth.

This tactic, if pursued by Hillary, will not change the outcome of the general election. She will be able, if she chooses, to snatch the nomination out of the grasp of Dean just before he closes his fingers around the brass ring. But she would have the same difficulties as Dean, beyond that point.

She will have trouble unifying her own party, in part because some of the dedicated Deaniacs will resent the "stealing" of the nomination, and will sit on their hands during the campaign, and sit on their sofas come election day. She will have the same problems in the South, the Midwest, the West, and the East. I will concede her the Electoral College votes of New York and the District of Columbia, but all else is up for grabs by Bush and mostly beyond her grasp.

If you are a glutton for punishment, feel free to read or watch further coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election. But that really isn't necessary, and you certainly have better things to do with your time. It's all over but the shouting. Today.

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About the Author: John Armor is an author and columnist on politics and history. He currently has an Exploratory Committee to run for Congress.

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(C) 2003, Congressman Billybob & John Armor. All rights reserved.

[JohnnyZ]

Here's my problem with your Dean has won theory:

He has to run the table. And money can only buy so much love. He has to take Gephardt in Iowa, Kerry in New Hampshire, and Edwards/Gephardt/Clark/Lieberman in South Carolina.

To sweep those three would be very unlikely. Gephardt is leading in Iowa, but it's probably back to a tie with the recent HUGE union endorsements of Dean. I don't think Kerry can overcome Dean in New Hampshire. But South Carolina and the other primaries to be held on that day are up for grabs. Odds are very high that an anti-Dean will emerge; that would make life difficult for the good doctor.

Do I think Dean will win? Yes. He could sweep, he could just be stronger than the anti-Dean, or (most likely) he could be faced with multiple weak anti-Deans who can't unify to defeat him. But the sweep scenario is still unlikely.

[Congressman Billybob]

Actually, there were two lightning strike victories that I recall -- Orten in Utah and Klug in Minnesota. Your guy, Flanigan, rings a bell. He might have done it also. Even if you count that as three such victories, against thousands of such candidates those are odds that no rational candidate will accept. And that's my point.

John / Billybob

[Congressman Billybob]

Now I see your point, so inarticulately presented. Your point is that assassination changes things. That is both hopelessly self-evident, and irrelevant to a discussion about elections.

Learn to write what you mean in clear English. It saves JimRob's bandwidth and the time and patience of Freepers.

John / Billybob

[HateBill]

She is an awful, evil person and should never be given any more power. I want her out of the Senate and out of public life.

If you are going to rant, at least rant at someone who disagrees with you. The only disagreement we would have is who hates her more -- you or me?

[usadave]

I think this whole analysis is on the money, except that Hillary is far more dangerous than you allow. She controls the press, she controls huge sums of money, she controls the Democrat Party, and she has FBI files on everybody who ever graduated from high school.

And if Hillary were to use any of the information contained in those FBI files to her advantage, she could one day find herself sitting in a prison cell.

[Congressman Billybob]

Dear Rooster,

The death rate for Americans in Iraq (population 22 million) is less, even now, than in the District of Columbia (population .9 million). All deaths of American soldiers are tragic. But in the context of the history of wars, this is the least bloody war we have ever fought.

The Democrat tactic is, obviously, to wave the bloody shirt. It is historically dishonest, but it's all they've got. Read the history of American occupation of Germany, as I have. The sabotage, attacks on soldiers, and assassinations of local officials trying to rebuild Germany after the war all tapered to nearly zero in the second year of occupation. I expect much the same in Iraq.

So, the war will disappear as a Rat issue next year, just as the economy has disappeared as a Rat issue today. History provides a lot of answers. Democrats and their allies in the press are repeatedly being surprised when things play out as history predicts, because they are so blindly ignorant of such matters.

John / Billybob

[Betty Jane]

Great analysis Congressman. I have a couple of questions about the apportionment of Dem. primary delegates. Do you have a run down of the number of delegates for each primary state? Are caucus winning delegates obligated to vote for the winner? How many candidates do you think will reach the 15% mark in order to win delegates. Lastly, how soon until one of the candidates wrapped up the 2100 needed delegates?

Thanks for any help. I've been looking for info and haven't been real successful.

[Miss Marple]

Well, that was a public rant, not directed at you! Sorry...it's just that your post reminded me of how much I hate her!! LOL!

I think we need to start an anti-Hillary organization. I am sick of her speaking for working women. Has she ever had to pay for day care? Has she ever had to wake up a child and load him into the car while the snow is falling? Has she ever had to beg for time off because of teacher conferences? Has she stood on her feet for 8 hours waiting on customers? NO!

She has practiced law as a hobby, and has been given preferences because of her marriage. She has no idea about how to make it on her own. She is a fraud.

[RJCogburn]

Ah, Miss M...here we can agree...Word For Word!

Good job.

[Wphile]

She is a fraud.

Indeed she is. It totally pisses me off when the feminazis praise Hillary. Criminy...all she has done is ride in on her husband's coattails. Seems to me that she is the antithesis of a liberated woman.

