Rob's Politics Blog

Bad News for Edwards

American Research Group has him trailing in Georgia, Maryland, Ohio and New York. Losing in Georgia would be pretty bad for him - and it would be hard to see a scenario where he loses there and wins elsewhere. He's done well to survive up to this point, but Kerry's in a position to impose a full court press. At this point, Edwards is fighting for his life and a Kerry sweep on Tuesday would obviate the rationale for his candidacy.

Those Progressive Saudis

A few days ago, the story broke that the Saudi government's tourism web site warned that Jews applying for visas to the kingdom would not be admitted. It was reported in The Guardian, and quickly denied by the Saudis, who removed the clause from their site. Still, to get a sense of what it looked like, you can see the Google cache.

(Note: as of 3/5, Google has recached and captured the newly edited page)

The New York Times reports U.S. Steps Up Hunt for bin Laden. It's entirely possible that he will be caught. A couple of assassination attempts seem to have motivated Musharraf to up the ante in Pakistan's hunt for Al Qaeda. And the US has developed new techniques for hunting individuals down, which have been constantly refined by the effort in Iraq - and paid off decisively with Saddam's apprehension.

I've noticed a tendency among some liberals or folks further left to wring their hands and worry that Bush will present a captured bin Laden as an "October Surprise" of some sort. This is entirely screwy and wrongheaded. One variant is to think that the US has him imprisoned somewhere and that we'll bring him forward at a moment of electoral convenience for Dubya. This belief seems to rest only on thinking the White House villainous enough to do it (and the classic tenet of a conspiracy theorist: the absence of evidence means that the conspiracy is really working). Perhaps worse is the notion that, if bin Laden is seized sometime this spring, summer or fall it would be a bad thing for this country. What an idiotic notion. Rooting for bin Laden to evade capture would be a disgusting way of placing partisan or sectarian preference over national good. I want to see bin Laden captured or killed, period. If it happens during this administration, fine. Maybe it would even allow Democrats to say, "What's next?" - an argument they can win.

Ruy Texeira, coauthor of The Emerging Democratic Majority urges Dems not to worry about Saint Ralph:

In DR's view, Democrats need to get over the obvious fact that Nader's decision to run for president is morally irresponsible, egotistical, betrays the progressive principles he's based his life on, etc. and look the truth squarely in the eye. This guy is irrelevant. He might as well team up with Ramsey Clark and run on the Workers World Party ticket for all the votes he's going to get. He's not going to get 2.7 percent of the vote, as he did in 2000, or even .7 percent of the vote, as he did in 1996. I think we're talking more like .27 percent of the vote.

By Texeira's reckoning Ralph can no longer make the case of two identical parties, as demonstrated the mass desertions that have plagued that has occurred since his 2000 run.

The Washington Post's David Broder evaluates Nader's pretension of appealing to a broad spectrum of voters:

Nader has claimed in interviews that his candidacy opens 'a second front' against Bush and would appeal greatly to disillusioned conservatives and Republicans. That is malarkey. Republican pollster Bill McInturff surveyed likely voters last month and found that the subgroups most prone to consider voting for Nader were 'younger white men, liberals and Democrats, particularly in the mid-Atlantic and Pacific regions,' the Democratic heartland. 'This data makes it clear that Nader's entry into the presidential race will have no impact on Republican or Bush voters,' he wrote.

An important op-ed in the Washington Post notes that mass murders are occurring in a region of the Sudan. Since no reporters are there, this has been largely unreported.

In the wake of Nader's announcements, I've been rereading articles from the fall of 2000 about Nader's candidacy then. They retain their relevance at the time since, no matter what else has changed in our world, Ralph Nader is every bit the fossil he was that autumn, only slightly more calcified this time. Jonathan Chait's Fall Guy looked at his basic irrationality, and also aptly predicted what would happen when he tried again:

Nader's dishonesty stems in part from his dogged unwillingness to admit any fact that complicates the rationale for his candidacy. He begins with the unshakable premise that the electorate is a vast left-wing majority waiting to be awakened from its apathy. Any evidence to the contrary--which would justify liberal pragmatism--must be dismissed. So when a TV anchor brought up Gore's poor showing in West Virginia, Nader replied that Gore had lost because "he went down with King Coal instead of the people of West Virginia." It's not that coal miners were afraid that Gore's environmentalism would cost them their jobs!

And, prophetically,

. . . . Nader's candidacy will serve as an object lesson in the futility of voting for a third party. Each of Bush's conservative accomplishments will lay bare Nader's dishonesty, and the destructive power of left-wing maximalism will be extinguished for a generation.

