James Joyner finds Howard Kurtz in today’s Washington Post acknowledging many of the same sins of the pundit class that SN did almost two weeks ago.

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but in case you haven’t heard—Ralph Nader will run in 2004 as an independent presidential candidate. What does it mean? Juan Non-Volokh and Glenn Reynolds think it might invigorate efforts to improve ballot access for third parties; some Democrats are apoplectic; Robert Garcia Tagorda thinks it may help Democrats; and Steven Bainbridge, Steven Taylor, and James Joyner used the occasion to dump on third-party candidates in general.

Steven Taylor has posted the most recent iteration of the infamous Toast-O-Meter.

The Baseball Crank has all the nasty stuff the Republicans never got to say about Howard Dean neatly collected in a single post. It might come in handy, just in case Dean ever tries to get elected to the city council in your town.

Since John Kerry’s alleged “zipper problem” has been debunked, Andrew Sullivan notes that Sid Blumenthal (not to be confused with Atrios) thinks John Kerry should sue the Sun for libel. Funnily enough, Jeffrey Archer had much the same idea under similar circumstances, but it didn’t quite work out the way he planned…

Update: Conrad has thoughts in a similar vein. And thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link!

Wonkette has the exit poll numbers:

Kerry 38
Edwards 33
Dean 17

Maybe we will have a real contest after all…

Professor Bainbridge notes a very marked contrast between John Kerry’s rhetoric on the campaign trail and what his aides have been telling lobbyists about Kerry’s bona fides.

Brock rather optimistically wrote below:

The presumptive nominee, John Kerry, deserves credit for voting in favor of NAFTA. I hope he has the courage to stick by what he knows is true: that tariffs and other protectionist measures do more harm to the country than good.

Brock apparently missed tonight’s Democratic debate, in which Kerry virtually repudiated NAFTA by advocating wider use of its environmental and labor side-agreements for protectionist ends—even though, in fairness, he was the best of a horrible field on that score. I’ll let Alex Knapp speak for me on Democrats’ commitment to our nation’s international agreements on trade:

You know, for a bunch of people who criticized Bush for being unilateral on military issues, they sure are eager to act unilaterally in rescinding our international obligations on trade issues. Or does international law not mean anything to these candidates?

Of course, since France is also a highly protectionist country, any issue where we agree with France but repudiate agreements with other countries apparently doesn’t meet the Democratic definition of “unilateral”.

Alex Tabarrok continues his insightful criticism of Democratic rhetoric on free trade.

Let me take this opportunity to say that the one thing likely to make me push the Libertarian button on the Shouptronic machine in November is continued protectionist demagoguery from whoever the Democrats nominate: and all of the remaining candidates are guilty of this to some degree.

(This, of course, assumes that the Libertarians manage to nominate someone who isn’t a total crackpot, which is not guaranteed.)

I’m not a single-issue voter in the usual sense. Free trade vs. protectionism is not the biggest issue facing this country. But it is a good issue for determining whether a candidate is more interested in policy or politics (or, as I suspect of Gephardt, whether he’s totally ignorant of basic economics). Our current president is clearly more interested in politics.

The presumptive nominee, John Kerry, deserves credit for voting in favor of NAFTA. I hope he has the courage to stick by what he knows is true: that tariffs and other protectionist measures do more harm to the country than good.

The latest Toast-O-Meter is up with a special Valentine’s Day theme, courtesy of Steven Taylor. As always, it’s the comprehensive review of everything you tried to tune out about the primary campaign over the last seven days.

I’m off shortly to Memphis to argue with Best Buy for what should be a new laptop, probably something Centrino-based (woo-hoo!).

Update: Well, that went well… not.

Oh, while we’re linking photos of interns: I never had sex with Connie Mack (or any other senator, member of the House, or anyone else in the District of Columbia). Hell, I never even met the guy. Signed his name a lot, though…

Well, I’m the last one to pick up on this outside the mainstream media. Random, barely-articulated thoughts:

• I don’t buy the Republican smear theory. For starters, Wes Clark’s people have been shopping it for a while, and I’m pretty sure Clark isn’t a Republican (or a Democrat, for that matter).
• I think James Joyner is right: only Republicans can suffer actual career damage from bimbo eruptions.