[Southack]

In the grand scheme of things, the Democratic Party offers no hope to Americans. Its members have no overriding "Vision," no new ideas, no grand policy proposals. The most striking example of this fact was in California last month where neither Gray Davis nor Cruz Bustamante could tell voters why or how they would save the state if the voters chose them to so do. What policy would they enact? What program would they change? How would they make things better for Californians?

They couldn't say. They didn't say. They did lose, and they lost because Arnold Schwarzenegger enunciated a grand plan that included a comprehensive fiscal audit of the entire California government in order to find and eliminate waste, a repeal of the car tax to stimulate their economy, and a plan to reform their workman's comp system to lure back businesses. Arnold had a plan. Arnold won.

On a larger scale, this is what voters will be faced with in 2004. Democrats aren't saying how they would fight global terrorism. Democrats aren't saying how they would stimulate our domestic economy. They have no plans. The have no new ideas. They have no vision. Thus, they are going to lose, as such a lack of proposals will certainly fail against GWB's proven War on Terror, tax cuts, national missile defense, bans on abortions, faith based charities, and private school choice vouchers.

Knowing that they have no new ideas and that they can't compete with GWB's policies, the Dems have to go negative. This is why they are trying to schedule both ex-Ambassador Wilson as well as his "outed" CIA agent wife Valerie Plame to be keynote speakers at the Democratic convention in Boston next year. They are clearly planning to make a full court press on all negative issues.

To this end, Al Gore's two campaign speeches so far this year (one today, the other back on the day that Arnold announced that he was going to Terminate Gray Davis) have directly attacked GWB. Given half the chance, Gore is going to jump back into this race. To his credit, he is trying to form his own Green TV cable network channel. This would give him publicity that money couldn't buy, which is a good thing for him since he's having more trouble than most Democrats in coming up with scarce campaign Dollars.

Hillary, on the other hand, has several options. Obviously she could just sit this election out, playing along with various campaign theories merely to elevate her status among the Democratic Party elite. Or she could use any of several inevitable events to take over Terry McAuiliffe's spot as head honcho of the DNC (she's got to go somewhere before Rudy Guiliani knocks her out of the Senate in 06).

Then again, she could simply play coy behind the scenes with two or three of the more likely eventual Democratic Presidential nominees, angling to be selected as the VP candidate (hint: no campaigning or ugly questions for her). Or, if she really believes her own hype, she can gun for the Presidential nomination itself with a last minute leap into the Boston convention morass.

But a high-profile campaign in the top spot of a national election would prove to be her undoing. In that sort of position she wouldn't be able to keep all of the press away from her felony violation of the Open Meetings Act back in 1993 with Ira Magaziner on her Health Care Task Force. Nor would she be able to coast through without explaining how her subpoenoed Rose Law Firm billing records somehow magicially showed up in her White House living room one day. She'd have to answer for her firing of the White House travel office staff, Billy Dale, and who hired Craig Livingstone.

The interesting thing to note is that her *known* scandals are precisely what the *known* Democratic Party strategy for 2004 doesn't need. Going negative against Bush will hardly fair well if her own scandals take all of the oxygen out of the room each day. So though I encourage her to try, the top spot nomination in '04 just doesn't seem like the odds-on bet to me.

Dean, of course, has a decent shot at the nomination, though the Democrats themselves hate him for his pro-gun stance, much less his flip flop on Campaign Finance limits or his blurb about Confederate flags on Southern pickup trucks. As for winning the brass ring, Dean doesn't have the money. The Democrats spent it all in 2000, 2002, and again in an absurd fight against the 2003 recall in California. The big donors are tapped out. Unions are smaller. Hollywood has been slammed. CFR is now law. Getting past the money, America isn't going to elect an anti-war Democrat when there are terror attacks going on around the world. Nor is America going to elect someone that wants to raise their taxes. Dean is 0 for 3 on those points!

The dark horse at this point is Senator John Edwards. IF, big *if*, Edwards was the one who leaked the Senate Intelligence Committee memo, then he's got a path open to lurch to the Right and grab the Democratic Party nomination. Of course, since he's a trial lawyer (sorry, Congressman), one can hardly expect that he's ethical enough to have leaked such a document, much less that he would lurch back to the Zell Miller middle.

Lieberman, God bless him, supports Israel and the War on Terror, thus dooming him to never again get a national Democratic Party nomination for anything.

Gephardt, for his part, has only one last chance to stop the rest of the Union endorsements from going to Dean. He's lost at least two major unions so far to Dean, and that's Dick's strong suit.

Clark is the scary one simply due to his baggage. I'm unconvinced that Joe Average can be fooled into thinking that he's anything but a stalking horse, however.

The rest of the Democrats can be safely written off for '04.

[Paulus Invictus]

Great stuff! The media and pollsters had Bush losing the election in last week's latest views from the left. I like your version best, but still have a ghastly premonition that Hitlery will steal the RAT nomination and somehow get enough votes to win the election, unlikely as that sounds now.

