Posted on 01/26/2004 5:00:43 PM PST by Pokey78
The American media are all excited about a new poll showing that, come the election, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry would beat George W Bush by 49 per cent to 46 per cent. Back in September, they were all excited about a poll showing Gen Wesley Clark would beat Bush by – guess what? – 49 per cent to 46 per cent. Even the lively Vermont governor Howard Dean had a poll putting him within the margin of error against Bush. Yet here we are just a few months later: the Vermonster self-detonated on Iowa caucus night, and Gen Clark will be lucky to hold on to fourth place in today's New Hampshire primary.
I know a lot of folks on both sides of the Atlantic are salivating at the arrogant Texas cowboy's impending demise, but these polls are meaningless for several reasons, the most important of which is that they're measuring a "known" – Bush – against an "unknown" – some hitherto obscure figure suddenly proclaimed as the Democratic frontrunner. When the unknown becomes known, his numbers slide and the media and the Dems go off in search of a new white knight. Last week, things were so desperate that the only fellow left for the white-knight role was John Kerry, Vietnam veteran and spouse of ketchup heiress Theresa Heinz. Hitherto, the somnolent Kerry had been written off as remote and detached, but these are small sins next to angry (Dean) and kooky (Clark). The Ketchup Kid is a default choice, the least unwhite knight. In the weeks ahead, he too will become known.
In New Hampshire, it's already happening. I don't believe these polls showing him with a double-digit lead. Here's my sense of how things will go today, based on nothing more scientific than a weekend winter-sports break over on the eastern side of the state and a chat with the waitress in the Littleton Diner on the way back to my pad in western New Hampshire. She'd had pretty much every candidate host events at the diner except Dean and Lyndon Larouche, whose campaign wanted to hold a shindig there but got turned down. Larouche is the guy who thinks the Queen is an international drugs kingpin (or, in this case, queenpin) secretly running the world on her cocaine profits. Compared with some of the wackier utterances of Dean and Clark, the House of Windsor drug cartel is one of the less fanciful notions this primary season. At the rate the white knights are tripping over their feet of clay, Larouche could well be the frontrunner by March, with his face on the cover of Newsweek and a poll showing he'd beat Bush 49 per cent to 46 per cent, if Prince Philip doesn't have him taken out by a hit team first.
But, barring a Larouche surge, my bet for today's vote is as follows:
1) Senator John Kerry 29 per cent
2) Governor Howard Dean 28 per cent
3) Senator John Edwards 19 per cent
4) Senator Joe Lieberman 12 per cent
5) General Wesley Clark 10 per cent
6) Everybody else 2 per cent
You can have a good laugh about these predictions tomorrow morning.
If it sounds a bit crass to reduce the whole business to Hit Parade rankings, well, don't blame me. After spending the best part of a year listening to the Democrats' strolling minstrels strumming their way round the White Mountains, I'm staggered by how little any of them have to say. If you go to a Kerry rally – something of an oxymoron, but let that pass – the senator's stump speech is a karaoke tape of floppo populist boilerplate. If he'd downloaded it for free from the internet, that'd be one thing. Instead, he paid a small fortune to hotshot consultant Bob Shrum, who promptly faxed over the same old generic guff he keeps in the freezer: "I (insert name here) will never stop fighting for ordinary people against the powerful interests that stand in your way."
This shtick worked so well for Shrum's previous clients - President Dick Gephardt (1988), President Bob Kerrey (1992), President Al Gore (2000) and President Insert Namehere (2008) that he evidently sees no reason why it shouldn't elect a fifth president this time round. Throw in a few mandatory sneering references to Enron, Halliburton and Attorney-General John Ashcroft plus a handful of local hard-luck stories of doubtful general application – "47-year-old Arlene Claxton of Hooksett worked 20 years to build up her hairdressing business only to contract a rare skin disease from a conditioner manufactured overseas by corporations George W Bush has given tax breaks to in order to export American jobs abroad to jurisdictions lacking environmental safeguards thanks to a sweetheart deal negotiated by a lobbyist for Halliburton and then learnt that her health insurer wouldn't cover the cost of treatment because etc etc."