Anyway, the old aphorism always holds: “where there’s smoke there’s fire… at least, unless someone’s installed a smoke machine.”

A lot of people have egg on their face over this one. Lots of bloggers staked their reputations, in some way, on it, and we utterly failed. The latest, and perhaps the most high-profile, blogger to acknowledge it, is Dan Drezner.

No, I’m not talking about WMD in Iraq. I’m talking about John Kerry’s cakewalk to the Democratic nomination. A month ago, everyone thought that Dean was going to win this thing, even though (as we now know) his poll numbers started eroding about that time.

This is, no doubt, the point where our good buddies the Perestroikans will come out and say this proves, once and for all, that attempts at a science of politics are futile (one suspects they might also think a science of chemistry is futile, but that is neither here nor there). And, if I were someone who believed that the ultimate test of science is prediction rather than explanation, I might agree with them. But in all good science, when our observations don’t conform with our theories it’s a good time to revisit our hypotheses. The hypothetical reasons why Dean should win were sound:

1. Dean will win the nomination because he’s got the support of the base: This was the clearest argument for Dean’s candidacy. He had a massive fundraising advantage. Dean had captured the energy of the Internet and young people. He captured the anger of many Democratic rank-and-file voters against both Bush and the Iraq war.
2. Dean has organization: Dean had spent all of 2003 setting up a formidable organization in Iowa; the only candidate who was close was near-native-son Dick Gephardt.
3. The primary schedule favors Dean: Coming off an anticipated win in Iowa, most observers expected him to surge into New Hampshire and create an air of inevitability around his campaign.
4. Dean was a governor: Three of the last five Democratic nominees were state governors. In a field where Dean was the only governor, the prediction that Dean would win would be reasonable.
5. Dean has elite support: Throughout the fall, establishment Democrats jumped on the Dean bandwagon. Elites don’t generally hand out endorsements, particularly in primaries, unless they’re pretty sure they won’t be shown to be incorrect.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to Boston. As we now know, none of these things came to pass. Why?

1. We overestimated the base: Dean’s base was deep, but not very broad—perhaps 20% of the Democratic electorate. Dean’s gambit to widen his appeal—being the hardcore “anti-war” candidate not named Kucinich—backfired when Saddam Hussein got dragged out of a foxhole in mid-December. Dean correctly recognized that Democrats were anti-war, but not why they were anti-war: much of the Dem base doesn’t really oppose the war on principle; instead, they oppose it mostly because George W. Bush called the shots. I’d call this the “process” critique of the war, and one that John Kerry was able to capitalize on by being downright shifty with his votes and rhetoric.
2. Organization didn’t matter in Iowa: Somehow a lot of Iowa Democrats got excited about the campaign without getting very excited about the candidates themselves, and when it came time to vote the undecided voters chose Kerry and Edwards—two candidates whose operations in Iowa were weak.
3. The primary schedule favored a New Englander: Kerry essentially borrowed the Dean playbook—convert a win in Iowa to unstoppable momentum coming out of New Hampshire as a “favorite son.” Kerry also benefitted from the unexpected nature of the Iowa win—a Dean victory in Iowa would have been expected, and the momentum bump would have been far smaller.
4. Endorsements don’t matter: The big kahuna, Bill Clinton, stayed out, so the endorsements Dean picked up from has-beens like Al Gore, Bill Bradley, and (maybe) Jimmy Carter were devalued.
5. Dean pissed off the Iowans: Not just in making stuff up when asked about his connection with military veterans, but in old videotapes where Dean had an all-too-candid moment in revealing that the Iowa caucuses are mainly an excuse for presidential candiates to go and kiss farmers’ asses for months on end.
6. Finally, Democrats recognized that Republicans were teeing up for Dean: Anyone with half a brain knew that Dean was Karl Rove’s dream candidate: an inexperienced opponent, prone to displays of short temper and highly vulnerable on social issues and defense policy. Democratic voters, who are desperate to be rid of Bush, siezed on electability as the one and only issue that matters—and decided a patrician senator from Massachusetts, like party idol/martyr JFK, was preferable to the thumb-shaped Vermont wonder in that department.

