Further observations on the horse race

Happy New Year to all of our readers. I'm going to sneak this piece in between Amy's missives and thus give your brain a rest for a few minutes. Amy's entries make you think, mine probably make you angry, especially if you are a Dean supporter. My drift has definately been more and more into anti-Dean camp. But a word in my own defense. "It isn't my fault. He made me do it." How could he turn into such a bad candidate so quickly? Was he saying idiotic things all along and nobody was noticing or did the pressure get to him finally? He has come up with a neat trick however to prevent any one of these "gaffes" from killing his campaign; as soon as one looks like it is taking hold and sinking into the public psyche he makes another one, even worse, and we completely forget about the prior one. So far it seems to be working.

There has however, been a subtle but perceptible shift in the race in the last several days. With the 4th quarter fund raising numbers unofficially out many pundits are now seeing this as a two-way race, with Clark clearly having the resources to carry the fight well into the primary season. In addition Clark is continuing to improve as a candidate at the same time that Dean's weaknesses are becoming more obvious to even some of his supporters.

Dean's camp has come up with a unique argument which unfortunately has some merit, about why only he can beat Bush. Not that he's a better candidate with better ideas, but rather that he's the only one that can match the Bush team dollar for dollar and can thus defend themselves better from the Rove smear campaign. The smear campaign will surely come, but if Dean's the nominee there isn't enough money in Fort Knox to counter it. There's just too much on the record already, too many flip flops, too many misstatements, too many retractions, too many half truths and untruths, too many video clips of an angry man shouting at his audience. The Dean candidancy has already been fatally wounded by the candidate himself. All Karl Rove and company will need to do is kick the dirt into its grave and read the eulogy.

Even a candidate as strong as Clark is going to see a withering attack on his character,ideas, gender, patriotism and anything else they can think of. That's after all why they raised 200 million to fight a non-existant primary opponent. This will be very hard to counter without any resources. I have to hope that there is a committee of "sons of bitches" deep in the bowels of the Clark campaign strategizing about how to deal with this problem. I would hate to work like hell to get Clark nominated only to see the Republicans destroy him before the campaign has officially begun. Of course maybe Dean will lend the party his donor's list so we can raise the necessary money to fight a smear. For some reason I don't think that's likely, but we'll see.

Mickey