moving on up

It's official: Tucker Carlson has just picked Wes Clark to win the nomination on the Chris Matthews show. He says "even the Democrats aren't crazy enough to nominate Howard Dean." The odds from the pundit's poll also from the Chris Matthews show shows a doubling of the likelihood of a Clark victory (still only 25%). "Meet the Press" with John Kerry as guest still had to devote several minutes of their round table discussion to the Clark surge in New Hampshire. I have not said it publicly but for many weeks I have felt that the decision to skip Iowa was the smartest thing the Clark campaign has done. This was voiced by one blogger several weeks ago; however, as I'm over 50 I can't for the life of me remember who made this case. The conventional wisdom has been that it was a grave mistake to skip Iowa; I don't think that will be true. The opportunity to campaign extensively without the clutter of other candidates has enabled Clark to get his message out, and, based on the polls and the reports on the CCN blogs, he has been successful beyond our wildest dreams. People are paying attention now -- not just the extreme fringes of the party, but the rank and file. And Dean doesn't play well with the mainstream of the Democratic party. Electability and temperament are starting to seriously be considered in choosing a candidate, and Dean doesn't do well on either count.

The Paul O'Neil flap has the possibility of changing the dynamics of the general election significantly. Here we have a Bush insider confirming what Clark has been saying for months: that the Bush administration was after Saddam Hussein from day one and used 9/11 as an excuse to do what he wanted to do from the beginning. This makes the nomination more important than ever. Bush can be beaten. He is not as popular as the recent polls would suggest. For Democrats to nominate Howard Dean under these circumstances would be a crime. This is not a throw away election. Democrats have a real chance of victory and we need to be very pragmatic about who we nominate. We need to nominate Wes Clark who, in the most recent poll I've seen, (I will try to find it and post it) is within 7 points of Bush. Dean is 15 points behind. It is conventional wisdom (I love that term) that Clark is the strongest candidate to run against Bush.

So let's keep working and keep giving. Money got us to this point and Clark will take us the rest of the way. See you all at the inauguration.