The Limits of Rage
Democrats are mad, but they're not crazy.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004582
So much for Democrats jumping blindly off a cliff. The main message Iowa caucus-goers sent on Monday is that, while they may be angry with President Bush, they think the best revenge isn't to snarl and stomp but to defeat him in November.
Democrats took a bold leap for the conventional, lifting a pair of well-known Senators, John Kerry and John Edwards, to the front of the Presidential pack. Both candidates were helped enormously because the two earlier Iowa front-runners, Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt, decided to attack one another in ads and speeches while the Senators dodged media and opponent scrutiny.
But it also helped that Iowa Democrats seemed to be in an Al Davis mood: Just win, baby. According to the "entrance polls" (this being a caucus, not a primary), 26% of voters said the most important quality they were seeking was the ability to beat Mr. Bush. Senators Kerry and Edwards combined to win two-thirds of those voters.
One submerged issue here may well have been taxes. The two Senators insist that they wouldn't repeal all of Mr. Bush's tax cuts, only those that went to "the rich." This is a contrast to Messrs. Dean and Gephardt, who have pledged to repeal every last dime. Mr. Kerry ran a below-the-radar, anti-Dean mail campaign on this theme, and it seems to have paid off. Even Iowa liberals--who represented 57% of caucus-goers--don't want their taxes raised.
A mild irony is that Iowa Democrats have also elevated the two candidates whose nominations would come closest to providing a rematch of 2000. Notwithstanding Al Gore's odd endorsement of Mr. Dean, the two Senators share Mr. Gore's Beltway provenance and both are campaigning on his main 2000 theme of "the people versus the powerful."
Mr. Edwards, the smooth millionaire trial lawyer, has distilled his stump speech into a modern, smiling William Jennings Bryan riff on the "two Americas." Mr. Kerry, who summers in Nantucket, employs Mr. Gore's tub-thumping wordsmith Robert Shrum and borrows the same lines from 2000 deploring the "powerful interests" who somehow run the country. Call these Democrats the angry affluent: They're rich as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.
Mr. Dean sounded similar themes, but without even a trace of optimism or moderate temperament. His political posture resembles one of those coiled springs with a boxing glove on the end, ready to bop you in the nose at the least provocation. In retrospect, the air began going out of the Dean project on the day Saddam Hussein was captured. The anti-Iraq rage that he had tapped on the left seemed less appropriate, and caucus-goers on Monday put the war down the list of their major concerns. The vaunted "new voters" Mr. Dean was allegedly drawing into politics also failed to show.
Perhaps the former Vermont Governor can rebound in New Hampshire, where he has so far been leading in the polls. He certainly has enough money to compete there and beyond, and other candidates have survived Iowa humiliation (in particular George H.W. Bush in 1988). But Mr. Dean will need a message that is about more than rage against the Democratic machine, and on that score his post-caucus public rant won't help. There's also a warning here for the erratic Wesley Clark, another candidate whose main theme is anti-Bush anger. Democrats may be mad but they aren't crazy.
As for Mr. Gephardt, who dropped out yesterday after finishing fourth, we will miss his maturity and character. He took a principled gamble last year in supporting the war, and again this year in voting for the $87 billion to see it through. (Senators Kerry and Edwards, by contrast, voted for the war but punted on the cash while chasing Mr. Dean's votes.) That stand has hurt him, as it also has Joe Lieberman, with a Democratic electorate that in Iowa opposed the Iraq war by 3 to 1.
We'd add that Mr. Gephardt was also damaged by his own trade protectionism. Though he ran TV spots against Nafta and free trade generally, Mr. Gephardt finished fourth even in union-rich Blackhawk County around industrial Waterloo. Mr. Gephardt won one of every two voters who cared most about trade, but that was only 4% of the Iowa caucus electorate. The lesson is once again that protectionism is the fool's gold of Presidential politics. Even union Democrats want a President who will help them lead the world economy, not shrink from it.
As for the Bush White House, the message is that there will be no easy landslide. Democratic voters aren't eager to follow some of their loopier pundits and financiers into the "liar, liar" fever swamps. They want to win. They're looking for a serious candidate who'd make a credible President. Mr. Bush and his fellow Republicans have a fight on their hands. |