I think the bottom-line lesson here is that peoples’ political behavior is both idiosyncratic and hard to predict. Perhaps more importantly, I won’t call for an investigation of my fellow political scientists for blowing the search for the Democratic nominee if you won’t.

This is today’s entry in the OTB Beltway Traffic Jam.

Martin Devon of Patio Pundit catches the New York Times engaging in a bit of fantasy in suggesting that John “I don’t need the South” Kerry can, er, carry Tennessee in November. Said fantasy is based largely on an interview with Kerry campaign co-chair and Congressman-for-life-if-he-wants-it Harold Ford Jr. Quoth the Times:

The state has tended to vote Republican and has two Republican senators. Mr. Gore lost here in 2000 by four percentage points, but some say the issues will be different this time and that Mr. Kerry is a different candidate from Mr. Gore. And last year the state elected Mr. Bredesen, a Democrat, as governor, and he has become enormously popular.

“Some” might also note that Kerry is much further to the left than Gore ever was (until he got Deanentia), and Bredesen largely won because (a) his opponent, Van Hilleary, was an incredibly weak campaigner and (b) his predecessor, Don Sundquist, managed to turn the Republicans’ names into mud in the state by becoming a tax-and-spend liberal in his second term.

Also amusing: the article misspells the name of Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer.

Since people are Googling… Wonkette! has swiped the results from NRO. The Kerryman is kicking ass.

Bear in mind, however, that at least in Tennessee voters are permitted to vote early up to two weeks before the election; to my knowledge, there was no exit polling done of early voting sites. Not that it’d make much difference in the results, as early voters are only about 1/4 of the electorate, but in a close race it might matter.

Steven Taylor thinks conservatives need to learn to love the Shrub, since otherwise they may well receive eight more years of Clintonism. On the other hand, if you’re a conservative—not necessarily a Republican, mind you—a spell of divided government might well be desirable.

It seems to me, at the simplest level, that different sorts of conservatism require the control of different branches of government. Fiscal conservatism rests largely on control of Congress; if you keep spending and taxes down, there isn’t much the White House or Supreme Court can do about it. Social conservatism, on the other hand, rests on control of the presidency and the judiciary; the Justice Department effectively decides to what degree morals violations (like prostitution and drug crimes) are prosecuted, while the judiciary effectively sets the limits of what personal behavior Congress and the states can regulate.

There are, of course, other issues to base one’s vote on; the Clinton administration fiddled while North Korea and Iraq burned during the 1990s, instead expending political capital on dubious adventures like Haiti (which is now in more of a mess than when I was a wee intern in D.C. being briefed on this problem 9 years ago) and saving the Europeans’ asses in the Balkans. And, at the moment, it’s hard to tell if Kerry’s campaign-trail pronouncements are simply part of a red-meat distribution effort to keep the Deaniacs on the Democratic bus through November or actually serious foreign policy views—if you believe they’re the latter, you might think twice about jumping on the divided government bandwagon.

But, given that Congress is essentially a lock to remain in Republican hands for the forseeable future,* if you’re not much of a social conservative and you make under $200k it’s hard to see what you’d lose under a Kerry (or Edwards) administration.

This is today’s entry in the BTJ™.

The Toast-O-Meter for this week has arrived, courtesy of Steven Taylor, although the bread is apparently borderline stale at this point due to Charter Communications’ ineptitude.

In other Campaign ’04-related news: Venomous Kate is perched on the fence for now, for a long list of reasons (via Dan Drezner, who’s doing some fence-sitting of his own).

In 11 days, we may no longer have Howard Dean to kick around any more. G33k-turned-law-student Joy has Dean’s numbers from Wisconsin (via dKos), and they don’t look pretty at all, with Dean’s “unfavorable” rating approaching 40%.

Apropos of Steven Taylor’s consideration of when President Bush will abandon the “Rose Garden” strategy and take the campaign to the road, it looks like the answer has been given: the president wil appear on Meet The Press this Sunday, according to tonight’s edition of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (yes, I'm part of his 0.3 share).

Of course, a wag might say he’s planned it to steal the thunder from Howard Dean’s “attempted return from the dead” campaign in Washington state.

