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Mark Steyn: How ‘None of the Above’ Won
The Spectator [UK] ^
| January 31 2004
| Mark Steyn
Posted on 01/29/2004 8:18:35 AM PST by quidnunc
I love New Hampshire! I forget which candidate opened his Tuesday night speech with that line. Oh, hang on, they all did. Except Joe Lieberman, the ever optimistic Yiddisher pixie, who beamed at the crowd and said: Is New Hampshire a great state or what?
Senator Lieberman, the only unabashedly pro-war Democrat on the ballot, had been claiming at every campaign stop for the last week to have something called Joe-mentum, which is like momentum, but apparently much smaller, if not entirely undetectable. Nonetheless, running into him in the final hours, I caught the Joe-mentum fever and rashly predicted hed run his numbers up into double figures. The Connecticut Senator and former vice-presidential candidate was, after all, the only candidate in the field so eager to win New Hampshire that he rented an apartment in Manchester and moved here. John Kerry and Howard Dean were said to have the advantage of being from neighbouring states, but Lieberman had the advantage of being from a neighbouring neighbourhood. Frankly, the least we Granite Staters could do was bump him up to a lousy 10 per cent. Alas, this proved to be a gross Joe-verestimate. In the end, Senator Lieberman managed 9 per cent, but nevertheless turned in a remarkable impression of Sally Field. Hed confounded all the naysayers, who had him down at 7 per cent.
The national pundits didnt expect this, did they? roared a gleeful Joe, claiming a great victory or, as he put it, We are in a three-way split decision for third place! He hadnt come in the Top Three, but hed come in the Top Three for third place. Just about. If I were General Wesley Clark and Senator John Edwards, who both got 12 per cent and were, in fact, in a two-way split decision for third place, Id resent some single-digit loser like Lieberman trying to muscle in. Hes going Joe-where, hes headed for Joe-blivion.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
TOPICS: Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2004; excerptsux; marksteyn; marksteynlist; nh; stoptheexcerpts
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1
posted on
01/29/2004 8:18:35 AM PST
by
quidnunc
To: quidnunc
LMAO!
To: quidnunc; Camachee
"That leaves John Kerry, the tall, gaunt, dozy Massachusetts blueblood Id written off ever since last summer when he came to the Barge Inn in Woodsville and, in the strangest political entrance Ive ever seen, walked through the door to cheers and flags and popping cameras and worked his way through the crowd pressing the flesh until he got to the mens room, whereupon he went in, leaving the clapping and waving to just sort of peter out as we waited for him to emerge."
The funniest political observation of the primaries, so far. LOLOL!!!
To: JohnHuang2
Ping.
4
posted on
01/29/2004 8:32:15 AM PST
by
StarFan
To: January24th
Oh wait! That's pretty funny stuff, but then Ann Coulter really nails Kerry on his strange Q-tip head:
"Kerry is like some character in a Balzac novel, an adventurer twirling the end of his mustache and preying on rich women. This low-born poseur with his threadbare pseudo-Brahmin family bought a political career with one rich woman's money, dumped her, and made off with another heiress to enable him to run for president. If Democrats want to talk about middle-class tax cuts, couldn't they nominate someone who hasn't been a poodle to rich women for past 33 years?"
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
To: quidnunc
Wow...I think I need a cigarette.
To: quidnunc
How None of the Above won
Mark Steyn says that New Hampshire picked the uninspiring John Kerry because he was the least unelectable of the contenders New Hampshire
I love New Hampshire! I forget which candidate opened his Tuesday night speech with that line. Oh, hang on, they all did. Except Joe Lieberman, the ever optimistic Yiddisher pixie, who beamed at the crowd and said: Is New Hampshire a great state or what?
Its a test-tube, Miss.
Senator Lieberman, the only unabashedly pro-war Democrat on the ballot, had been claiming at every campaign stop for the last week to have something called Joe-mentum, which is like momentum, but apparently much smaller, if not entirely undetectable. Nonetheless, running into him in the final hours, I caught the Joe-mentum fever and rashly predicted hed run his numbers up into double figures. The Connecticut Senator and former vice-presidential candidate was, after all, the only candidate in the field so eager to win New Hampshire that he rented an apartment in Manchester and moved here. John Kerry and Howard Dean were said to have the advantage of being from neighbouring states, but Lieberman had the advantage of being from a neighbouring neighbourhood. Frankly, the least we Granite Staters could do was bump him up to a lousy 10 per cent. Alas, this proved to be a gross Joe-verestimate. In the end, Senator Lieberman managed 9 per cent, but nevertheless turned in a remarkable impression of Sally Field. Hed confounded all the naysayers, who had him down at 7 per cent.
