Tacitus and Kevin Drum are wrong.
How so? No major-party candidate is ever "unelectable". If you doubt that, just look to Ronald Reagan's candidacy in 1980. The man was the laughingstock of the intelligentsia until, just one week before election day, he roared out of nowhere in the polls and wound up taking Jimmy Carter's Presidency away from him. In 1948, no one thought that obscure nebbish Harry Truman (who never really earned his Presidency) could possibly beat the charismatic Thomas Dewey, especially in a time of military uncertainty and economic doldrums.
Let's also not forget those who thought that an effete dilettante like Woodrow Wilson could never beat the hearty and well-liked William Howard Taft.
Mind you, I will repeat something I've said before: if Howard Dean were the Democratic nominee, and the Republicans were to dig up the rotting corpse of Thomas Dewey to oppose him, I would vote Dewey. Not because I'm a loyal Republican, either. In fact, I can name issues on which I'm in agreement with Dean, and have no love of Bush. But no matter: on certain fundamentally important issues for me, I'd vote for the dead man over Dean.
But what I think doesn't matter. It's what voters think that matters. And the notion that anyone is "unelectable" is foolish, especially if he's won either the Democratic or Republican nomination.
Still and all: were I a still-loyal Democrat, I've be voting for Clark, Lieberman, or Gephardt before Dean.
I agree it's awfully early to say anyone is unelectable. Goldwater was pretty close, as was McGovern. Despite the rhetoric of some on the right, Dean is not that level of extremist.
I'd have to go back and look at the polling, but I recall Reagan pushing ahead a bit earlier in the 1980 race. He clearly won the big debate ("Are you better off than you were four years ago?" "There he goes again. . .") and Carter was extremely unpopular. Only the presence of a second Republican (John Anderson) made it even a contest.
Your memory is excellent, James, except on one point:
The debate between Carter and Reagan occurred one week before election day, and more or less undid Carter.
Which means that your memory is correct, and so is mine. ;-)
Keep in mind that the Howard Dean we love (or despise) today may little resemble the Howard Dean that emerges after his nomination. The latter may be far more centrist, and possibly a very attractive candidate to the general electorate.
Saying that Howard Dean- or anyone else- is "unelectable" at this point is a bit over the top.
Dean,
On the other hand, I remember very clearly being dead sure that Reagan would win, even when the post-convention polls showed Carter up substantially over Reagan. I was, of course, only 15 in 1980, but by listening to the adults, I never came across anyone who had anything other than utter contempt for Carter - even one friend's dad who still had the McGovern campaign button prominently displayed on the living room wall was fed up with Carter. People who earn that level of dislike don't tend to win popularity contests.
Anyways...
There is, of course, a way for Dean to win - in the theoretical world, Dean could hold on to all of Gore's States and win AZ in addition; bingo, he's at 270 electoral votes and you and I are forming the American Liberation Front.
Possible, but not very likely - because to defeat this Deaniac dream, all GW has to do is win IA...which, I believe, he lost by a couple thousand votes in 2000 and which has had a large uptick in GOP voter registration over the past 3 years; bingo, Dean is back below 270.
This also pre-supposes that the race is close. With the economy improving, GW is well-positioned to put at least five percentage points between himself and even the best Democratic candidate (Gephardt, eg). Well-positioned even without a lot of effort and even with other things going wrong for him - with a lot of effort and things going GW's way, then its easy to see 7-10 percentage points separating the two (Bush and Gephardt). Add in the Dean effect, the slavering of anti-Bush hatred....15 points? 20?
Dave,
But if Dean doesn't stay the party of Bush-hatred, then the Bush-haters will either stay home or vote for the Green candidate. My prediction of Bush's win is not based upon personalities, but upon the electoral realities on the ground - the left hates Bush and demands a standard-bearer who relentlessly attacks what the left considered the absolute and irretrivable evil of President Bush; you get people like that, they're not amenable to reason. Dean tacks right, then his left goes elsewhere. This is not a year where the Democrats have a skilled Clinton to keep the left on the ranch.
