BY JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 11:01 a.m. EST
Roe v. Dean
Poring over exit-poll data from yesterday's New Hampshire primary, we were especially struck by one fact: John Kerry handily out-polled Howard Dean in every age group--except 18- to 29-year-olds. Dean actually did slightly better than Kerry among the younger voters. But this didn't do Dean much good, for 18- to 29-year-olds made up only 13% of the electorate, vs. 30% for 30- to 45-year-olds and 46% for 45- to 64-year-olds. (We take these numbers from The Wall Street Journal online; link requires subscription and is in PDF format. The Washington Post has a less detailed chart in which some of the numbers are slightly different.)
Why so few young voters? Part of it, of course, is that younger adults tend not to show up at the polls. But part of it as well, as we noted last week, is that they tend not to exist. That's right, Dean once again has fallen victim to the Roe effect. Not that Dean would have won the election had more young voters shown up at the polls, but Kerry would not have dealt him such a trouncing.
Some readers scoffed when we brought this up after Iowa. But the numbers bolster our case. Check out these 2000 census data, which break down the population of New Hampshire by sex and age (in one-year increments). More New Hampshirians were 40 in 2000--meaning they were born in 1960--than any other age. The number. The number takes a sharp drop between ages 35 (1965) and 34 (1966), coinciding with the end of the baby boom (and, perhaps not coincidentally, with the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court established a legal right to purchase contraceptives). Then it declines slowly each year, before undergoing another dramatic drop between ages 28 (1972) and 27 (1973)--just after Roe v. Wade. There does seem to have been a baby boomlet starting in the late 1970s and picking up in the '80s and early '90s, but it's far smaller than the postwar baby boom. Nationwide figures show the same trend.
Because the two political parties have become polarized on abortion, it seems reasonable to assume that more potential Democrats than potential Republicans have been aborted. After all, their would-have-been mothers show through their actions that they agree with the Democratic position on the issue. Result: fewer younger voters in Democratic primaries, as we saw last night, and probably a boost for Republican candidates in the general election. (Newsweek headline: "Bush's Secret Weapon: Young Voters.") This advantage is likely only to increase as the post-Roe babies get older and vote more often--and, in future decades, as their children reach voting age.
Howard Dean's appeal is essentially to adolescent rage, so it's no wonder he would do best among the youngest voters--and thus be hardest hit by the Roe effect. Whatever you think of the morality of abortion, it does seem for the moment to be pushing American politics toward sanity.
A Win-Lose-Lose-Draw-Lose Outcome
Here are the nearly final primary results (99% of precincts reporting):
Kerry 39%
Dean 26%
Clark 13%
Edwards 12%
Lieberman 9%
Kucinich 1%
John Kerry is the winner here--and the only winner. It's a wash for John Edwards, who was never expected to come close to winning New Hampshire and who moves South beginning next week. Everyone else is a loser.
It's hard to see why anyone would vote for Wesley Clark after his dismal showing. If you want a war hero, there's Kerry. If you want a Southerner, there's Edwards. If you want a crackpot, there's Dean (though we'll grant that Clark is more of a crackpot).
It's also hard to see where Dean goes from here. Iowa and New Hampshire were supposed to be his big states, and it's hard to think of any other state except Vermont where he's going to be the favorite. He still has lots of money and can go on for a long time, but how can he possibly win? Apparently having learned the lesson of his Iowa rant, Dean gave a subdued, even boring, speech last night, though there was one notably weird line: "I am tired of being divided by sexual orientation." We understand that voters demand "authenticity," but really, this is just too much information.
Sadly, Joe Lieberman is finished, and even more sadly, everyone knows it but him. Here's what he told his supporters last night (the transcription is ours):
Based on the returns that we've seen tonight, thanks to the people of New Hampshire, we are in a three-way split decision for third place! Now, you and I both know that the national pundits didn't expect this, did they? Matter of fact, this morning a national newspaper put four of the candidates on their front page--not me. But today the people of New Hampshire put me in the ring, and that's where we're gonna stay!
That "you and I both know" was a nice touch. In fairness, it did sound as though there was more than one supporter in the audience. We hate to be cruel--well, OK, actually hate isn't the word--but Lieberman's claim of a "three-way split decision" falls apart under scrutiny. If you ignore the votes for Kerry, Dean and the minor candidates and look only at the race for third place, things look bad for Lieberman:
Clark 27,254 37.6%
Edwards 26.415 36.4%
Lieberman 18,829 26.0%
Total 72,498 100.0%
Lieberman not only finished third in the race for third (i.e., fifth); he lost to both Clark and Edwards almost as badly as Dean lost to Kerry.
