Sometimes a Great (Southern) Notion
On Monday, voters in Iowa will drive to their fire halls, school gymnasiums and community centers and mark the beginning of the end for many of the eight Democratic presidential candidates.
By nightfall, a brutal and stark reality will have set in. Careers will have been ended, egos shattered, mouths silenced.
This, in fact, is how it will go:
Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean, having duked it out for first-place honors, cross the finish line close to one another. But Gephardt, despite a good showing, winds up looking like burned toast. Iowa is all about expectations, and to beat expectations, Gephardt must not only have finished first but way first. When that doesn’t happen, pundits write him off.
The story on Dean, meanwhile, is that he finishes strong, and will only look stronger the next week in New Hampshire. But the real star of the day is John Edwards, whose endorsement from The Des Moines Register helps him ride a tiny little boomlet into a surprisingly strong third- or fourth-place finish. As reporters file their stories from Iowa, first paragraphs go to Dean and Gephardt. But the second paragraph is all about Edwards’ “stronger-than-expected finish” that slingshots him down the trail.
John Kerry then takes his painfully Brahmin Massachusetts accent into friendlier Northern territory, still fighting to dislodge Dean from the No. 1 spot. But as New Hampshire voters go to the polls (Jan. 27), and Kerry winds up in a distant second or third, he is forced to acknowledge he’s doomed. Gephardt, meanwhile, makes it official: He’s out. Then there’s Joe Lieberman, whose pious earnestness has flat-lined. That said, a consistent theme in the coverage immediately following New Hampshire is what a nice guy Joe was and how sorry everyone was that Gore had screwed him.
Needless to say, the days after New Hampshire find Carol Moseley Braun, perhaps the most eloquent of the bunch (but nobody’s idea of a winner), telling the two or three reporters at her press conference that she’s quitting. Dennis Kucinich goes home, opens a used bookstore. Rev. Al Sharpton, whose sense of humor during the campaign succeeded in masking a dangerous inner core (Tawana Brawley anyone?), says he’ll continue in the contest. Only nobody is listening.
Also in New Hampshire’s wake, two important developments emerge. First is that Dean wins solidly. Second is that Edwards and Wesley Clark become the only two other legitimate candidates in the race. For Edwards’ part, voters in New Hampshire come to discover that the guy isn’t just a baby-faced puffcake. Clark, meanwhile, is able to authoritatively claim what many have been saying for months: that he’s the real deal. On top of that, both Clark and Edwards, regardless of their finishes in New Hampshire, are also able to say, “We’re headed to our home bases for the next couple of weeks. See you in Dixie.”
At this point—and this is where our honest predictions end and our fictional portrayal commences—the phone calls from a tiny office in Harlem begin. It’s Bill Clinton on the line. He calls Bob Strauss. He calls Vernon Jordan. And before long, the message goes forth to the Democratic Leadership Committee, Democratic Southern governors (Phil Bredesen included), that Edwards and Clark must unite to stop Howard Dean from taking the party into a death march. The suggestion is made: Clark and Edwards campaign as a ticket. Edwards agrees to the number-two spot on the ticket, thereby exceeding even his expectations for where politics would ultimately take him in so short a time period. And war-hero Clark becomes the presidential candidate, thereby sending Republican Party operatives into orange-level panic mode. It’s Clark-Edwards and the more moderate Southern base of the party taking the fight against Dean’s now exposed liberal wing.
On Feb. 3, it’s South Carolina and Oklahoma. Four days later, it’s Michigan and Washington. On Feb. 10, it’s Tennessee and Virginia.
Clark-Edwards. Sounds good, looks decent. Otherwise, please say hello to George Bush, the next president of the United States.
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