Somehow, Nickelback’s “Someday” seems oddly appropriate as a eulogy for Howard Dean’s campaign. Don’t believe me? Take a look-see at the lyrics:

How the hell’d we wind up like this
And why weren’t we able
To see the signs that we missed
And try to turn the tables
I wish you’d unclench your fists
And unpack your suitcase
Lately there’s been too much of this
But don’t think it’s too late

Nothing’s wrong
Just as long as you know that someday I will
Someday, somehow
I’m gonna make it alright
But not right now
I know you’re wondering when
You’re the only one who knows that
Someday somehow
I’m gonna make it alright
But not right now
I know you’re wondering when

See, it’s all so obvious when you look back…

Taegan Goddard has the exit poll roundup from five states, duplicated below:

South Carolina: Edwards 44, Kerry 30, Sharpton 10
Oklahoma: Edwards 31, Kerry 29, Clark 28
Missouri: Kerry 52, Edwards 23, Dean 10
Delaware: Kerry 47, Dean 14, Lieberman 11, Edwards 11
Arizona: Kerry 46, Clark 24, Dean 13

If these results hold up (a big if, given the poor exit polling performance in New Hampshire), predictions of a delegate-free Tuesday for Howie look strong and—realistically—Edwards is the only candidate who can claim to have a shot at unseating Kerry, although Clark may have an outside chance depending on how he does in the caucus states.

Update: Wonkette! reports that the Columbia Journalism Review is throwing a hissy fit:

Political Wire did the same thing in New Hampshire, though nobody raised a peep. Some readers have written in to suggest that since National Review's The Corner, and Political Wire, are blogs, rather than more traditional news outlets, and since they likely did not have contracts with the poll organizers, they're bound by different rules than, say, The Washington Post. By the standards of contract law, that may be true. But in terms of journalistic ethics, it's a copout. Once the numbers are out there, they're out there, and possibly influencing voters who haven't yet made it to the polls.

And that the culprits are blogs, and not networks, doesn't let them off the hook.

WHO THE FUCK CARES? Ahem. Thank you, I just needed to get that off my chest. (Dan Drezner has the sober response more properly befitting an academic.)

I think I’ll let Earl Black speak for me on this bit of unmitigated idiocy by South Carolina Democrats:

“It sounds like one of the stupidest ideas I’ve heard in a long time,” said Rice University political scientist Earl Black, formerly of the University of South Carolina. “This makes no sense at all. It just steps on the effort of South Carolina Democrats to create a situation to build the party.”

What idea is so stupid? According to The State:

Voters who appear at their polling places will be asked to sign an oath swearing that “I consider myself to be a Democrat” before casting their ballots.

Hey, why stop there? Take Jonah Goldberg’s advice and reinstate literacy tests. Better yet, set up a nice collection box at the door to collect everyone's poll tax. Good thing the state legislature didn’t take down that Southern Cross from its front lawn, since it seems mighty appropriate about now.

More on this story at Jeff Quinton’s place and suburban blight.

Update: The Dems dropped the loyalty oath today faster than most single women lose Dennis Kucinich’s phone number. And Ryan of the Dead Parrots wonders if the Democrats’ news release somehow got lost in the shuffle, as it was dated Sunday—so the damaging stories never should have run.

Both Sean Hackbarth and Matt Ygelsias note new Dean campaign head honcho Roy Neel’s submarine strategy for gaining the nomination:

Our goal for the next two and a half weeks is simple—become the last-standing alternative to John Kerry after the Wisconsin primary on February 17.

Why Wisconsin? First, it is a stand-alone primary where we believe we can run very strong. Second, it kicks off a two-week campaign for over 1,100 delegates on March 2, and the shift of the campaign that month to nearly every big state: California, New York, and Ohio on March 2, Texas and Florida on March 9, Illinois on March 16, and Pennsylvania on April 27.

In the meantime, Howard Dean is traveling to many of the February 3 states, sending surrogates—including Al Gore—to most, and conducting radio interviews in all. We believe that one or more of our major opponents will be eliminated that day, and that the others will fall by the wayside as our strength grows in the following days. As a result we have elected to not buy television advertisements in February 3 states, but instead direct our resources toward the February 7 and 8 contests in Michigan, Washington and Maine. We may not win any February 3 state, but even third place finishes will allow us to move forward, continue to amass delegates in Virginia and Tennessee on February 10, and then strongly challenge Kerry in Wisconsin.