[Congressman Billybob]

The base number of delegates that each state has in the Demo Natl Convention is proportional to the population of each state. However, to that are added the "superdelegates," the slots given to the major elected Democrats in each state, which varies state by state, of course. The DNC website probably has a breakdown on the number of delegates from each state.

The laws of each individual state determine whether delegates chosen in their primaries are required to vote for the candidate they were pledged to, in the first ballot (or I think in rare instances, beyond the first ballot). The FEC website might have that information.

On the math of nomination, I think it's March when enough primaries are completed so a candidate who sweeps the field to that point will have committed delegates for a guaranteed majority. However, it's not strictly a matter of numbers. If one candidate -- presumably Dean -- has won 80% of the delegates chosen to that point and holds 60% of the delegates necessary for the nomination, he'll pick up enough to win among those who are afraid to cut their own political throats by not supporting the "man who would be President."

When, not if, it reaches that point, the only change that could derail Dean would be Hillary jumping into the race in March. This is going to be a nasty election with a solid win for Bush if Dean is the nominee. It is going to be a very nasty election, more like a mud-wrestling match, if Hillary! jumps in. But Bush will still have a solid win. IMHO.

John / Billybob

[Jim Noble]

Hillary was elected Senator from New York by upstate conservative women.

She has a large female vote not detected by polling.

If your woman ever saw Thelma and Louise, she is probably a Hillary voter.

[Cicero]

Well, both clintons have done enough to spend the next 9,999 years in prison, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

As the saying used to go, bill clinton could rape a woman on prime time network TV, and he'd get away with it.

[CFC__VRWC]

Here is the problem. Dean is already 7 points behind Gephardt in Iowa-- and this is before the impact of his recent asinine comments and then damning pandering apology the next day. He was only up 12 in New Hampshire, again before the comments, and after months and months of huge (free) publicity and fawning press coverage. He should be up 30 with the media fellatio he has gotten. And he's not even in first or second in South Carolina.

I can see these points, but I think what you're missing is the "expectations" factor. Six months ago, no one expected Howard Dean to be anywhere near the position he's in now. In Iowa, Gephardt is ahead, but everyone would expect him to lead there comfortably, thanks to all of his union connections (that's another thing you missed - Dean's pickup of the AFSCME and SEIU endorsements is a huge, probably fatal, blow to Dick Gephardt). In short, Dean doesn't have to "win" Iowa in order to chalk it up as a victory - all he has to do is make a respectable showing.

New Hampshire - this was expected to be Kerry's prize, from which he would pick up the necessary momentum to at least make the "finals" of the nomination. Dean's got a double-digit lead on Kerry, and probably won't lose too much with his "pickup trucks with Confederate flags" comments - Democratic primary voters in NH are going to share the candidates' hatred and disgust for the South. If Kerry gets blown out in NH, his own backyard, what's he going to do anywhere else? He'll be cooked - the action then moves to South Carolina, and Kerry shares Dean's electability problem in the South.

No one in the world expects Dean to do very much in South Carolina, and he actually may have done himself a favor by shooting off at the mouth, in that he lowered the bar for what will constitute a "victory" in SC. Again, all he'll have to do is make a somewhat respectable showing. Eventually the primary action will move to other states where Dean will do much better.

In summary, I think the nomination is Dean's to lose.

[William McKinley]

I still think the nominee is going to be someone you have written off. John Forbes Kerry.

But I was just outside raking up about 10 gajillion leaves, and while doing so it hit me exactly why Dean won't win if he gets the nomination, and why he probably won't even win the nomination.

He started off his campaign with a speech where he came out and said how he represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. He was claiming the Wellstone line as his own. But it wasn't the Wellstone mantle he was shooting for-- he was going after the people who found the Wellstone memorial to be inspiring. He was going after the people who were chanting right along with Wellstone's son, "We will win! We will win!" He has tapped into the same "energy" that energized that spectacle of the living dead desecrating the memory of one of their own.

America was repulsed by it then. They are repulsed by it now- which is why in matchup poll after matchup poll, Dean comes in below all other Democrats when put head-to-head with Bush.

I think a lot of Democrats are starting to sense it too. There has been all of this talk about Dean's momentum, but the fact is he is treading water in some places (NH, where his lead is what it was weeks ago), sinking in others (Iowa), and completely underwater in others (South Carolina).

So if not Dean, who?

Gephardt, perhaps. He would have the early win, the name recognition. But he's spent too much defending Iowa, and he has lost a few unions already.

Clark? Empty suit. Edwards? Too far back in too many places. Lieberman? He's shown to have about zero support on his own.

Kerry could still make it. He has the money. If he can come back on Dean in New Hampshire, he'll get an amazing amount of press for being the new comeback kid. And I think Dean will come back to the pack in New Hampshire.

But I still wouldn't rule out Gore making a reappearance into things.

[al baby]

Sorry I went to public schools

[William McKinley]

I think right now the expectations for Dean are so high he can't possibly live up to them.