Sen John Edwards, the pretty-boy southern lawyer, does a much better job of this sort of thing. I caught him at Gorham Town Hall way up in the mountains on Saturday morning. It was a brutally cold morning – 40 degrees below freezing – but the place was packed and we all came away enthused, unlike at a Kerry rally where you come away trying not to think about why you're not enthused. Next to the groggy, haggard Kerry, Edwards has a fabulous, glowing complexion. In Gorham, surrounded by leathery weatherbeaten chapped blotched Yankee faces on all sides, the North Carolina trial lawyer looked like a star. If he'd taken my question, I'd have asked him for the name of his moisturiser. True, his stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he'd like to get a piece of – we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc – and he has nothing of interest to say about the war. But his qualified support – or qualified lack of support – seems to suit a Democratic electorate that recoils from Joe Lieberman's full-throated backing of the Iraq liberation and isn't quite suicidal enough to nail its colours to the mast of the fruitcake anti-war Left.
That's the real story here: for all Howard Dean's talk that you can't beat Bush with "Bush Lite", the candidates who'll survive to the southern primaries next week are doing their best not to sound anti-war, anti-tax cuts or anti-guns. In other words, even in the Democratic primary, this election's now being fought on Republican terms.
I would have told him it was a New Hampshire poll.
Something Newsweak and the media didn't tell ya.
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Of course, we all know that the African American leaders won't make a big deal of it.
I just found out a little bit ago that these morons in New Hampshire won't vote until midnight tonight?That leaves me to check FR first thing in the morning to see which moron is crowned there !
If it sounds a bit crass to reduce the whole business to Hit Parade rankings, well, don't blame me. After spending the best part of a year listening to the Democrats' strolling minstrels strumming their way round the White Mountains, I'm staggered by how little any of them have to say. If you go to a Kerry rally – something of an oxymoron, but let that pass – the senator's stump speech is a karaoke tape of floppo populist boilerplate. If he'd downloaded it for free from the internet, that'd be one thing. Instead, he paid a small fortune to hotshot consultant Bob Shrum, who promptly faxed over the same old generic guff he keeps in the freezer: "I (insert name here) will never stop fighting for ordinary people against the powerful interests that stand in your way."
This shtick worked so well for Shrum's previous clients - President Dick Gephardt (1988), President Bob Kerrey (1992), President Al Gore (2000) and President Insert Namehere (2008) that he evidently sees no reason why it shouldn't elect a fifth president this time round. Throw in a few mandatory sneering references to Enron, Halliburton and Attorney-General John Ashcroft plus a handful of local hard-luck stories of doubtful general application – "47-year-old Arlene Claxton of Hooksett worked 20 years to build up her hairdressing business only to contract a rare skin disease from a conditioner manufactured overseas by corporations George W Bush has given tax breaks to in order to export American jobs abroad to jurisdictions lacking environmental safeguards thanks to a sweetheart deal negotiated by a lobbyist for Halliburton and then learnt that her health insurer wouldn't cover the cost of treatment because etc etc."
I agree. Still, both Kerry and his run-off-at-the-mouth wife are cold fish, not the kind to excite the black Baptist church crowds themselves. And if they knew Ms. Ketchup kid was a member of the white African ruling class, I doubt that would do much to help.
Thank God Al Sharpton has'nt been emailed this info!.
(wink...wink)
ROTFLMAO
That would be a shame wouldn't it...wink, wink. OTOH, the Rev. is probably busy pondering who he will appoint as the next head of the IMF, CFR, WB, or was it the Fed?
The people seem to want it that way -- an unsullied candidate, even if they know nothing about him.
It wouldn't surprise me to see a front-running 'rat make a quick departure from the field, maybe even feet-first. Suddenly, from nowhere, a new front-runner and not enough time for opposition research. The Lautenberg gambit, redux.
...even Hillary can run in later ballots taken at the convention. Is this so?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
What's her maiden name? I'd like to check out her mother, who is/was, as I recall, Jewish. With Arabs here uniting in an anyone-but-bush election push, this could be a very interesting tidbit.
Interesting question, but I didn't dig that far. We could probably Google it out. And your point is an interesting one as well.
Didn't happen to Clinton in 92 as I recall.
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