One other interesting finding: According to Associated Press figures, two write-in candidates got enough votes in the Democratic primary to be counted: George W. Bush, with 112 votes, and Hillary Clinton, with 54. That's right--President Bush beats Sen. Clinton by more than 2 to 1 among Democrats and independents! If, as William Safire sort of predicts, Hillary gets the nomination at a brokered convention, the president may be headed for the biggest landslide since James Monroe in 1820.
What Would We Do Without Exit Polls?
"Exit Polls: Kerry Voters Keen to Beat Bush"--headline, MSNBC.com, Jan. 27
He Served Where? Are You Serious?
"Like most men who served in Vietnam, Kerry is reluctant to talk about his combat experiences."--Time, Jan. 27
Wacky Wesley
The Weekly Standard's David Tell publishes a bizarre Monday speech by Wesley Clark in its entirety, "just so's nobody thinks I'm being unfair." If you think we're being unfair, go to the link; we're just highlighting the paragraph that struck us as oddest:
I was in one war I came home from on a stretcher with a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. My son was a lieutenant in the Army. I believe in our veterans. I believe in public service. And I led our forces in another war that saved a million and a half people. If you want someone to get us out of a war, you elect a general who's been in a war and knows how little can be accomplished by fighting.
So he "saved a million and a half people" by going to war, and he also "knows how little can be accomplished by fighting"? And he must be awfully ashamed of his son for being a mere lieutenant, like John Kerry.
Franken Sense?
Reader Darren Garnick writes in to defend the actions of Al Franken, which we noted yesterday:
I'm no fan of Franken's views, but I give the guy credit for trying to tackle the LaRouche thugs. I was at the Dean rally in New Hampshire and those guys were not going to leave peacefully. There were no cops around, and polite requests from the Kumbaya-swaying Dean volunteers weren't convincing the LaRouche-heads to leave. One LaRouche heckler screamed his taunts from the balcony, swinging his leg above the crowd as if he were going to jump. Ironically, they were shouting that Dean had no "courage" to criticize Dick Cheney. C'mon--Dean's whole presidential campaign is based on bashing Bush/Cheney. The LaRouche zombies are really really creepy. If I could turn back time, I'd have happily sacrificed my glasses in Franken's noble rumble.
An account in today's Manchester Union Leader corroborates the detail about the balcony.
Homer Nods
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan last March, not last month as we said in an item yesterday (since corrected).
Just in the Nick of Time
"U.N. Says It's Willing to Go to Iraq"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 27
Duh, We Dunno
"Who Is Accountable for Lack of Intelligence?"--headline, Advocate Messenger (Danville, Ky.), Jan. 27
Zero-Tolerance Watch
Three boys at Bemiss Elementary School in Spokane, Wash., have been suspended for bringing "toy guns" to school, the Spokane Spokesman-Review reports. Now at first glance this may not seem wholly unreasonable--after all, children have been shot by policemen who mistook toy guns for the real thing.
But there wasn't much danger of that happening in this case. Terry Wilson-Spence, whose eight-year-old son was among the suspended students, tells the paper that "the toy guns her son carried in his pocket were for GI Joe action figures. The guns are from only 1 inch to 3 inches long--half the size of a pencil."
Who Knew?
"Teenagers Still Have Unprotected Sex, Report Shows"--headline, Dallas Morning News, Jan. 26
A Trial Will Determine if the Driver Was at Fault
"Golf Club Retains Lawyer"--headline, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 27
You Only Live Twice
"Man Dies in Hospital After Jail Suicide"--headline, Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal, Jan. 28
What a Bunch of Hot Air
The Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader looks at John Kerry's record on "global warming" and unearths this quote from May 2000: "In Massachusetts, we always looked forward to fall because the ponds froze over and we could play hockey. Today, you are lucky if the ponds freeze in northern New Hampshire. Up there . . . I do not wear a coat until after November now."
This quote makes the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, look rather silly, given that he's just been campaigning in New Hampshire during a bitterly cold winter. But the global-warming zealots aren't deterred. Today's New York Times carries an op-ed piece by one Paul R. Epstein, who claims--we're not making this up--that global warming causes frigid weather.
When the weather gets warmer, that's because of global warming. When the weather gets colder, that's because of global warming too. "Global warming" thus is unfalsifiable; adherents insist all contrary evidence actually supports the theory. This isn't a scientific hypothesis; it's a conspiracy theory.
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