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Who Killed Howard Dean?

With the Democratic nomination process down to only one notable candidate, tired and suddenly bored political columnists across the nation have turned to the most compelling story they can write in elegy. How did Kerry roar ahead of Dean in the waning moments of the Iowa campaign and best Dean's previously unstoppable juggernaut. And there are no shortage of theories: that Joe Trippi and Dean always fought and could never get along. That the major unions, SEIU and AFSCME, decided that Dean was too liberal. The "scream" speech was replayed so often it caused him to crash and burn. And my personal favorite: Dean torpedoed his own campaign because he really did not want to be president. But each of these focuses too much on personality and persona, and not enough on message. How could voters suddenly change
nearly five months of consistent poll numbers all for one night?

And the answer is, though we hate to admit it, because this entire nomination process is a sham.

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe stung from the the election defeat of 2000, and then 2002. He envisioned a "front-loaded" nomination process that would favor the front-runner nearly the whole way through. After all, the eventually nominee gained so much momentum in Iowa, that unless another person had a strong victory in New Hampshire, they were destined to see the bottom drop out. McAuliffe organized it this way because he felt against the George W. Bush, the Democrats would need to know who the candidate was as soon as possible to keep the "silent money" from staying on the sidelines. The only problem is, McAuliffe's ideas about who to run in 2004 have always been perhaps a bit charitable. When Al Gore refused to take up the standard in 2002, a fierce contest broke out among his three choices for vice president, John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman. Surprisingly or not, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark put in his hat as well as Howard Dean, unemployed from ten years as the governor of Vermont. Former speaker of the house, Richard Gephardt resurrected his 1988 bid as well. At the moment in December of 2002 when Gore announced, it is hard to guess which of the five the Chairman favored.

And further, McAuliffe was careful not to attack the President's decision to levy "conflict" in Iraq at first, and only Dean emerged as the lightning rod for the anti-war movement. A bold move, but he did not have the last. Dean faced a strange situation at the start of 2004: he had to develop the equivalent of a nomination Schlieffen Plan, one that would let him wage war on two fronts, Iowa and New Hampshire, almost simultaneously. With Gephardt and Edwards working hard in the plains, and Clark and Lieberman exclusively plying the Granite State, it appeared that McAuliffe had been supplanted by Joe Trippi as the person who held all the cards. With a week to go, Dean's troops had both Des Moines and Manchester in their sights.

But in the last week, attack ads began to pummel Dean as Gephardt feared he was losing. Also, a group called Americans for Jobs and Healthcare began to run several negative ads in New Hampshire and Iowa. The group was spending quite a bit of money, but in addition, was careful not to run the advertisements outside of Iowa and New Hampshire. Secondly, as we told you in January, the Club for Growth had already given the media much tastier anti-Dean ads comparing him to a "left-wing liberal freak show". But naturally you might ask why these ads were so important. The reason for this is that if any group under the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act uses soft money to run attack ads against the candidate, there must be a disclosure of which candidate the money came from supporting the message. The paper trail on Americans for Jobs and Healthcare was long, but on February 11, in the Washington Post, Jim Vander Hei found out it the "group" was essentially disgraced ex-senator Bob Torricelli funneling money from Kerry and others campaigns. However, Torricelli appears nowhere on the balance sheet, and only with severe digging did Charles Lewis manage this essay.

Dean knew that Gephardt was attacking him, and when it appears his numbers were dropping...he pulled the spots. If the laws in place had worked, Dean could have bloodied the other candidates noses by showing just who American for Jobs and Healthcare were. But at that point it was fait accompli. Kerry survived because only Dean could have stopped him in New Hampshire. When Dennis Kucinich threw his delegates to Edwards in Iowa, it pulled the race to where, as we saw...no one could stop Kerry. The only problem? The race for the nomination isn't the election itself. George W. Bush now has the chance to accuse Kerry of violating election laws in addition to nailing him as a candidate with an almost Gore-like tendency to waffle. In fact if Bush is smart enough, he could wait until after Labor Day to declare that Kerry has committed such heinous fraud he should drop out of the race. If he were to, the Democrats would be in a huge bind, and no matter how poor the state of the country, Bush would likely prevail.

And what does the Dean for America remind us of? Much like the "Cross of Gold" speech of 1896. With Populism gaining strength throughout the 1890s...William Jennings Bryan stunned the Democratic seventeen on July 9, attempt to succeed Grover Cleveland as the Democratic nominee and as one which would enfranchise the Populist movement, which had nearly cost the Democrats the vote in '92. However, unlike 1892, eastern Democrats in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana shunned "free silver", afraid that it would cause inflation in the face of what had been a very serious depression in 1893. Populism disappeared as a party, but it ultimately heralded not soon after massive business reforms by Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican. Dean was Bryan...attempting to bring the Nader protest vote of 2000 into the big tent.

The question remains if "playing it safe" will be the winning strategy this year. Ultimately, McAuliffe may not be the ultimate mastermind, but Bill and Hillary Clinton. For remember, Gore proclaimed Dean as his man, and this likely meant that Gore wanted Dean to win so that if Dean had lost, there would be wide open race against someone other than Dick Cheney for the Presidency in 2008. Indeed, how high up the ladder of American power must we go to find someone that opposed Dean's message? For if it is as Nader proclaims, "a one party system with two wings", both parties must be aware that Roosevelt's final election pitted him against William Howard Taft in 1912, crippling the GOP and allowing the victory of Southern professor Thomas Woodrow Wilson. In short, Dean's demise could spell a political realignment's rise.

Next week: This Coup is For You, America
posted by Thomas at 6:18 PM 0 comments