If Not Dean, Who?
tompaine.com
If Not Dean, Who?
Richard Blow is the former executive editor of George Magazine. He is author of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and is writing a book about Harvard University.
If the pundits have been consistent about one thing in this campaign, it's the argument that the Democrats will get
slaughtered if Howard Dean is their presidential nominee.
He's not a national candidate, they say. He's too left-wing. He doesn't have enough foreign policy experience. By running as the centrist, tough-on-terrorism candidate, George W. Bush would beat Dean like a drum. Or so they say.
But the Dean campaign has brought such unexpected energy into the Democratic primary that the Dems now have an entirely different problem: If Dean loses, the party will probably lose in November 2004.
Here's why. Other than the implausible figures of Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich, Dean is the only candidate to have fired up the Democratic faithful. What he's done is remarkable. At a recent Maryland speech, Dean drew 3,700 listeners. A few days before that, 16,000 fans went to hear Dean speak in Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan. John Kerry couldn't draw 16,000 people if he were giving away Justin Timberlake bobble-head dolls. If the president were to speak in Bryant Park, you'd have to pay unemployed people to attend. (Okay, then you could get a lot more than 16,000.)
But yes, there is a credible argument that Dean would have a difficult time in a national race. His supporters aren't exactly a rainbow coalition, and he is still perceived as a leftist candidate. That perception is due more to the vociferousness of his criticisms of the president than because of his political record. Dean was a centrist governor of Vermont, particularly on economic issues. But you can be sure that Karl Rove and Co. would try to portray Dean as Dukakis II (i.e., clueless, lefty wimp from a nutty lefty state). Memo to Dean staff: Keep your boss away from any photo-ops near a tank.
If Dean doesn't win the primary, it will be either because he implodes of his own doing or because the party machinery blocks his path. And it's probably true that the folks at the Democratic National Committee would prefer John Kerry or John Edwards -- safer, more predictable candidates -- to the Dean wild card. When it comes to internal party politics, Dean is even more of an outsider than Bill Clinton was.
But Dean's success has created an unintended consequence: the possibility of Dean disappointment. If he loses, what happens to all those thousands of people who have rallied to him over a year before a presidential election? The answer is that they drop out of activism -- and their disappointment hangs like a cloud over the nominee. That person would not only have to reach to the center to win swing voters, but tack back to the left to reinvigorate the Dean partisans. Moreover, there will inevitably be the perception that the less exciting candidate won the nomination.
In recent political history, this situation has arisen twice before for the Democratic Party: in 1968, when Hubert Humphrey beat out Eugene McCarthy after the death of Bobby Kennedy; and in 1984, when Walter Mondale beat back an unexpected challenge from insurgent Gary Hart. In both cases, the party machinery steamrolled grassroots excitement. The results? A first term for Richard Nixon and a second term for Ronald Reagan.
It's true, a Howard Dean victory may pose a challenge for the Democrats. Dean has to show he can run credibly in the South, and he needs to get black and Latino voters as fired up as he has white Democrats. But as problematic as his candidacy might be, Howard Dean is making it increasingly difficult for the Democrats to nominate anyone else. |