Mark,
Yeah, I thought of that, and it's a good point; but on the other hand, Dean could be calculating that the votes he picks up moving rightward, in a very carefully contrived way, could exceed the left-wing votes he'd be losing. All I'm saying is, don't count the bastard out yet. It ain't over til it's over.
"...bingo, he's at 270 electoral votes and you and I are forming the American Liberation Front."
And that is indeed what it would take to get out of the mess he'd create for us. Sign me up, please.
Enh. Nixon said that to win the Republican party's nomination, you went hard right, and then when you won the nomination, you tacked as hard as you possibly could to the left.
So don't count your chickens just yet, Mark.
"But if Dean doesn't stay the party of Bush-hatred, then the Bush-haters will either stay home or vote for the Green candidate. My prediction of Bush's win is not based upon personalities, but upon the electoral realities on the ground - the left hates Bush and demands a standard-bearer who relentlessly attacks what the left considered the absolute and irretrivable evil of President Bush; you get people like that, they're not amenable to reason. Dean tacks right, then his left goes elsewhere. This is not a year where the Democrats have a skilled Clinton to keep the left on the ranch."
Mark, I disagree. The "haters" on both sides will cancel each other out. So will the staunch partisans. The remaining group will decide based upon their and the nations' condition next summer and, especially, how the Democrat stacks up against Bush in the debates.
Dean, Lieberman is too short and too ugly to win the telegenics competition with Bush. Go with Gephardt.
Actually, if Governor Doc tries to portray himself as a centrist after the Demvention, I am confident Karl Rove, et al, will keep him from getting away with it.
Too many juicy soundbites of Governor Doc sounding like Tom Hayden and George McGovern rolled up into one. That's what the opposition-research guys call "ammunition," and to people who don't already have a firm opinion of Governor Doc, it's going to make a huge impact.
"and, especially, how the Democrat stacks up against Bush in the debates"
The political effects of the debates are vastly overstated. What most people hear about the debates is "Gore won", end of story.
Dean does have to moderate, and I fully expect him to even before the convention. Even mainstream Democrat voters won't go for his Iraq rhetoric, it's strictly for the activists. The left will accept him moving right because he's still their best choice. After the last election fewer people are going to vote third parties.
"The political effects of the debates are vastly overstated. What most people hear about the debates is "Gore won", end of story."
The trouble is those "people" are the damned "liberal" journalists who are analyzing what was actually said. Of course Gore won. Though that's not what people who voted for Bush were evaluating. Besides, more people voted for Gore so, what was your point again?
Why, Dean, you really are a Demorat. They sometimes really do run dead men for office,,,,and win.
Gore won which debate? On my scorecard, he lost all 3 and Lieberman clearly lost his with Dick Cheney. One former Clinton aid even remarked, after being told that Gore blamed Clinton for his loss, "I don't recall Pres. Clinton being there when he lost all 4 debates."
Can you clue us in to the criteria on your "scorecard", mg? As far as I can tell, he came off as too smarmy to be likeable. Why did he lose it for you?
It's way too early yet to be writing anyone into, or out of, the script.
In the world we live in, almost ANYTHING can happen. And already has.
Frankly, I wasn't making a point about who won, only that it's a sidebar.
Gore won, Bush won, who cares? Most people don't watch and it isn't an important issue to them.
IMHO the presidential debates are not worth much and they should be dropped. So much rides on them and they are almost never won or lost on substance, but on some general feeling, a one-liner, or whatever sound--bite/gaffe the media picks up and replays, over and over. If there had been no debates, I believe Gore would be (shudder) president today.
RE my gibe that Gore lost all 3 debates: It was more a lasting impression than a point-by-point score. The 1st debate Gore lost with his heavy sighs and attempts to be assertive that made him appear rude. The 2nd debate he was so polite that he seemed weak and embarrassed for his behavior in the first debate. And in the 3rd he did better but then he just couldn’t stop himself from walking right up to Gov Bush, I guess in a lame attempt to intimidate his opponent. Bush dismissed him with a curt nod. So, yeah, I think Gore lost all 3 debates.
