More thoughts on a coming bloodbath

These sentiments have been registered elsewhere, and many times, but isn't the media coverage of the Democratic pack atrocious? Really, it's just an exaggerated example of the way most punditry in America has become, but it's just so bad. I remember several months back, when Kerry was the presumptive nominee. I remember that even then the press had sketched out a Standard Press Account for Kerry. There was always "he's aloof" "his hair is weird" "northeastern liberal" "waffler" "looks French" somewhere in every press account. Most of these were Republican fashioned spin points, but they caught hold at the bastions of the supposed liberal media: the Wash. Post and NY Times.

All of it speaks poorly to the quality of political discourse in this country. Each (actually flesh and blood) candidate is assigned a designated role by the media. They are rebuilt in straw only to be whacked at repeatedly by the punditocracy. Politics is all spectacle in contemporary American culture. Some candidates even participate in their own caricaturing. Kerry, early on, made copious mention of his previous military career, to the point where it came to define him. Not that Kerry's Silver Star doesn't put Bush's "Brave, Brave Sir Robin" routine to shame, but I'd prefer to see a candidate stand up to Republicans than know that he stood up to VC more than 35 years ago. The point is that a campaign based on substance isn't feasible in these times.

Such brilliant luminaries as Maureen Dowd and Bill Schneider have lamented the fact that Howard Dean has kept personal history and anecdote out of his campaign. Ms. Dowd even attacked Judith Steinberg Dean's relative absence from the campaign trail. No wonder Dean doesn't return her calls. Both seem to crave a convenient story arc for Dean, as if Dean were a goddamn fictional character they could pose.

And it will only get worse. If Kerry gets the nomination, the story will be that he's aloof, phony and has weird hair. If it's Clark it will be that he flipflops, that he doesn't have experience, that he's really a puppet of the Clintons. If it's Dean, he'll be an angry, pessimistic, cold, weird traitor who says the craziest things, wants to raise your taxes and whose wife doesn't wear pink pantsuits or go to Washington parties and is therefore some sort of freak. If it's Edwards, it'll be that he's inexperienced, a Clinton-wannabe who's controlled by the trial lawyers who really are all slimy and want to raise your insurance premiums with their insane torts. And each one will be accused of pandering to special interests, and probably of class warfare. Meanwhile, unless Iraq turns into Lebanon or Algeria or unemployment hits 7%, Bush will remain everyone's favorite lovable dim schlub, like George Wendt and Woody Harrelson from Cheers rolled into one, only a lot more religious.

But does any of this make any sense? Does it make any sense when we're heading toward an election for the Leader of The Free World for our Pulitzer-Prize winning NY Times columnists to be obsessing over Wes Clark's sweater? Lady, do you know how cold a New Hampshire January is?

The Iowa caucus thing

The results in the Iowa caucus were as follows:

Kerry 38%
Edwards 32%
Dean 18%
Gephardt 11%

Which is really an interesting result. Personally, I find it rather disappointing and rather troubling. This is a rather poor result for Dean, whom I have come to prefer as Democratic nominee. I don't endorse him as such- after all, who am I?- but I figured that an insurgent, outside-the-beltway type campaign would be more likely to defeat Bush. Also, I was and am attracted by Dean's rhetoric and his willingness to say blunt, unpopular things that are true.

Obviously my feelings haven't changed in this regard. And Dean has a decent chance, even now, of snagging the nomination. But the whole situation has been placed in a different perspective. The conventional wisdom, going into Iowa (say 3 or 4 weeks back) was that the whole primary race basically belonged to Dean and Clark- that Clark had finally found his place as the anti-Dean. This race not only hurts Dean (and Gephardt, who has quit the primary) but also Clark.

I've been flipping the cable channels, and someone, I think the execrable Tim Russert, made what I think is an important point: This is a crowded field, and that isn't good. You have the ascendent Edwards and Kerry on one hand, and on the other you have Dean and Clark, both with strong national media profiles, both flush with money and a strong grassroots base. There are four strong people in this race. I like each of them, and think each would make not only a good president but also a good presidential candidate, so I would have no trouble voting for any of them in the General (of course, I am a Anybody But Bush person, so whatever). My problem with a four man race is that it will be expensive and much mud will be slung.