The SF Chronicle has collected a few quotes about Ralph's latest exercise in narcissism. Two stand out:

'It's of absolute, utmost importance that George Bush is not re-elected.' -- Pat Lamarche, Green Party candidate for Maine governor in 1996, in calling for the party not to field Nader or any other candidate in 2004.

'Republicans love Ralph Nader!' -- Minnesota Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. "

Also, Nader should be worried by this one:

"I'm going on a national crusade to stop Nader. This is only going to help Bush." -- Al Sharpton

Now he's in trouble.

Going on two years, we still remember the defeat of Max Cleland in the Georgia senate race. Cleland's name has become an instant reminder of the ruthlessness of Republican campaigners - not least of which because his rival, Saxby Chambliss, seems to think he can now bash Kerry on his stance on defense. Chambliss, we all know, used an ad campaign placing Cleland's image beside those of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. As you also probably know, Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam.

The conservative counterattack has been to question the Democratic description of Max Cleland as a war hero - since he did lose his limbs in an accident when he picked up a faulty grenade that a comrade had dropped. It wasn't enough for them to question his commitment to his country.

Joe Conason cites an Army report on Cleland's performance under fire before the tragic accident:

When the battalion command post came under a heavy enemy rocket and mortar attack, Capt. Cleland, disregarding his own safety, exposed himself to the rocket barrage as he left his covered position to administer first aid to his wounded comrades. He then assisted in moving the injured personnel to covered positions. Continuing to expose himself, Capt. Cleland organized his men into a work party to repair the battalion communications equipment which had been damaged by enemy fire. His gallant action is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

In 2000, Al Gore made a real mistake by not holding the Republicans to account for the impeachment farce. Kerry has been willing to cite Cleland's treatment and this does deserve to be made common knowledge. If the conservative commentariat thinks they can dodge this by questioning Cleland's record further, there is no end to the hole they are digging for themselves.

Eric Boehlert of Salon - who seemed the magazine's most pro-Nader writer 4 years ago - charts Nader's nadir. One rich revelation:

Even some of Nader's closest progressive allies have their doubts. 'I love and appreciate him, but I definitely want to get Bush out of office, so I won't vote for him, which would be a first for me,' says Medea Benjamin, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate from California in 2000. She says it's good that Nader is not running as a Green Party candidate, because it will allow someone else within the organization to gain national attention as a presidential candidate. "

Medea Benjamin is pretty far left. It's doubtful that she has any great political disputes with Nader. What is interesting is the role played by Nader's apparent falling-out with the Greens, which may have further weakened him. His ability to organize nationwide is unproven at this point.

Another gem in the article: Public Citizen - an organization founded by Nader in 1971 - may remove his name from its letterhead. After Nader's last run, it lost 20% of its membership and took in $1 million less in contributions. Public Citizen is taking pains to tell people that Nader is unaffiliated with it.

We're left with Todd Gitlin's assessment:

What Nader's decision amounts to is not logic but an exercise in monomania by a man who once accomplished great things and now believes that whatever he claims to accomplish is great by virtue of the fact that he claims it. Quixotic Nader, whose first run was tragedy, now tries farce. It's not funny. 

4 years ago, editorial opinion at The Nation split down the middle on the question of Nader's candidacy. What a difference a Bush makes. The editors made a plaintive plea to him recently, stating the following in An Open Letter to Ralph Nader:

The context for an independent presidential bid is completely altered from 2000, when there was a real base for a protest candidate. The overwhelming mass of voters with progressive values--who are essential to all efforts to build a force that can change the direction of the country--have only one focus this year: to beat Bush. Any candidacy seen as distracting from that goal will be excoriated by the entire spectrum of potentially progressive voters. If you run, you will separate yourself, probably irrevocably, from any ongoing relationship with this energized mass of activists. Look around: Almost no one, including former strong supporters, is calling for you to run, compared with past years when many veteran organizers urged you on.

One can't help but be moved - until one remembers that The Nation's prior ambivalence is partly responsible for this mess. If Nader has already lost the signature magazine of dedicated lefties, this bird is gonna be flightless.

. . . and he's in! Time to open up a can of whup-ass.

It's official - Nader can't take it:

It's a marvelous demonstration by liberals, if you will, of censorship,' he recently told National Public Radio. 'Running for political office is every American's right. Running for political office means free speech exercise, it means exercising the right of petition, the right of assembly. And so when they say, 'Do not run,' they're not just challenging and rebutting -- they're crossing that line into censorship.