The national pundits didnt expect this, did they? roared a gleeful Joe, claiming a great victory or, as he put it, We are in a three-way split decision for third place! He hadnt come in the Top Three, but hed come in the Top Three for third place. Just about. If I were General Wesley Clark and Senator John Edwards, who both got 12 per cent and were, in fact, in a two-way split decision for third place, Id resent some single-digit loser like Lieberman trying to muscle in. Hes going Joe-where, hes headed for Joe-blivion.
Hes not the only one. Any way you slice it, John Kerry had a very good night. And I had a very bad night. A couple of months back, when Senator Kerry was in the basement, going down and headed for a victory of Lieberman-like proportions, I announced a competition on my website: predict the percentage of votes Kerry would get in New Hampshire and youd win that number of copies of my book. I figured hell be down to 6 per cent, Ill give away six books. The bugger got 39 per cent. Thats 800 bucks worth of merchandise Im giving away.
Oh well. At least I can admit Im a loser. On Tuesday night, the other players refused to concede the Joe-plessness of their situation, even though Kerry had not just won, hed managed to weaken all his rivals.
General Wesley Clark hailed his spectacular triumph of getting 12 per cent when hed only got into the race four months ago. This is true. Nor did he need to rent an apartment. But four months ago a CNN poll showed him beating Bush 49 per cent to 46 per cent, and in the end he could barely find 12 per cent of Democrats willing to vote for him. New Hampshire is said to have more veterans per capita than any other state. Kerry campaigned with veterans at every stop. Clark campaigned with the support of Michael Moore, the corpulent conspirazoid; George McGovern, who rivals Walter Mondale as the Greatest Living Democratic Party Loser; and Madonna, the well-known resident of the United Kingdom. Septembers white knight had shrivelled away to the candidate of the carny-folk Left. He was supposed to be the sane alternative to Dean; instead, Kerry snaffled that role, and left Clark to frolic on the grassy knoll as the crazy alternative to Dean.
My man John Edwards, the pretty-boy trial lawyer with the fabulous bangs and a lovely layered nape (Ive seen a lot of his neck this primary season), hailed his spectacular triumph of tying with General Clark, when only a week earlier General Clark had had double his numbers in the polls. This is true. But Senator Edwards didnt catch up with General Clark. Instead, General Clark dwindled down to Senator Edwards and its hard to see how the Senator can take credit for that. More importantly, coming out of Iowa a week earlier as a strong second to Kerry with 32 per cent of the vote, Edwards should have had a real bounce. Instead, he flopped, ending not with his fabulous bangs but with a whimper. I saw him up in the mountains on Saturday, when he brought his positive message to Gorham Town Hall. This election is about the future of the country, he said. Howard Dean and John Kerry and Wes Clark also say it, but Edwards says it better: Dean says it angrily, and Kerry says it groggily, as if hes in danger of falling asleep midway through the sentiment, and Clark says it tetchily, usually in response as to why hes claiming hes always been against the war when in the Times of London last April he gave the full Monica to Bush and Blair for their tremendous military victory.
So give Senator Edwards credit: he can pull off this platitude better than his rivals. But all his issues are weird trial-lawyer obsessions you should have the right to sue your health insurer; credit card companies and mortgage lenders should have to explain their interest rates in bigger print. He sounds like hes auditioning next years class action suits. If he was the nominee and there was another chad-dangling stand-off, Id bet on Edwards to represent himself and sue his way into the White House.
Otherwise, the pretty boy is relentlessly positive as he says, If youre looking for the best candidate to attack the other Democrats, Im not your guy, which is itself a not so subtle attack on the other candidates. But eventually the condescension grinds you down. Even Democrats, even in a broken-down North Country mill town, dont want to be told theyre helpless children who cant function in the world without Edwards swaddling them in a cocoon of government regulations. And, after a while, you begin to notice that while hes got policies to address the fine print on your MasterCard statement, hes got nothing to say about the great issues of the day, aside from taking action to prevent war profiteering by Bush cronies. In the crush as he was leaving, I asked him what he would do about Iraq.
