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The Terrible Saga of the Nation’s First Primary
By Mark Grueter
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Manchester,
New Hampshire
January 28 2:10 a.m.
The results are in from New Hampshire, and the pundits are wrong again. Everyone assured us that New Hampshirites, because they’re so impressively unpredictable and independent, would give us a surprise. Well, they haven’t. The lemmings voted almost exactly how the pollsters said they would: Kerry wins big, Dean the Scream takes a respectable second, and Clark edges out Edwards for a distant third. The press wizards said it’d be really close in both Iowa and New Hampshire, but John Kerry has blown out the competition in both states. So is anyone strong enough to stop him from winning elsewhere? The answer is No.
Why the fuck do Kucinich, Sharpton and Liebermann continue to insist that they (and not, say, the guys who get all the votes) will win the Democratic nomination? They’re either delusional or they’re just being stupid, and everyone must realize this; voters are dumb but they’re not that dumb. If these men are running, not to win, but merely to promote certain issues, why not just say so? They would command much more respect by offering us their true intentions. Instead they act like the apparent jackasses that they are. I just heard Mo Rocca compare these characters to the Japanese soldiers who were still fighting twenty years after World War II was over. It is interesting to note that the combined vote total for Kucinich and Sharpton in the NH primary was lower than the number of written-in votes for conservative Pat Buchanan on the Democratic side when he ran and won in 1996 on the separate Republican ballot.
And with that, Some Home Truths:
1)
I badly overestimated Clark’s prospects.
I saw the General on Saturday morning at a Pancake Breakfast in a village
called Auburn. Wesley’s stump speech is laudable but it lacks the
energy and excitement to win in the Big Time. Moreover, he knows the domestic
issues okay but doesn’t know policy inside-out like some of his
opponents, and this is really hurting him in a way that it never hurt
(say) George W. Bush. I still think Clark would be a great president and
I’ll defend him at every turn. To me, his much-criticized answers
to questions about his position on the war are refreshingly honest and
nuanced, rather than contradictory or crazy. But I guess his complicated
responses make for bad politics. He’s unpolished as a candidate
and the poor man just couldn’t get his shit together. It sucks but
at least there’s always smack.
2)
Endorsements don’t matter because most people pretend to
think for themselves.
It seems that no number of endorsements can deny a superior candidate
anyway. John Kerry, at the end of the day, is a superior presidential
candidate to Howard Dean and we all know it. Wannabe opportunists like
Gore and Bradley “thought” that Kerry was cooked so they jumped
on the Dean chic; they wanted to be part of a movement they themselves
were too inept too lead.
Did the hugely popular Michael Moore bring herds of leftie voters to the Clark campaign? Yeah right. What about George McGovern’s endorsement of Clark? Somehow, I doubt it. You could argue that Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Kerry boosted the frontrunner, but does anybody seriously believe Kerry wouldn’t have won Iowa and NH without Kennedy?
3)
The pseudo-debate over whether or not to run a positive or negative
campaign is in fact pseudo.
We are often told that candidates who “go negative” alienate
sensitive voters and therefore lose. The conventional wisdom coming out
of Iowa was that Edwards and Kerry did well because they ran positive
campaigns while Dean and Gephardt did poorly because they ran negative
ones; all bullshit of course. Kerry did just as much as Gephardt to distinguish
himself from Dean by pointing out their differences. Here’s the
sinister message being sent: don’t bother engaging in an earnest
criticism of your opponents because that’s negative and people with
low IQs don’t seem to like it.
4)
Nobody really cares about the issues, including me.
All of the Democratic candidates basically agree on almost every issue;
voters are much more interested in determining who has the best command
of those issues. At a Dean rally on the island of Newcastle some boohoo
in the audience stood up to ask Dean what his views on health care were
- as if the boohoo didn’t already know. Dean’s views on health
care have been in the news for over a year. So, people vote for intangible
reasons. This is why more Iowa Democrats who opposed the war in Iraq voted
for Edwards over Dean even though Edwards actually supported the war.
5)
My contempt for Howard Dean blinded me to certain realities.
I talked to several Dean supporters and they are committed to this guy.
I would say that he has the strongest base in the field, meaning that
his fans will vote for him no matter how bizarre his behavior. Kerry is
solid but I don’t sense his supporters are nearly as emotionally
attached to their candidate. One half-crazed Dean fan insisted that she’d
vote for Bush over Kerry because she sincerely believes that Kerry is
“evil.” Dean does a fine job affecting to know the issues
thoroughly. He talks so damn fast that people just assume he knows his
shit.
This whole thing is madness. There’s almost nothing interesting or fun about the campaigns and speeches themselves. Reporters have the speeches memorized; improvisation on the part of candidates is kept at a minimum. Events and the questions posed at them feel completely staged. The best way to entertain oneself at these charades is to engage in the spectacles that surround them. For instance, in New Hampshire, you can always find a Lyndon LaRouche supporter to exchange violent thoughts with. LaRouche has been running for President since the early 70’s and his supporters – though incredibly small in number – are militant and twisted. It’s also easy to accost famous press wizards on the scene like George Stephanopolous, Chris Matthews and Bill Schneider. And sometimes you find creative ways to infiltrate rallies that are already jam-packed. Crashing events through backdoors tends to antagonize the more conservative and thuggish elements present, but that’s what’s good about it. It bucks one up and forces you to use all the mental and physical resources at your disposal.
So on to February 3rd, when seven more states will weigh in. Some of the press wizards are still saying the race is “wide open.” Well, they’re wrong. Nobody has won both Iowa and New Hampshire by such wide margins and gone on to lose the nomination. And the formidable John Kerry certainly will not, even if he loses South Carolina. Voters nationwide are impressed by his gravitas, self-confidence, military background and demonstrated command of the issues. The only so-called surprise will occur as Kerry sweeps every state. I’ll bet anyone.
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Mark Grueter is pursuing a Masters in Liberal Studies at the Graduate Faculty for Political and Social Sciences. He is the Publications Manager and Web Editor for The Canon, the school's student publication and is a contributor to Stop Smiling, a magazine based in Chicago. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Grueter may be contacted at grueter@methree.net.
©
2004 Me Three