Leave it to Ralph to conflate criticism with censorship. Actually telling Democrats that they're not allowed to question the purpose of his candidacy comes closer to censorship, since no Democrat is telling him he can't speak out. Of course, he may not understand why Democrats are upset that Bush was elected.

If he runs - and at this point, my reading of his ego says that he probably will - expect this to get ugly. He is going to have some ugly, ugly rallies. The Democratic base is a lot more fired up this time around and doesn't have patience for another display of Ralph's purist pageantry. He'll be running a weaker candidacy without the Greens, so it'll be ironic that he's going to draw more ire this time. Ironic in a savory way, anyway.

The always sensible EJ Dionne hits the nail on the head:

As for Dean, pray that he doesn't go into a self-righteous pout. His campaign didn't fail because the Democratic establishment took him out. The establishment was too timid to do that. He made his own mistakes. He lost the race not in 'the salons of Georgetown' but in the cafes of Fort Dodge.

If Dean walks away from all this with a martyr complex, he'll seal the outcome of his next effort as well.

The latest from the Iraqi marshes as reported in the New York Times - tens of thousands of people are living there and they're filling with water, though the water quality is worse than it once was.

A story like this reminds me of my own particular reasons for supporting the Iraq war. The Bushies may be trying to highpedal out of Iraq quicker than you can "national implosion" but the intervention has already made a positive difference for some Iraqis. If only Team Dubya was as committed to the peace as it was committed to the war, then the WMD issue would seem a lot weaker.

I'm truly baffled when I read a story like this: Democrats nervously await Nader's decision. Our self-appointed savior is once again publicly considering a run for the White House. And Democrats are talking to him as though he gives a crap about what they think, or about any Democratic nominee. They're hoping that he stays out and are using the same bootless appeals they made to him 4 years ago, when he sunk Gore. Pleading to this egomaniac is ridiculous and degrading. It's time to lay the smack down on this self-righteous jabroni. As Kerry would say, "Bring it on!"

Nader declared war on the Democratic Party 4 years ago. Does this sound like a harsh statement? Consider the following statement he made in an interview:

this is war on the two parties. After November we're going to go after the Congress in a very detailed way, district by district. We're going to beat them in every possible way. If [Democrats are] winning 51 to 49 percent, we're going to go in and beat them with Green votes. They've got to lose people, whether they're good or bad. They've got to lose people to be put under the intense choice of changing the party or watching it dwindle.

He made it clear that same year that he was hoping for a Bush victory: "If it were a choice between a provocateur and an anesthetizer, I'd rather have a provocateur. It would mobilize us."

Apparently, the party wasn't paying attention. In 2000 Ralph Nader embarked on a deeply amoral social experiment to grow his particular sect. He did it by campaigning to undermine Gore rather than campaigning to attract 5% of the vote - the much celebrated threshold for public funding. He was happy to see Gore go down. Of course, he's largely pissed away the next four years with the odd Larry King or CSPAN appearance, but clearly doesn't loom on the national radar. He's been moderately more visible than Lyndon Larouche.

If he does run - and appeals to his political conscience are doomed because he doesn't share the views of Democrats - he needs to be addressed for what he is. Gore wanted to ignore him and pretend that he would go away. He didn't and he actually thrived on the inattention. Whoever gets nominated needs to have the willingness to take him on and challenge him and ask how the country benefited from his self-righteous splinter campaign 4 years ago.

Nader supporters are, in my experience, used to dishing out about the rest of the spectrum, which they consider hopelessly immoral. They can't really take it though. Saint Ralph may walk among us, but he is exempt from blasphemous criticism from we flawed beings. Well if he runs, that's going to change.

He may or may not run and if he passes this up, it won't be because he's reconsidered his view of being the spoiler. If he does run, the Democrats will have a chance to finally come to grips with the truth that eluded them in 2000.

It's time the Democrats accepted the fact that there is a sectarian faction to their left that wants to see their demise. For starters, accepting fact is an intellectually healthy exercise. Secondly, it would be clarifying for them to really grasp what they're about. The cult of personality that Nader fostered around himself is anything but democratic, and his bitter rejection of coalition politics forever sets him out of the Democratic spectrum. The Democrats have always been a coalition party and probably always will be. Compromise may be a dirty word on the sectarian left, but it is a necessity for binding liberals and moderates together and for moving this country forward.