Not that there hasn't been enough mud already. I don't like it when Dean calls Clark a Republican. I don't like it when any host of persons, Democrat or otherwise, extrapolates Dean's anti-Iraq war sentiment into weakness on national defense. I don't like the sundry smears and distortions and creative editing of Dean and Clark's and Kerry's past statements. And it's not going to stop. It's going to be a disgusting year, all the way down to November. And the lack of decisiveness implied by the result in Iowa- that is, I predict Dean, Clark, and Kerry all bunched up together in New Hampshire, with Edwards not too far behind, and likewise I expect the mythical national primary poll #s to bunch- means more smearing and attacks and such upon each of the Dems.

Another problem, as, of all people, Tucker Carlson, pointed out, is with the Dean hordes. Which is not to do any disrespect to Dean partisans, of which I am one, at least of the fair-weather variety. When Dean said, to some controversy, that his support wasn't necessarily transferrable to other candidates, I think this was true. Many Dean supporters see themselves as members of a movement, and the fervor with which this group of people has campaigned and raised money in the past months is unlikely to be maintained unaltered with a Kerry or Edwards nominee. I'm not so sure this is the case for Clark- Clark's use of grassroots fundraising is similarly impressive and the two candidates share credible outsider status. I don't have the data, but I would think that most Dean supporters' second choice would be Clark (mine is).

In addition, we have the cascade of Dean endorsements. SEIU, AFSCME, Gore, Harkin. These are big endorsements, and (you can pardon my ignorance, I may be very wrong) it seems early for a candidate, even a front-runner, to garner such endorsements. Maybe in a 2-person race, like 2000, but not now. As kos said, the endorsements hurt Dean's outsider status. Will Gore's endorsement of Dean hurt any other eventual nominee? I'm not sure, but I think it gives the impression of chaos. The Bushies must love that.

So I think this Iowa thing is kind of messy and I don't like the implications of it. But what I like less is the response of much of the TV media. The beltway Heathers seem to be out in force, declaring this result a repudiation of that nasty icky Dean. Bill Schneider seemed positively giddy at the result. 'See!" I could hear their unified voice, 'The people don't want a anti-war-angry-peacenik-whose-wife-is-weird! Catching Saddam means anyone who questions Operation Iraqi freedom is weak on defense! Deaniacs are, like, in a cult and uncool!' Watching the vultures pick Dean's not-really-dead corpse made me feel dirty. It made me angry, too. And that anger reminded me of why I came to favor Dean.

The Bush presidency has made a large section of America feel powerless. It is a ruthless, efficient machine that pursues its agenda largely unchecked. With the help of a news media that is in parts compliant and an active advocate, it disparages and mischaracterizes its competition. (I'd have to agree with Eric Alterman and Bob Somersby that the spectre of liberal media bias is just that- a characterization that was last credible perhaps in the days when the press just hated that bastard Nixon, but has become conventional wisdom due to constant flogging by such self-pitying professional whiners as the MRC, Bernie Goldberg, and Ann Coulter) The Bush administration acts with impunity, going from photo-op to photo-op, fundraiser to fundraiser, platitudinous speech to platitudinous speech, while anything of substance they pursue collapses in a heap. So I remembered back nearly a year ago, when I caught a digital feed of Dean's speech to the California Dem convention. I saw a passion and a courage and, above all, a defiance that articulated how I felt. And it wasn't like watching some whacko fringe leftist- it was as if I was watching someone who, like me, loved this country so much that the damage done to it by Bush felt like a wound to his person.

I don't know if I feel like that now. I guess my rational mind has convinced me that Dean probably scares, or at least off-puts, a big chunk of the electorate that will be needed to defeat Bush. I guess I see Dean's relative awkwardness and tendency to speak too bluntly better than I did then. But I still feel that Bush is unlikely to be defeated by a candidate who hedges and calculates like a traditional Washington politician. Which is why the Iowa caucus has made me feel... a little nervous.