BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Saturday, December 06, 2003
Dean, Kerry, and McGovern. I
was taken to task yesterday by a reader who thought I was too facile
or Kaus-like or something to jump on the latest polls showing that
John Kerry is behind Howard Dean in New Hampshire by something like
30 points. Fair enough. The news was familiar, and I didn't exactly
add a lot of value by regurgitating the numbers.
Still, it's fascinating to see the
hand-wringing going on now over the fact that Dean will -- barring a
biblical-scale implosion -- win the Democratic nomination. Eric
Alterman argues
that Kerry, whom he likes much better than Dean, is also infinitely
more electable against George W. Bush. Josh Marshall isn't quite so
certain, but also worries
that Dean is toast. The emerging wisdom is that it's McGovern all
over again.
Well, I worry how Dean is going to
fare against Bush, too. And I also think Kerry is the most
experienced and best qualified of the Democrats. But, at some level,
if Kerry is more electable than Bush, shouldn't he be beating Dean?
Frankly, at this point it's easier to construct a scenario that Dick
Gephardt or Wesley Clark will somehow emerge to give Dean a scare
than to picture how Kerry can recover.
Not to push this too far. After
all, if John McCain had somehow managed to defeat Bush in the
Republican primaries four years ago, he probably would have beaten Al
Gore by five or six points. But McCain, despite his conservative
stands on many issues, was in the wrong party in 2000. Dean and Kerry
are both real Democrats, and thus there's some reason to think that
the one who is able to win the nomination is, by definition, the more
electable of the two.
Of the nine Democrats, only three
manage to talk like normal people: Wesley Clark, Carol Moseley Braun,
and Dean. The rest, most definitely including Kerry, speechify, and
it doesn't work in the modern television environment. Dean has
managed to combine his plain speaking with a brilliant,
Internet-based campaign that's bringing in tons of money. His early
opposition to the war in Iraq continues to be his biggest selling
point.
As for Kerry, it's not just that he
voted for the war, which was a perfectly respectable if wrong-headed
stance. (How could he not have figured out by the fall of 2002 that
the Bush White House lies so promiscuously?) It's that he has such a
hard time explaining it, and that he then turned around and voted
against the $87 billion in reconstruction money, which, regardless of
where you stand on Iraq, seems to be needed pretty
desperately.
And yes, I realize that Dean has
had the advantage of not having to vote on anything. But that's why
governors get elected president and senators don't.
Ironically, Kerry is more liberal
than Dean on the environment, social programs for the poor, Medicare,
you name it. For the most part, he probably represents my political
values better than Dean does. But Dean's won. As Marshall asks, how
can anyone expect that Kerry, having blown a large lead in New
Hampshire, will somehow persuade voters there to switch back
to him?
Democrats shouldn't worry quite so
much about Dean. If he's sharp enough to beat Kerry, Clark, Gephardt,
Lieberman, et al., then he might be the best candidate the
party can put up against Bush next November.
posted at 9:53 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
