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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (25396)	1/20/2004 9:19:31 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793759

Well written column by Oliphant THOMAS OLIPHANT The gamble works for Edwards and Kerry By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist, 1/20/2004 AND SO, New Hampshire, say hello to the two Johns -- Kerry and Edwards -- who may not have needed airplanes to fly to New Hampshire from Iowa early this morning. Proving that nicer guys sometimes finish at the top, the two people given the least chance of winning the caucuses turned out to dominate them last night. Even more impressive, their domination -- and close competition with each other -- occurred at the climax of a month during which they were given no chance of doing what their perseverance in fact produced. For John Kerry, the gamble worked. Betting the farm in Iowa has produced a slingshot effect for his candidacy into New Hampshire. If he behaves there this week like he behaved in Iowa the last two weeks -- nicely and with his focus on domestic issues -- he could easily repeat his performance, Wesley Clark or no Wesley Clark. In many respects, what John Edwards of North Carolina has done is even more impressive and amazing -- literally out of nowhere, propelled by a surprise newspaper endorsement and then by the unsurprising strength of his personal appeal and populist tone. Once again the voters in Iowa have ended up performing their quadrennial task -- winnowing the field of presidential candidates for New Hampshire's benefit if not always edification -- but what a stunning, surprising and educational bit of winnowing they turned out to do. Upsetting the applecarts carefully arranged by the conventional wisdom in politics just two weeks ago, they not only gave a respectful, sad but definitive thumbs down to the candidacy of the person who won there in 1988 -- Representative Dick Gephardt -- they also rejected the version of Howard Dean who showed up there last spring as the embodiment of alleged national fury at the status quo in general, and the war in Iraq and George Bush in particular. There is another Howard Dean -- the guy who governed Vermont rather well for more than a decade from the center and contributed positively to national policy debates. There is a TV commercial about that Howard Dean running in New Hampshire. If that guy actually shows up there this morning, he may have a chance next week. But the guy who showed up in Iowa overstayed his welcome. The more he lashed out at fellow Democrats for having been cowed by President Bush, the more he excoriated them for caving in to Republican pressure on domestic and foreign policy issues alike, the more he decried the "Washington insiders" among them ready to cut deals at the public's expense -- the less people liked him. The best evidence of the extent to which Dean and the media's horserace-fixated "experts" miscalculated was in the poll of Democrats as they entered caucuses last night, just prior to dividing up for the final results. It turned out that this was indeed a crowd that opposed last year's invasion of Iraq -- more than 70 percent of the Democrats sampled indicated just that. However, the fabled anger that was supposed to be sweeping America didn't register last night. Only 15 percent of those surveyed identified Iraq as the issue most important to them. This was the only significant chunk of last night's electorate that Dean dominated; he got about 40 percent of the comparatively small slice of the voters. On other matters once considered important to the alleged Dean phenomenon, the caucus-goers turned out to be quite different than predicted by Dean's people. For example, half of them were first-time participants, but this supposedly crucial part of the Dean coalition was in fact divided almost equally among Dean, Kerry and Edwards. He also showed no particular strength among younger voters, and he got basically clobbered among the third of the Iowa universe that is over 65. The swiftness of Dean's demise in Iowa can been seen in the fact that roughly 40 percent of the caucus attenders said they made up their minds whom to support within the last seven days, and among this surprisingly large group, Kerry and Edwards each got a third while the onetime frontrunners' Dean and Gephardt got 15 and 10 percent respectively. This was an issue-oriented electorate, but instead of the war, it was the economy, education, jobs and health care -- kitchen table issues vital to ordinary working families -- that mattered most, and Dean's war fixation and process slogans about taking back the country did not resonate among them. As for Gephardt, he could only dominate among those voters who considered America's trade policies to be the most important issue. Unfortunately for him, that turned out to be barely five percent of the people who showed up last night. Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.