We need to get the UN in there, he said.
But they were in there. They pulled out because it was too dangerous.
We need to get Nato in there, he said.
But 21 out of the 34 countries with troops on the ground are, in fact, Nato members.
Hey, thats what I love about these town hall meetings, he said, shaking my hand. You get to hear from the people. If Edwards were in a presidential debate with Bush, there wouldnt be a lot of questions on Visa card rates but there would be one or two on Iraq, and his platitudes wouldnt pass muster.
Howard Dean? Oh, he hailed his spectacular triumph, too. And he might have got away with it, had he lost by a point or two (as I predicted) or held Kerry under 30 per cent, or 35 per cent, or from a double-digit lead. But a partial recovery in a state that represented Deans best shot at an early victory isnt enough to make him the Comeback Kid. I thought he put it very well in this weeks Concession Speech of the Week. We can have jobs again in America. And we will.
And he will. Howard Dean will have a job again in America. It wont be President of the United States. But theres no reason why he couldnt be a spokesperson for Ben & Jerrys premium Vermont ice cream, perhaps dressed up as a Holstein in the late stages of BSE. (I scream for ice cream. And you will, too.)
That leaves John Kerry, the tall, gaunt, dozy Massachusetts blueblood Id written off ever since last summer when he came to the Barge Inn in Woodsville and, in the strangest political entrance Ive ever seen, walked through the door to cheers and flags and popping cameras and worked his way through the crowd pressing the flesh until he got to the mens room, whereupon he went in, leaving the clapping and waving to just sort of peter out as we waited for him to emerge. One reason why I couldnt bring myself to believe in the alleged Kerry surge of last week is that, while one meets plenty of Dems hot for Dean and a few who admire Lieberman and some kooky types who dig Clark, Ive yet to meet anyone who really likes Kerry. According to the exit polls, the Ketchup Kid won because Democrats were looking for someone with electability. What this means is they settled on Kerry because he has less obvious unelectability than Dean (too angry), Lieberman (too Joe-ish), Clark (too freaky) and Edwards (too unknown). As I said here months ago, this was a race to find None of the Above, and the trick was always to position everybody else as The Above and you as the None. On Tuesday, Kerry pulled that off.
And hes certainly the ultimate None. Last summer, he was terrible on the stump. Six months later, hes still terrible, but the difference is hes now terrible with a full supporting cast. Back in Woodsville, while he was in the mens room, we had to twiddle our thumbs. By the time of his final appearances in southern New Hampshire, he could have been in the mens room for three quarters of the evening and youd never have known it. Traditionally, a candidate gets introduced by some local supporter a state representative or some such and then gets on with it. Kerry has introducers to introduce his introducers. Bill Shaheen comes on and introduces his wife, former governor Jeanne Shaheen. And then Jeanne introduces Patrick Kennedy, and Patrick introduces Ted Kennedy, and Ted introduces former Senator Max Cleland, and Cleland introduces his fellow veterans. And pretty soon its like ABCs 80th birthday salute to Frank Sinatra where Bob Dylan and Natalie Cole and Bruce Springsteen and Tony Bennett came on and paid tribute to Frank and at the end he got up on stage and sang the last two notes of New York, New York. And, when Kerry does eventually get to the microphone, he cant even do the last two notes well. The speech is the usual patrician-populist boilerplate, concluding with a message to the powerful interests, influence peddlers and Big Oil who currently own the White House: Were coming. Youre going. And dont let the door hit you on the way out. He says this at every stop. And they say Howard Dean isnt presidential! But Dean could at least put a bit of attitude into that line. Kerry cant. The campaign seems to have calculated that, if they can just lose him in the crowd scenes, hell be the nominee before anyone figures out how plonking he is.
Meanwhile, Kerrys wife Theresa Heinz, the Big Ketchup heiress and representative of powerful condiment interests, stands by his side, looking either bored or embarrassed. At the singalong bits the dont let the door line she half-heartedly mouths every third or fourth word. She was game enough to host a rally at the Littleton Diner for her husband. Did she refill the bottles? I asked the waitress. I dont think she uses a lot of ketchup, she said. But her husband has 57 varieties of his position on Iraq, and Democratic voters seem to have figured that one or other of them is likely to be more politically viable than Deans.