*I should add that Dean did one very good thing in his speech - deny any intention to run as a third party candidate and urge supporters not to back one. If he is willing, he could act to undermine any Nader candidacy. As this blog makes clear, I'm the furthest thing from a Dean fan, but he should get some credit for that.

With every song comes liner notes, so its time to talk about Dean's departure. As the lyrics below would indicate, I'm glad to see it. I think he was a poor candidate and I deeply disliked his style of campaigning, which I think tapped into the inflamed liberal id. Bush-bashing is a fine way to win the Democratic primary, but not to reach a broader audience. Bashing the half of the party that supported the war in Iraq is a nice way to stabilize your support at 40%.

Dean comes from that strain of liberalism that has a hard time crediting anyone who thinks differently with having ideals. It began to show in the end of the campaign when he was calling Kerry a Republican, or when he said that Washington Democrats would scurry "like cockroaches" if he was elected. He may be a Democrat, but that sort of thing reminds me of Ralph Nader. There was the same self-righteous gleam to the whole enterprise. Like Nader, he pretended - all polling evidence to the contrary - that there was a great untapped pool of liberal nonvoters he could recruit and win with. This is pure fantasy - research on non-voters suggests that they mirror the actual spectrum of voters and do not concentrate in any one area.

The tendency to identify ideological orthodoxy with ideological purity is an ugly and self-defeating one. Democrats cannot win the country by appealing only to an ideological base. Bill Clinton understood that all too well. Howard Dean pretended to understand that, but could not really express it. When he tried to talk about appealing to a broader audience, he started riffing on people in pickup trucks with Confederate flags.

Over the course of the campaign, Dean seemed the candidate least congenial to his peers. He rocketed past them by questioning their competence over the Iraq war vote, and never could abandon this tack - indeed he tried to use it to climb past Kerry in his final months. He appropriated Paul Wellstone's classic line of representing "the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" but stopped there. He did not appropriate Wellstone's generous personality - which was what made the Minnesota senator so respected and admired by all his colleagues, even conservative Republicans. Dean seemed to enjoy being small and righteous, hammering against the half of the party that didn't agree with him. For a while it worked, but you can get away with such things during the primary season.

I liked to say a few things when he was ascendant: that he would run a bad race and have no ability to take the fight to Bush's base; and that if every senator ran like him, the Democrats would be lucky to have 30 seats in the Senate. Dean's campaign style was well-suited to liberal primary voters, but ill-suited to the general election. The promises he made to his base made him unable to adapt his campaign to circumstance - even after he began trailing Kerry, he still based his appeal on attacking Kerry. His feuding with Gephardt in Iowa was by all counts disastrous for both men.

As he faltered, he could not blame his faltering on the real doubts that his frequent venting sessions were spurring in voters. Instead, he chose to blame them on the Democratic establishment - the same establishment he was painting as inept and weak. The Democratic establishment can do a lot of things like printing its own letterhead, but it had very little to do with the fact that Iowa and New Hampshire voters took a more critical second look at Dean. If anything, it was resigning itself to having him as a frontrunner when the great shift started. Dean started hiring lobbyists to run his campaign and reaping endorsements from the likes of Al Gore. A majority of super-delegates - primary delegates who happen to be high-ranking party members - went to him. The least he could do is say thank you and consider the possibility that his personality was a part of the problem. Say what you like about Gore, but he was capable of reconfiguring his outgoing side. It didn't work, but he wasn't too proud to do it.

Moreover, Dean's attacks on the Democratic party leadership revealed both his deep self-righteousness and a real lack of generosity and understanding. The party's leadership in the Senate comes from a senator from South Dakota and another from Nevada. Both, I think, have an appreciation of the need of Democrats to compete in moderate or semi-conservative states, and both are appreciative of the difficulty of representing the states that they do as Democrats. Strange as it may seem, the Democrats have 2 senators from Arkansas, another 2 from Florida, 2 from Louisiana, 2 from West Virginia, 2 from Nebraska, 2 from the Carolinas, and a whopping 4 from the Dakotas. Howard Dean to the contrary, these senators did not get elected by carving out a position on the hard left. Their electoral viability is utterly dependent on forming coalitions of liberal, moderate, and even conservative voters. Once elected, these people may not be as liberal as a guy from Vermont could be. But it's pretty clear that we're better off with them than the alternative. Unless someone wants to start scissoring out the states of the Union that they don't like (which many liberals seem to be mentally doing) the question of winning outside of the Northeast, liberal Midwest and Pacific coast is not going away.

