Iowa overturns conventional wisdom about politics
By Chuck Raasch, GNS Political Writer
DES MOINES — Iowa destroyed conventional wisdom.
In a frigid night of caucuses, Democratic activists revived the once-moribund campaign of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, exposed serious vulnerabilities in the still-formidable crusade of ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and served notice that Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is a newcomer worth deeper consideration in the eight states with primaries and caucuses over the next two weeks.
And in the end, Iowans ended the long presidential dreams of Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
What's next? A more protracted fight for the Democratic nomination than was expected a month ago, when pundits were boiling Iowa down to a Dean vs. Gephardt match and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark was just beginning to catch on.
If Dean rebounds in New Hampshire and Clark challenges there, then Iowa sparked a longer nomination battle than the Democrats wanted. It's a battle made for candidates with proven fund-raising ability. Right now, that includes Dean and Clark. Now, Kerry and Edwards will join them with an Iowa bounce.
"I think now we are in for a slugfest here, an extended slugfest," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.
Clark and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut detoured around Iowa. They await in New Hampshire for next Tuesday's primary. Dean still leads in the polls there but Kerry was gaining even before Monday night. Edwards, who had lingered far back in the New Hampshire pack, may look to the first Southern primary in South Carolina on Feb. 3 as his chance for another breakthrough.
"Obviously, it's a sad night for Dick Gephardt," Rothenberg said. "If I were in the Dean camp right now, I'd worry about the breadth of his support. We all know he has deep appeal among some Democrats. The question now is the breadth."
Meanwhile, Rothenberg said, "Kerry showed he had this kind of broad support, that he is broadly acceptable."
No matter who eventually wins their party's presidential nomination, the Democrats learned valuable lessons in Iowa that could apply to a Nov. 2 showdown with President Bush.
Going into 2004, Dean had acquired an aura of inevitability based on surprising national fund raising, armies of young Internet-savvy volunteers and support from liberal Democrats upset at the direction in which Bush has taken the country.
But Dean's collapse in Iowa proved that anger and anti-Bush fervor are not enough, even for hard-core Democrats. As the other contenders matched or countered Dean's claims of being a change agent, the former Vermont governor's confrontational personality became more of an issue. In the final days, many Iowans familiar with the differences on issues between the candidates began weighing intangibles such as electability, freshness and genuineness.
And these attributes favored Kerry and Edwards.
Kerry focused on his Vietnam War record and Senate foreign policy experience to appear more presidential. The once-obscure Edwards, still only in his first Senate term, slipped into focus with a relentlessly positive message. It is a lesson, he said, to Democrats who want to beat Bush in the fall.
"A lot of the other candidates have engaged in negative attacks," Edwards said in his Southern drawl after a rally in Greenfield, Iowa. "My positive message has driven through that and that's what's catching on now."
Although they had voted to give Bush authority to use force in Iraq, Gephardt, Kerry and Edwards all have become major critics of how the president launched and prosecuted the war. Dean's powerful appeal to anti-war Democrats was blunted, and some Iowa Democrats with questions on the war accepted the more nuanced arguments from Dean's competitors.
On other issues — such as the need for broad health care reform, ending corporate greed scandals and Bush's foreign policy — the candidates broadly agreed. In an echo of 2000, the four top finishers here fine-tuned a variation of the "people versus the powerful" message that Al Gore used in the closest presidential election in history.
But in their favor, Democrats are the outsiders this time. And the economy, which was humming along four years ago, has yet to produce the jobs that mean financial security to the middle class.
The Democrats' fight will go into hiatus Tuesday night when the focus is on Bush's State of the Union address. A primetime Democratic debate looms Thursday night, and if the rhetoric out of New Hampshire on Monday was any indication, the niceties will wait.
"We are going to welcome back those other candidates from Iowa and we are ready to fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party," Lieberman said Monday night at a rally at the Black Brimmer Bar in Manchester. |
