False Positive
by Jonathan Chait
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 02.11.04
The message of the night is that John Kerry has proven his electability and all-around national appeal by winning two Southern primaries. I'm not buying it.
On CNN, Judy Woodruff voiced the prevalent view when she asserted that Kerry "won against two Southerners who said, 'Vote for me, I'm one of you.'" This sentence made it sound as if beating two Southerners is some particularly strong achievement--beating three Southerners, one supposes, would be more amazing still. But of course the fact that there were two Southerners in the race made it easier, not harder, for Kerry, because it split the vote of moderates and conservatives who were attracted to John Edwards and Wesley Clark.
Kerry's true "Southern problem" is not that he couldn't win a Democratic primary. It's that he can't win over Southerners in the general election. And it's not so much that Democrats need to win in the South per se--although being competitive in places like Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina would make things a whole lot easier. The real issue is that Democrats need to attract voters in culturally Southern places, which include parts of Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and other swing states. Talking about "the South" is useful shorthand for winning over these groups of voters.
And tonight's results don't put that issue to rest. The Democratic primary is not reflective of the general electorate--it attracts, by definition, voters inclined to support Democrats in the fall. When George W. Bush in 2000 won, say, the California primary, it hardly proved his ability to compete in that state in November. (Bush went on to lose California by 12 points.)
Most important, Kerry won Virginia and Tennessee under circumstances in which losing would have been nearly impossible. He has ridden a wave of favorable publicity. Nearly every article about the campaign has underscored that his nomination is inevitable. His opponents have not attacked him, and have not been able to afford much in the way of television advertising. In fact just about the only way his opponents have gotten their name out to the public is through media coverage that inevitably centers on the theme of why they're losing and how soon they'll drop out. Under such circumstances, how on Earth could Kerry not win?
A better measure of Kerry's potential strengths can be gleaned by looking at how he matches up against Bush in polls. On the surface, of course, he looks pretty good. In some polls he's had a five- or seven-point lead. This week's Time magazine shows Kerry down by two to Bush. But of course right now Kerry remains an empty vessel into which voters can pour their hopes. Just about the only thing voters know about him is that he served in Vietnam. He has an extensive liberal voting record that has not yet been presented to the voters. Given his wooden personality--even admirers describe Kerry's speeches as average at best--there's little reason to think he can withstand the inevitable barrage. You can't talk about Vietnam every day until November.
By way of comparison, consider when George W. Bush was at a similar point in his trajectory. The proper comparison would not be after the first few weeks of primaries, because Bush's tussle with McCain, when he visited Bob Jones University and defined himself as an arch-conservative, harmed his general election standing. No, the proper comparison would be the George W. Bush of 1999, who had benefited from flattering media attention and, like Kerry now, remained largely an abstraction to most voters. At that point Bush had a massive lead over Al Gore. The campaign, which brought unflattering aspects of Bush to voters' attention, diminished that lead to the point where Bush lost the popular vote. The comparison is this: Bush began with a huge lead. Kerry begins essentially tied. If this is his high-water mark--and it's hard to see how it could not be--that bodes ill for the Democrats.
There's one more Bush analogy that may be instructive. During the GOP primary, polls showed that GOP voters thought Bush would be more likely than John McCain to defeat Al Gore. To any objective observer this sentiment was simply insane--McCain had far more support among moderates and even liberals than Bush, and could have benefited from the cultural backlash against Clintonism without being dragged down by Bush's unpopular domestic agenda. I remember asking Slate's Will Saletan how voters could possibly be so stupid. Will told me to look at it from the voters' point of view: All they had heard about Bush for a year was that he was raising ungodly sums of money, winning over the party establishment, and trouncing his foes. Why wouldn't he seem like the strongest candidate?
I think the notion that Kerry is the Democrats' best hope for beating Bush is essentially the same fallacy. Kerry has benefited from a self-sustaining bubble--the same kind of bubble that nearly propelled Howard Dean to the nomination. If the primaries went on forever, the bubble would eventually pop. But since the process is going to end, probably very soon, Kerry will survive without having his electability truly tested.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at TNR. |