Regardless of who takes first place in these states, we think that after Wisconsin we’ll get Kerry in the open field. Remember one crucial thing about the 2004 calendar—in previous years a front-runner or presumptive nominee would typically emerge after most of the states had voted and most of the delegates had been chosen. The final competitor to that candidate, even if he won late states, as many have done, has not been able to win a majority of delegates under any scenario.

This year is very different. The media and the party insiders will attempt to declare Kerry the winner on February 3 after fewer than 10% of the state delegates have been chosen. At that point Kerry himself will probably have claimed fewer than one third of the delegates he needs to win. They would like the campaign to be over before the voters of California, New York, Texas and nearly every other big state have spoken.

Democrats in Florida, who witnessed a perversion of democracy in November 2000, will not have a choice concerning the nominee if the media and the party insiders have their way.

We intend to make this campaign a choice. We alone of the remaining challengers to John Kerry are geared to the long haul—we’ve raised nearly $2 million in the week after Iowa, over $600,000 in the 48 hours since New Hampshire. No candidate—not even Kerry, who mortgaged his house and tapped his personal fortune to funnel $7 million into his campaign—will have sufficient funds to advertise in all, or even most, of the big states that fall on March 2 and beyond. At that point paid advertising becomes much less of a factor.

The question is whether Dean’s campaign can stop the bleeding long enough, and keep the cash rolling in, while Kerry racks up primary wins in state after state and pulls ahead in the delegate count. February 17th isn’t that far off, but for Dean—who may not pick up a single delegate between today and then, due to the 15% threshold rule†—it could nonetheless be too far off. To be competitive after Wisconsin, Dean will need the cash in hand to run effective ads in “big media” states like California, Florida, and Texas to counter the inevitable publicity and fundraising advantages Kerry will have as the presumptive frontrunner, and to expand his base beyond the core activists and true believers. Presumably Dean will pick up some support from Clark’s base after Clark leaves the field, but I don’t think that’s enough to build a lead over Kerry anywhere.

That isn’t to say it’s a bad strategy to employ, relative to all the others. Dean already knew February 3rd was a lost cause without the expected momentum from New Hampshire and Iowa, and he can probably wait out Clark and Lieberman’s inevitable withdrawals. The race should be a 3-man contest by the time Wisconsin rolls around, assuming Edwards wins South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. I just don’t know that any strategy can save the Dean campaign now, barring a collapse by Kerry.

Update: Colby Cosh notes that Joe Lieberman may win more delegates than Dean on Tuesday, due to the former’s decent showing in the polls in Delaware. However, Steven Jens’s estimates disagree.

Also of note: Eric Lindholm finds promise in the strategy, while Greg of Begging to Differ doesn’t see how it could work.

Will Baude points to this David Brooks column that elevates describing “big mo” to the status of high art. What strikes me most about the process is how completely endogenous it is—everything feeds back onto everything else, starting with the trigger of the otherwise-completely-meaningless behavior of several thousand Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa. In 12 days, John Kerry was translated from being a virtual also-ran to the likely Democratic presidential nominee largely due to the unanticipated behavior of said caucus-goers.

Could the momentum shift yet again? Probably not, with the Dean campaign imploding before our very eyes, Edwards fighting for traction in South Carolina, Lieberman in abject denial, and Clark scrambling for votes in Oklahoma. Kerry may yet fall victim to interneccine attacks, but his rivals’ campaigns may not persist long enough for them to be effective.

Most people see presidential candidates at big rallies—my two experiences seeing Presidential fodder in the flesh were at a Clinton-Gore campaign stop in Ocala in 1992 and Harry Browne in Atlanta on Election Day in 2000. Other presidential candidates, however, are more low-key. Take Brian Noggle’s encounter with Michael Badnarik in the basement of a St. Louis pizza parlour, for example.

Badnarik sound familiar? Brock blogged his unusual views on prison rehabilitation below.