To call Dean’s second place finish in New Hampshire “close” is to approach a cliff face, jump off, and attempt to land on the ground without so much as a bruise. But apparently it’s worse than that. Howard Dean is now down to $5 million. Barring a Missouri win next Tuesday, it looks like we may stuck with Kerry. Unless Dean musters up Robert Kennedy-like support in California and many of the big states, and reenergizes his campaign. Kennedy, however, was more of an idealist than Dean is. And it ain’t exactly 1968.
However, while I woefully miscalculated the percentage points, I was dead-on in my place predictions.
[UPDATE: Dan Spencer has compiled all blog NH predictions with success and failure rates.]
[1/21/06 UPDATE: Apologies for the introspective aside, but I’m truly astonished by the idealism here. Not entirely surprised, mind you, because wildly optimistic notions enter fresh upon my noggin on a daily basis, with several acted upon during any given week. Indeed, I can safely confess that, since I turned thirty, life has been a process of trying to hold onto any and all scraps of hope, bonhomie and idealism, as the wise and sober forces of adulthood demand me to be serious and responsible (I am to a great degree, but I maintain that one can be both!). Granted, there’s still plenty of helium in the Zeppelin, with the only real Hindenburg being my inevitable death, I suppose. But this is what it means to be a committed “optimistic realist” at 31. On one hand, and tying this into Howard Dean, it would be foolish to discount the role of the Internet in disseminating Howard Dean’s Muskie moment. The conservatives guffawed and remixed that twenty second holler and played it over and over and effectively obliterated Dean’s momentum. But let us also consider how refreshingly genuine Dean’s yell was from the stiffs. Here was a man who was ultimately punished for expressing a genuine moment of excitement during the 2004 presidential election. And how much of a telling statment is that of what the United States political process has become? Little wonder that we have no real candidates to choose from anymore. American media, and those who react to it, is particularly unforgiving when it comes to genuine enthusiasm.]
Yes, I’m afraid you may be right. Unless he can convince someone like Clark to sign onto his campaign. I’m pretty sure Kerry win win MO – the Dems there tend to be on the conservative and establishment side. I think the only mini Tuesday race Dean has a chance of winning would be NM. Too bad that probably won’t hold him until he gets to places where he has a bigger base of support like MI, CA, and NY.
The fascinating question is why anybody who knows anything about presidential politics would believe that Howard Dean has ever had a chance to get elected is difficult for me to understand. Arguing that he has balanced a budget which, truth be told is smaller than most large cities, makes him capable of running the U.S. Treasury? Jimmy Carter (probably the most decent man we’ve ever elected) got to Washington and found out that the people he needed to run the government were people who had expierience running the government. Dean has played on Americans inherent distrust of Government, and admirably the doomed to fail militarism of this administration, expecting they would never get aroungd to looking at him and his qualifications to be president. It is not just the rant, it is the underlying question that has been there from the begining – is this man qualified to be president? Once people get beyond using their votes as protests I think the overwhelming answer is going to be no.