Dean,
I'm up to my neck in chicken feathers here, buddy.
I'm not a rich man - but I'll lay money on it; $20 against your $1 that Bush wins, $10 against your $1 that Bush wins by better than 10 percentage points.
Bet?
We'll let the absolutely honest (and apparantly saintly) Mrs. Esmay hold the money. Just tell me where to send the $30 (and don't tell the putative Mrs. Noonan...she don't cotton to me betting these days - a really rough reality in Las Vegas).
Dave and Shep,
Bush doesn't have any haters in his camp - this is not any holier-than-thou GOP boosterism; its just that the GOP has no need to hate these days - we're on top. The only thing which would make GOP hate a factor would be Hillary jumping into the race (so, brace yourself for 2008). Dean is propelled by the leftist haters - he wouldn't be front-runner save for them; he owes his entirely political existence as a national candidate to the hate-filled Democratic left. He can trim a bit, but he can't tack away from the left without betraying them and losing them....Clinton, in 1992, never actually came down on the side of the far left - he had aides, sotto-voice, saying that they should back Clinton and he'd be much more liberal than he was on the stump once in office; it was partially a scam, but it worked. Dean doesn't have this ability.
Its pretty much a sure-thing that GW will get at least 95% of the voters who voted for him in 2000; 95% of 49% is 47% (46.55%, if you want to be technical); GW's task it to pile up three percentage points, about three million voters. Methinks there's three million votes in incumbancy + improving economy + wartime. Dean, right now, can rely upon half of Nader's vote plus the Democratic core (these days, about 37% of the electorate); that gets Dean up to 39% or so...how's he gonna get that ten or eleven million more votes? And, can he do it without losing three million on the other hand? Pick up as much as 14 million votes, just to make it a close shave? Which he still might lose given the GOP's electoral college advantage?
Not gonna happen - unless GW is caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl, he's going to be re-elected next year. The only question is by how much and will he have enough coat-tails to really take over the Senate?
Oh, the caveat:
If Hillary does ride to the rescue of the Democrats then things will get really interesting...first off, she'll flatten Dean; but this might lead to a Deaniac walk-out from the convention and an entirely split liberal/left vote...on the other hand, the Clinton magic still might hold and she'll carry a united Democratic Party into the general election...then it will become a matter of how well Hillary plays in Peoria.
The people who think Dean can successfully run to the right after getting the nomination are forgetting one big thing: The internet.
Two big things: the internet and the common ownership of handheld video recorders.
Three big things: internet, video recorders, and the ease of creating and saving and making freely available and viewable on demand of avi/mov/mpg files.
Every time Dean tries to run right, somebody somewhere will pull out a clip of him spouting a hard-left position on that exact same issue, and it will flood across the internet.
Even in 2002, video clips were not readily and freely available, nor quick & easy to store & download.
From now on, politicians will know that the red light(s) in the audience are taking down his words that can and will be used against him for the next 20 years.
Not to mention the two little things known as 9-11 and WOT.
Picture a 60 second ad, panning across torture chambers and mass graves. Panning across a field of toddler skeletons with bullet holes in skulls. Pan to a field of fighter jets being dug up out of the sand.
Pan to pictures of Iraqis holding up pictures saying "George Bush, thank you!"
The last 5 seconds of the ad would show Dean (or whoever is the Dem), saying "This is the man who said that we should have let Saddam keep doing this."
If Hillary enters the race, people who never donated to a political campaign in their lives will pull out their checkbooks. Unlike Bill, she doesn't have the charm and charisma to overcome the visceral hatred of her opponents.
Mark says
Dean, right now, can rely upon half of Nader's vote...
According to the exit polls, the vast majority of Greens would have stayed home rather than vote for anyone but Nader. The Green vote may be lost with or without a Green candidate.
fred:
"Picture a 60 second ad..."
Hmmm. So you are seeing, possibly, a reenactment of the now-famous Democratic Party video about Barry Goldwater and the atom bomb, but the other way around?
This would be (nearly) poetic justice... :)