It's no accident that the most successful Democratic candidates of the past 50 years have been charismatic Southerners, who instinctively know how to undermine the conservative base region, while reassuring their own liberal base. Dean stood in opposition to that tradition, even as he claimed he would appeal to moderates. He claimed to understand the desire of the party, even as he misread it. Enough Democrats realized that the primary season exists to do something other than give them a five-minute catharsis: produce a viable candidate who reflects the makeup of the party. The Democratic party is the party of liberals, but it is not an overwhelmingly liberal party. We can bemoan that until the ghost of FDR visits us, but it also bears mentioning that we retrospectively make our historic standard-bearers more liberal than they actually were. FDR, Truman and the Kennedys were all moderates in some sense who managed to advance liberal goals. Kerry and Edwards better understand the makeup of the party that they represent and rather than bashing or denying that reality, they are working with it to shape a successful White House bid. Dean failed to accept what most primary voters know, and is retiring to Vermont because of it.

This normally isn't a musical weblog, but I really couldn't resist. I call this little composition "Goodbye Vermont's Rose"

Goodbye Howard Dean
Though I never knew you at all
You had to disgrace yourself
After Iowa was called
You marched out of New England
With those voices in your brain
Telling you to slam your party
Preen and generally do stuff in that vein

And it seems to me you ran this race
Like a looney from the bin
Never actually realizing
What country you're in
And I would have liked to have known you
Or at least figure out your id
Your campaign burned out long before
Your ego ever did

(Self)-Righteousness was tough
The role you always played
Since no one else could have real principles
Other than those that you proclaimed
There's more to the electorate
Than liberals who are rich
One can't win without moderates
It's true, though it's a b----

And it seems to me you ran this race
Like a looney from the bin
Never actually realizing
What country you're in
Preaching to the choir
Doesn't bring converts to the church
You might make Nader happy,
But you'd leave us in the lurch

Goodbye Howard Dean
It's time for you to go
Take a long look at the electoral map
And thanks for the screaming show

This just in from Europe - Tony Blair's participation in a Franco-German summit has perturbed Chirac, who publicly scolded him that the Franco-German relationship cannot be replicated. Chirac tends to vent publicly when he loses control of things - it was reported weeks ago that Germany was seeking closer ties to Britain and that the German political class sees no gain in being handcuffed to France. A realignment is far from certain, but this meeting comes at a time when smaller European countries are increasingly doubtful of the Franco-German axis.

Edwards' finish in Wisconsin is definitely a sign that he's solidifying his grasp on the #2 slot in the race - no matter what Kerry supporters say. At this point it would seem that he has a new lease on life before Super Tuesday, though if Kerry sweeps the boards then it would probably be a good time to cut his losses. Still, there may be a wave of reluctance to give the nomination to Kerry now - Democrats seem to want the race to go and to see more of Edwards.

Perhaps more significant is news from Kentucky: Democrat Ben Chandler wins special election to fill vacant House seat in Kentucky. This is the first special election pickup for the Democrats since 1991 and it happened in Kentucky, which has been trending Republican for a decade. The national Republican party had been throwing its weight into the race, including an ad taped with Bush. Special elections are odd events, with variable turnout, but this should be a worrying sign to the Republicans.

Good news from Afghanistan - the Taliban insurgency may be dwindling and "running out of energy." Now would be a good time to step up developmental aid and policing to capitalize on this, whether it's a lull or the beginning of longterm pacification.

Another round of primaries goes to Kerry . . . reports that Clark will quit are interesting. I hadn't realized that his cash situation was going badly - CNN reports that staffers were giving up pay to fund his ads. If so, this frees up a pool of votes for Edwards to grab - at least in the South. If the veteran vote is an emerging phenomenon, a fair amount will go to Kerry too. But at this point - assuming a Clark exit - Edwards emerges as the clear undisputed second-place candidate.

I like the idea of Edwards as VP candidate and think he would round out the ticket well. I do think he's got that in mind - why would he say no to that in the event of him losing? He has the best chances of any Kerry opponent right now, but the odds of him winning are, to put it lightly, not terrific. I think his strategy has been premised on leavng the door open for that possibility.

Dean is reputedly stepping away from the "Wisconsin or bust!" strategy, and has reportedly been raising cash. Still, Kerry's on a streak like Joe DiMaggio, and if Dean's thinking that he can just jump into the race in a few weeks, he's been spending too much time with his cadre of Phish fans down by the river. He reportedly skipped the Virginia Democrats' annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner to see his son's hockey game in Vermont. Far be it for me to question his commitment to his family - on the contrary, I think he should give some thought to enjoying more time with them in the near future.

