Some notes on Iowa and elsewhere:
Dean has been heard joking that he can’t raise a damn dollar from anyone who is straight. This is strange because Dean really didn’t want to deal with the issue of gay marriages, but once presented it he handled it with class and restraint.
The buzz in Iowa is that Dean is coming on strong amongst the quirky intellectual activists. Much as Bill Bradley took communities like Fairfield and Mt. Vernon, Dean is making inroads in such places as well. He is a straight shooter and people naturally like the guy. And Iowa and Vermont face similar issues in both health care and education. The real question is how well he can handle Iraq. To date he is the most skeptical of the Dems running. Of course, he is no more skeptical than Jim Leach has been. If he were to make it to the General Election, this might become an issue.
Gephardt is in full swing from the sounds of it and the consensus (of a small group of friends) seems to be regardless of whether he takes back the House or not, he is going. Part of this may be that if he wins House, he will be barely able to govern anyway. Spending your days trying to cajole Ralph Hall over his hearing aid isn’t anyone’s idea of fun.
This creates an interesting problem for Edwards. If Gephardt is in the race, unions go to him and possibly Gore (more in a sec). Dean potentially takes the activists and quirky intellectual crowd–a not so small crowd in caucuses in Iowa. That leaves little space for anyone else. Making it more difficult is New Hampshire where Kerry and Dean have natural inroads and Gephardt and Gore get the organization people. Where does Edwards go? Dean has the NRA record on top of all of this and the gun nuts in New Hampshire are Republicans who backed Smith.
Edwards, probably the strongest in the general is squeezed out if he doesn’t come up with a strategy to neutralize some of these factors.
Gore both is and has an interesting problem. And he is a problem besides being a pedantic pain in the ass. He beat Bradley with unions. With Gephardt in the race, he can’t do as well with them and his biggest supporter last time was Harkin who has already backed away a bit. So who does Gore target? And he performed poorly in New Hampshire. Save John McCain’s upset and he comes out in a battle. Instead, Bradley contemplated robbing a bank to get attention.
Overall, this leaves Gore and Edwards out for now. They may well find a niche, but in Gore’s case that is good news for the Democrats. In Edwards case it means a new strategy has to be devised that can pull atypical caucus goers into the caucus. I’m not betting on this working, but combatting hog lots, a North Carolina issue as well, would almost have to be at the center of any Democratic rural strategy. Or Jesse Ventura, but I don’t think Edwards can be that inappropriate that often.
And Dean will be giving the keynote at the Iowa AFL-CIO meeting. I suppose he was a good compromise so as to not offend the other potential competitors.
Kerry isn’t getting anywhere from what people can tell. He is aloof and culturally a bad fit for a Midwestern state that bases its decisions on how many times you meet the candidate and whether they remember you. He also may have problems attracting a staff that never could meet his expectations. Given he has a natural advantage in New Hampshire, this may not matter too much–except his aloofness doesn’t play well out of the Northeast.
In Florida, rumor is Ed Diaz is going to win his race North of Orlando