« Dan Reeves | Main | Mouse Trap »
November 10, 2003
Logical Flaw
Jonathan Chait has written one of many columns detailing the aftermath of Dean's ill-worded Confederate Flag remarks. (Saying 'guys with gunracks in their trucks' would have been soooo much better.) However, I find one flaw with the solid-South logic used by so many pundits.
Chait says:
- ...This is one of [many reasons] Dean would be squashed like a bug in the general election ... Bush could take the South for granted and concentrate all his resources on battleground states like Pennsylvania.
If Bush is going to win the South anyway, couldn't Dean skip it (just like Bush) and concentrate all of his resources on Pennsylvania as well.
Afterall, any Democrat gets to skip New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois, which, last time I checked, have more large media outlets than Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas combined. Chait's (and the national CW) logic may be completely wrong. A candidate who can compete in the South (Clark, Edwards, maybe Kerry) can do so with much less money in electoral vote rich Georgia, Tennesee, North Carolina and Virginia than Bush can in California. Those four Southern states have about the same amount of votes as California, or New York + New Jersey.
I'm not saying a Democrat has to win the South (or be competitive there) to win the Presidency. There's a good argument to be made that someone like Dean can carry the "Gore" states, plus New Hampshire, plus any two out of West Virginia, Arkansas, Ohio, Arizona and Nevada and still win the election. But it seems to me that were a Southern Democrat, like Clark, to be nominated, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, West Virginia, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Nevada and Arizona are much lower hanging fruit than Pennsylvania, Michigan and California are for Bush. I think the more Democrats, especially those voting on Super Tuesday, take this into consideration, the more likely it is that Clark becomes the nominee.
Posted by Chris at November 10, 2003 08:27 PM
Comments
How close was PA last time? Bush has a shot there, he tried to by it with that (flagrant violation of his supposed "principles") steel tarriffs stuff, and withoput studying it I think PA is close. They've got two GOP senators, one very conservative, the other liberal but HE is being challenged from the right next year (that's right the GOP is allowing a contest to a sitting Senator in a close Senate) I do agree though that the South, the states you mention anyway, are more in play than the DC and NY pundits believe.
How are you feeling about Dean these days? Reax to the confederate trux comment?
Posted by: Wes at November 10, 2003 11:21 PM
Well, Gore won the state of Pennsylvania 50.6 - 46.4, so I don't think it's quite in play (or was that close -- the networks called it and Florida very early). Nader picked up an additional 2% or so, so Bush is facing a 6% uphill climb in '04, I'd say, at the very least.
How am I feeling about Dean? Pros and cons. I definitely think Dean will go down as a very important candidate, maybe less for all the revolutionary stuff (weblog, small donors, etc) than just for being the candidate who finally challenged the status quo, mostly on Iraq, which freed up the other candidates to take on Bush as well.
Right now I'm thinking Dean may be the Ross Perot to Clark's Clinton. There's a good theory that Perot may have cost Bush the election in '92. Not the way many Republicans think (on election day, Clinton would have won with or without Perot on the ballot). Perot's very visible entry into the race made many people who otherwise would have stuck with the incumbent take a look at another candidate. Of course, they didn't look at Perot for long, but once they were willing to consider another candidate, Clinton was a much more reasonable alternative, even if he wasn't initially the man voters cheated on Bush with.
I think Dean maybe doing something similar. For whatever reasons, he opposed Bush when few other Democrats were. Democrats, if not independants too, saw that there was an alternative to Bush. I'm not sure if Dean is the guy who can sew it up, so I'll vote for (who I think) is the strongest candidate in the primary. Could be Dean. Could be Clark. It will probably be one of those two, but if it were today I'd probably vote Clark. Not to say Dean hasn't done great things, and not to say he can't in the future. We'll see, I guess.
Posted by: Chris at November 10, 2003 11:39 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)