Traditionally, the role of the New Hampshire electorate is to rattle the front-runner and thereby make him a better candidate, as they did with Bush in 2000. But this time round the candidates seem to have rattled the electorate. Kerry is this years Bob Dole the guy you make do with. Its summed up by one of the Senators campaign buttons: Dated Dean, Married Kerry i.e., sure, Deans great for a few drinks and a couple of wild parties, but when you want to settle down for keeps you go with a solid citizen like Kerry.
Well, maybe. But Ill bet on Wednesday morning more than a few of those voters who married Kerry woke up feeling like Britney Spears. If Kerry clobbers Edwards in South Carolina next week, theres no way to annul.
7
posted on
01/29/2004 8:41:21 AM PST
by
GulliverSwift
(Saddam's WMD were sold/hidden while we were bogged down at the UN.)
To: January24th; quidnunc; dighton
"What this means is they settled on Kerry because he has less obvious unelectability than Dean (too angry), Lieberman (too Joe-ish), Clark (too freaky) and Edwards (too unknown). "Joe Lieberman ... too Joe-ish ...
The best line in the article.
8
posted on
01/29/2004 8:42:16 AM PST
by
BlueLancer
(Der Elite Møøsënspåånkængrüppen ØberKømmååndø (EMØØK))
To: quidnunc
"Dated Dean, married Kerry?" Bwah!
9
posted on
01/29/2004 8:44:00 AM PST
by
VadeRetro
To: quidnunc
Joe-blivion!!!! LOL!!
To: GulliverSwift
Thanks for the complete posted column.
This unecessary excerpting is getting ridiculous.
11
posted on
01/29/2004 8:56:17 AM PST
by
Pokey78
(Steyn: Leftists demonize Wolfowitz because his name begins with a big scary animal and ends Jewishly)
To: GulliverSwift; Howlin; riley1992; Miss Marple; deport; Dane; sinkspur; steve; kattracks; ...
12
posted on
01/29/2004 8:57:22 AM PST
by
Pokey78
(Steyn: Leftists demonize Wolfowitz because his name begins with a big scary animal and ends Jewishly)
To: Carolina; Howlin; mykdsmom
"More importantly, coming out of Iowa a week earlier as a strong second to Kerry with 32 per cent of the vote, Edwards should have had a real bounce.
Instead, he flopped, ending not with his fabulous bangs but with a whimper."
Heh! I love it!
13
posted on
01/29/2004 9:03:40 AM PST
by
Constitution Day
(What happens at CPAC stays at CPAC.)
To: BlueLancer
It's a bad time to cash in on Joe-mentum. It only brings to mind: Joe Millionaire, Average Joe, and The Joe Schmo Show.
To: GulliverSwift
Dated Dean, Married KerryYeah but Dated Dean, married Kerry, woke up with Bush is what the Deaniacs are saying. And they're right.
15
posted on
01/29/2004 9:08:41 AM PST
by
jalisco555
("The right to bear weapons is the right to be free" - A. E. Van Vogt)
To: Pokey78
Thanks Poke!
16
posted on
01/29/2004 9:09:28 AM PST
by
Lando Lincoln
(The Vermin had vermin)
To: Pokey78
This unecessary excerpting is getting ridiculous.Quite.
17
posted on
01/29/2004 9:12:18 AM PST
by
Constitution Day
(What happens at CPAC stays at CPAC.)
To: Pokey78
Especially when we are not legally obligated to do so.
18
posted on
01/29/2004 9:18:35 AM PST
by
GulliverSwift
(Saddam's WMD were sold/hidden while we were bogged down at the UN.)
To: quidnunc
Every time I look at Kerry I think he must be a genetic crossbreed of Frankenstein and Droopy the Dog...
19
posted on
01/29/2004 9:22:57 AM PST
by
apillar
To: GulliverSwift
Thanks for posting the full article. I, for one, would like to see a new rule at FR: Threads that contain unnecessarily excerpted articles are locked the minute someone else posts a NEW thread that contains the full article. That would stop unnecessary excerpting.
20
posted on
01/29/2004 9:24:05 AM PST
by
RedWhiteBlue
(<a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com" target="_blank">miserable failure)
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