Pick a Theory

Just because I don't want to be the ONLY weblog on the planet to not offer an opinion on the Iowa Caucus here's my two cents. Howard Dean lost.

This comes as no big surprise Howard Dean was not supposed to win Iowa. This had been the consensus opinion for a while. Where the consensus opinion was wrong was in predicting Dean to finish a close second to Dick Gephardt. The surprise is that Dean came in A distant third behind Kerry and Edwards. Dick Gephardt wound up in forth with numbers that just barely kept him from being listed as other.

There are so many theories that can be thrown at this to try to explain it away. First there is the Media Bias Theory. This theory holds that the media elevated Dean to a frontrunner status he did not have or deserve. They did this because he was the most virulently anti-bush candidate running. This allowed them the freedom to print and broadcast harsh anti-Bush rhetoric for months without anyone pointing a finger and saying look at how biased they are. Their defense is that they were just reporting what the leading candidate was saying. That they were just doing their jobs as journalists. Of course in order for this to work, for them not to have egg on their faces when Howard began to lose primaries, they would have to start letting some of the wind out of his sails a week or two before Iowa Caucuses. Nothing big, just a little less than positive coverage here, a little more focus on what his opponents were saying about him there. They'd probably start using some of the more psychotically angry looking photos as well.

The Media Bias Theory dovetails nicely with the Howard Dean Theory

Dean blamed the loss on attacks he suffered as the one-time front-runner. His rivals pummeled him with criticism, saying he didn't have the foreign policy experience or temperament to lead the country.

"We were pretty much the target of everybody for a long time," Dean said on CNN's Larry King Live. "And it's hard to sustain that." (From Fox news)

Dean's theory amounts to people said bad thing about me and it cost me votes. There had to have been a lot of mud being slung around Iowa, and a lot of it had to stick if it took Howard from clear frontrunner to third behind two campaigns that a month ago were considered DOA.

Then there is the Al Gore Kiss of Death Theory. Whatever you think about the 2000 election mess in Florida, the party faithful can't be too happy with Big Al. For them it comes down to either a. He was not good enough to beat a moron like Bush; b. He was not good enough to keep a moron like Bush from stealing the election; c He was not good enough to steal an election form a moron like Bush. No matter how they slice it Gore ran against Bush, Bush is the White House. This makes them unhappy to the point where a Gore endorsement is major negative. (I like this theory mostly because my loathing of Al Gore knows almost no bounds)

Of course there is the Voter Theory of the Dean defeat. This theory states that there are basically three types of voters who participate in the primary/caucus process. There are idea voters, party voters and their close cousins the pragmatic idealists. The idea voters are the candidate loyalists. They love their candidate and they live, breath, eat, sleep and drink his message. They are the true Deaniacs, Kerryites, and Edwardians. Their candidate could be seen on live television having sex with farm animals while smoking crack and beating their children and they would still vote for their guy. The party voters are those people who don't care so much what a candidate says as long as the nominee is someone they think can be elected. They are not measuring Democrat against Democrat they are measuring Democrat against Bush and voting for whomever they think either has a chance of winning or at least not embarrassing The Party in defeat. The segment that will probably have the most impact under this theory is the pragmatic idealist voters. These are the people who get excited by a charismatic energetic candidate like Howard Dean. These are the people who in polling before a primary are Dean supporters but when the time comes to make the commitment of voting, they can't follow through. They re-evaluate their opinion and vote for whomever they think either has a chance of winning or at least not embarrassing The Party in defeat. Trying to explain this discrepancy between the entrance poll and the exit poll results in the Media Bias Theory and the Howard Dean Theory.

Lastly, there is the big one. The Conspiracy Theory. This theory posits that anything that happens is the Democratic nomination process is being carefully orchestrated by Bill and Hillary Clinton for the purpose of positioning the party for her 2008 campaign. This theory suggests that all the other theories are wrong. No media bias, the polling numbers were accurate. It wasn't the negative coverage, and it wasn't voter switching. It was all the machinations of Bill and Hillary. It is possible that Bill and Hillary are behind the Al Gore Kiss of Death. Step one of the conspiracy was to take Dean down in Iowa and to do it in a way that throws some serious sand in the gears of the Dean machine. Knocking him from frontrunner to an also-ran third does that. Step two is to make sure their boy Clark wins in New Hampshire. According to The Conspiracy Theory, the Clintons are arranging to have Clark win the nomination so that the real reasons he was fired form his NATO post will sink his candidacy moments before the election (think October surprise). Bush wins an easy re-election and Hillary can look to 2008 without the specter of facing a Democrat incumbent.

One of these theories explains what just happened in Iowa and what is about to happen in New Hampshire. I'll theorize - you decide.

UPDATE:I forgot to include the WWE Smackdown Raw Theory Which... well just listen and you'll understand.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:18 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment