NEW REPUBLIC
WHY ISN'T JOE TRIPPI SWEATING WESLEY CLARK?: One of the early pieces of conventional wisdom forming around Wesley Clark is that the former NATO supreme commander's campaign potentially hurts all the current major candidates: John Kerry because he's a Vietnam vet, John Edwards because he's a Southerner, Howard Dean because, like Clark, he's apparently heard of the Internet.... As "The Note" put it this morning: "This endless blather about whose support Clark cuts into makes us roll our digital eyes. Theoretically and thematically, one can make the case that he cuts into EVERYBODY."
But this analysis doesn't make any sense. After all, it's not as though you have to achieve some absolute standard of support or media coverage or fundraising in order to win the nomination. (Not really, anyway. There is the question of lining up enough delegates to officially win, but no one thinks the guy who wins the most primaries won't eventually do that anyway.)
Of course, if you did have to meet some absolute standard, then Clark's entry into the race would make it more difficult. But, as it happens, all you have to do is achieve relative success--that is, you only have to win more support than the other guys. Which means that, assuming Clark is the extreme longshot most people still think he is, his nomination clearly hurts some people and helps others. (Call it Kaus's law of zero-sum-ness.)
So who does he help? Well, assuming Dean is still the de facto front-runner, and that the rest of the major candidates, including Clark, are pretty much just vying for the anti-Dean slot in the race, then one possibility is that Dean benefits. That is, the non-Clark candidate (remember, Clark's almost certainly not going to win) who ends up filling the role of non-Dean will almost certainly arrive in that role weaker than he would have been without Clark in the race. (Since Clark sucks up support and money and media attention...)
The other possibility is that Dick Gephardt benefits. As we've already mentioned, Clark undermines part of the case for Kerry and Edwards. As an apparent cultural moderate with impeccable national security credentials, he also partially undermines the case for Joe Lieberman. It's Gephardt whose rationale for running seems most different from Clark's--he's a lifelong insider, whereas Clark will probably claim the outsider mantle. And, among Democrats, he's probably most closely associated with the war, having essentially given George W. Bush the cover he needed on the issue. Geographically, too, Gephardt seems to be most immune to Clark. The one early contest he has to win, Iowa, is the one race Clark is least likely to contest. (New Hampshire, on the other hand, has shown itself to be pretty amenable to unorthodox insurgent-types over the years.)
In the end, though, this too could help Howard Dean. That's because Gephardt seems to be the non-Dean/establishment candidate Dean best matches up against, should the nomination come down to a one-on-one faceoff. Gephardt is exactly the kind of special-interest, inside-the-beltway stiff the Dean campaign has been engineered to beat.
Which, come to think of it, is maybe why Joe Trippi has been the lone major-campaign operative not to seem especially worried about Clark these last few days.
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