For 'soft' voters, hard choices in quest to beat Bush
By Thomas Oliphant, 1/24/2004
CLAREMONT, N.H.
THEY'RE BACK, the real stars of Iowa, hanging over New Hampshire like a storm cloud from the White Mountains, the outcome of the New Hampshire primary in their hands.
People who take polls for a living list them as undecided, but they are more than that. They are leaning one way but say they could easily switch allegiance. They are diligently researching candidate positions, chatting continuously with friends; for this late in the game they often profess amazement at the soft sand under their feet.
They were the delight of Iowa, offering a chance to observe voter decision-making in mid-process. And now they're back. I've met them on the fringe of a Howard Dean appearance here, in the overflow room for a John Edwards show in Portsmouth, at the edge of a hall in Pembroke where John Kerry spoke, and in the back of the American Legion post in Rochester while Wesley Clark droned on.
They are a joy to talk to, engaging in their resistance to poll-driven, media-oversimplified categorization, but the temptation to try is too great.
In size, they dwarf the officially "undecided" in the polls. Off my experience this week, they are on a par with the 40-50 percent of caucus goers in Iowa down the stretch who were in play -- soft voters in a supposedly granite state.
In composition, they come with a wrinkle in New Hampshire because Independents can vote here and have a history of moving almost as a bloc at the end. In the blizzard of polling data, these crucial voters make up roughly 30 percent of the samples; if they make up a lot more or a lot less of the voting pool on Tuesday, the current polls are meaningless.
In views, they do not strike me as all that diverse. For the most part, they did not like the US invasion of Iraq last March, and some did not like it with a purple passion. Over time, however, that anger has changed into a mood of determination to help elect a new president this year. It has also been superceded by a more powerful desire for a president who understands their concerns about economic issues that directly affect their hard-working lives, and who is most likely to beat President Bush.
In candidate terms, this means that the Dean bubble of 2003 really has burst. Far more than temperament is involved. To the extent the Dean candidacy has continued to be about attitude and emotion, it has missed this shift in sentiment and is thus far failing to connect at the kitchen table.
Especially after Clark's weak performance in Thursday's debate, the loose voters are having trouble fixing on the former general. His attraction was as the distinguished non-Dean. Now that Dean looms less large, so does Clark because he is still trying to introduce himself to an audience more interested in how he intends to affect their lives.
They tend to say, as they did in Iowa, that they are thinking about the two Johns -- Kerry and, to a lesser extent, Edwards. This is reflected in the typically larger and more engaged audiences that the two men draw to events that are much more lively, even fun, than those hosted by Dean and Clark.
The Kerry phenomenon remains real because his focus continues to be primarily on the economic concerns (including the cost of health care) shared by ordinary Americans. The Edwards phenomenon remains incipient, primarily because he remains both an extraordinarily appealing figure and a less well-known one whose fresh face both attracts and gives pause. One of the wild cards in this campaign, as it was in Iowa, is what the soft voters who really like this guy will do in the end.
I always thought one of the other wild cards would be Joe Lieberman. He did well in the debate, he is known and respected, and yet he languishes. I thought he might get another look, but his endorsement by the conservative Manchester Union Leader was less a spark than a reminder of New Hampshire's quirky pitfalls.
No sooner had he been supposedly blessed than the state party chairwoman, Kathleen Sullivan, threw her one penalty flag of the week, criticizing him for cozying up to an institution that progressives in the state have to battle every day of every year.
In addition, his certainty about Iraq clashes with the ambivalence the soft voters sincerely evince.
This is the weekend historically for the late surge and the late hit that often have decided the New Hampshire outcome. This is when Gary Hart threw his ax into the center of a target, when Ed Muskie cried, when George H. W. Bush sneak-attacked Bob Dole, when Dole attacked Lamar Alexander and Pat Buchanan.
This time, the issue is how that big cloud of interesting people bursts as they finally decide on their two biggest questions: Who connects to their real lives and who can beat Bush?
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.
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