Time to give a shout out to one of my homeys who has started a political weblog of his own: Organized Crime. Check his stuff out!

With results in from the latest primaries, it seems clear that Dean is toast.

Were he viable, Washington state should have been his territory - the affluent, socially liberal voters of Seattle are the best pool of voters he's encountered. But he lost the state by 20 points. In fairness to him, Kucinich's 8% probably would have belonged to Dean otherwise, but this is a very bad finish for him. Wisconsin is probably moot at this point, and Kerry's decisive finish in Michigan probably bodes well for him in Wisconsin. A recent poll there finds Kerry up comfortably.

If Dean leaves the race, this could boost the fortunes of Clark or Edwards, but more likely Clark. Dean voters might be more likely to sulk and abstain than, say Gephardt voters, but Clark will probably reap the benefit from being more anti-war than Dean.

At this point, safe money is on Kerry. But it's good to keep in mind that it was on Dean one month ago.

John Kerry must be ecstatic to get Gephardt's endorsement. Edwards had sought it for a while - and indeed might have made a real claim for the working class vote. Sewing this up puts Michigan further in the bag for Kerry, and his momentum will carry over into Wisconsin.

This is crunch time for Edwards. I suspect he'll do well in Tennessee and Virginia, but he really needs to win outside the South. Otherwise, the race is Kerry's.

A good story in the NY Times: Dean's Once-Solid Base in Washington Becomes Shaky.

Washington should be ideal for Dean - the Seattle area is full of affluent, socially liberal voters. If he can't beat Kerry there, Wisconsin will be a wake for him.

Dean says he will be out of race if he loses the Wisconsin primary.

Here's hoping.

George Will, crusty conservative that he is, lays a finger on why Dean creeps me out:

Ralph Nader must be smiling, in his dour way, now that Dean is saying Kerry is a 'Republican,' 'Bush Lite,' 'no different' than Bush in being 'a handmaiden to special interests,' is making 'crazy' promises of tax cuts and spending increases, and is 'a Washington insider who shifts back and forth with every poll,' exemplifying 'exactly what's wrong with American politics.' Dean, sinking with his guns blazing, is providing a pretext -- and a cadre -- for another run by Nader (or a kindred spirit), whose 2000 candidacy prevented Al Gore from winning.

Dean is incapable of staging a non-accusatory campaign. His strategy is premised on projecting self-righteousness and condescension toward anyone even slightly to his right (and Kerry actually stands to the left of Dean on a few issues). I think that the vulture of a Nader candidacy won't take wing as readily this time round, but Dean reminds me of the tone that the Naderites took 4 years ago when they self-righteously sent this country to the right in the name of left-wing causes. That's why he's losing now, but he'll never be able to admit it.

A good night for Edwards

Edwards did nicely tonight. His win in South Carolina was solid - a good 15 points about Kerry. He did well enough in Missouri, even though he spent less time there than Kerry, winning a quarter of the vote. And, importantly, he virtually tied Clark for first in Oklahoma. His campaign is hampered by limited resources and still doesn't have the big guns that Kerry, Dean and even Clark have managed to pick up. And he was clearly the best performer of the night after Kerry.

Kerry had the advantage of momentum and money, and performed well enough, particularly in the crucial Southwest. But he may regret not chasing Edwards more in South Carolina. Edwards can now turn his attention to playing away from his base, and may want to try his luck in Michigan, which will be the early jackpot of the campaign. Also, he may want to try in Wisconsin. After demonstrating his competitiveness in the South, competing in the Midwest is probably the next most important thing for him.

It was not Dean's night, and it prompts the old saying of "nothing ventured, nothing gained." He may have shown voters that he didn't really take an interest in their states, and they rewarded him in kind. This makes him worse off for the next round at the end of the week. FOX News noted that he conspicuously failed to praise his competitors, although that may have been spin on their part. Clark's campaign may just barely be alive at this point, although he did finish a respectable second in Arizona, North Dakota and New Mexico.

And finally, Lieberman. He bowed out with class, just as his campaign was sputtering to a halt. It wasn't his year the way that 2000 was, but the Democrats of the Senate will benefit from having him around, and he'll be an asset to whoever the nominee is.

Vexed by lefties who tell you that Bush is worse than Hitler? Ask them how they feel about gas chambers in North Korean prison camps. Check again in a week to see if they remember.