CANDIDATES KNOCK DEAN . . . TO THE CENTER?

Slate's William Saletan, of whom I'm often critical, has a spot-on article about the effects of the efforts by Gephardt/Kerry/Lieberman to attack Dean from the left.

All year, Howard Dean has been gaining ground in the Democratic presidential race. And all year, Democratic centrists have been scrambling for a candidate to stop him. He's too liberal, they said. He's soft on defense, a Vermont lefty, an evangelist for expansive programs. To stop him, they turned to Joe Lieberman, then John Kerry, then Wes Clark. But the more Dean's rivals expose his record, the more I suspect that the centrist who's going to spare Democrats this left-wing nightmare isn't any of these guys. It's Howard Dean.

Months ago, when the candidates squared off at a Children's Defense Fund forum, moderator Judy Woodruff tried to embarrass Dean by pointing out that he had criticized "liberals" for opposing the 1996 welfare reform law. An article in The Nation complained that Dean had cut welfare spending in Vermont, supported the death penalty, opposed federal gun control, and criticized Dick Gephardt's "radical revamping of our healthcare system." On Sept. 4, in the first of the fall debates, Dennis Kucinich charged that Dean would have to cut "social spending" because Dean was intent on "balancing the budget" and was "not going to cut the military." Five days later, in the next debate, Joe Lieberman protested that Dean had "said Israel ought to get out of the West Bank and an enormous number of their settlements ought to be broken down." In a general election, I figure these attacks would get Dean at least the 537 votes Democrats needed to win Florida in 2000 and probably the 7,211 they needed to win New Hampshire.

For a while, I worried that Dean was a protectionist. Then Gephardt relieved me of that impression, pointing out on Sept. 14 that Dean had declared himself "a very strong supporter of NAFTA." On Sept. 25, in the third fall debate, Dean was forced to admit that he had advised President Clinton to admit China to the World Trade Organization on "national security" grounds, betraying competence in both economics and foreign policy. Kucinich chastised Dean for proposing a health insurance program that fell far short of Kucinich's plan, which would cover "everything" and require an additional "7.7 percent tax paid by employers" on all wages. On Oct. 9, in the fourth fall debate, Kucinich complained that Dean was against pulling out of Iraq immediately. Dean had to concede that he thought such a pullout would be irresponsible, because in the post-Saddam power vacuum, if al-Qaida were to "establish a foothold in Iraq, or if a fundamentalist Shiite regime comes in, allied with Iran, that is a real security danger to the United States." That moment alone may have earned Dean the 21,597 votes he would need to pick up Nevada.

(...)

You can imagine how angry I am, as a swing voter, to find out these horrible things about Dean. My hands are trembling so violently, I can barely write his name on the check.

(the only reason I stuck the ellipses in there was because I didn't feel right reprinting an entire article here, but go read the rest)

Even beyond the thrust of the article -- that Gephardt/Kerry/Lieberman, by pushing Dean towards the center, are actually helping Dean -- doesn't fully reveal how well this bodes for Dean's nomination/election chances.

I'll tell you why: Dean is the Democratic Bush.

Now if you'd just sit down calmly and let me explain...

Bush is extremely popular within his own party, despite the smattering of complaints you hear from people like McCain, Hagel, Specter, Lugar, Bill Kristol, and so on. They don't love him because he's a pure conservative saint, or because he's an extremist on various issues (and yes, he is). First and foremost, they love George W Bush because he's with the Republicans 100% on the three issues that matter to them most:
1. Tax cuts,
2. Opposing a woman's right to choose, and
3. Bombing brown people
At this point, it doesn't matter enough to libertarian-leaning Repubs that Bush has turned record surpluses into record deficits, or threatens various civil liberties and privacy rights with the Patriot Act. Sure, they're upset about it from time to time; all one needs is a look at the conservative blogosphere, which is disproportionately populated by libertarian-leaning R's. But at the end of the day, until further notice, virtually all of them will pull the lever for Bush. Sorry, H. Ross and Harry Browne.

The effect of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" (yes, it's bullshit, but words are important) was to say to swing voters, "hey, I'm not so bad", and in connection with that, "hey, I know I'm gonna cut taxes for the affluent, but I'm also gonna spend a lot!" And enough, just enough swing voters said "yeah, you got me", and since 2000 was portrayed by the media as an election where relatively little was at stake, Bush got to the White house (with an assist from the Scalia 5, but hey).

Enter Howard Dean.

Thanks in part to the criticisms made by his fellow candidates, Dean is positioned in his party just as Bush was in 2000*. He may be a highly-motivated deficit hawk, one that thinks a federal program or two can be streamlined here and there, and he's not diometrically opposed to things like NAFTA. And yes, this stuff may be a tad unsettling to the left base of the party (you know, people like me). But at the end of the day, the Democratic base is going to vote for Howard Dean, for precisely the same reason that the right will always vote for Bush, and that is because Dean stands with them, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the issues they care about most:
1. Opposition to the war in Iraq,
2. Repealing Bush's massive top-heavy tax cuts and restoring the Clinton economic legacy, and
3. More or less, getting back on Clinton's path in general
Dean's rivals can dig up whatever details they want that somehow suggest that Dean was critical of Medicare or whatever else, but if their expectation is that it will change the minds of Dean's core supporters, think again. I'd say that a yes-vote on the Persian Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is a much larger albatross for a Democratic primary candidate than some snippet about trade or dealing with AARP would be.

So after everything Gephardt, Lieberman and Kerry are saying to try and bring down Dean, all they've done is help Dean by highlighting the places where he is most appealing to swing voters. Why would they do this? There are two possibilities:

1) Their campaigns are inept and stupid . . . A distinct possibility, as two of those three campaigns have experienced significant management overhauls in recent months. But then again, I have a different idea:

2) They're trying to stop Clark . . . At first glance, this doesn't make sense. But think about it: Most of the major Dem candidates have had one goal since about July, which is to be the anti-Dean candidate, as Saletan and others have noted. They want to be his moderate counterpart, so they can win the early southern primary states and possibly ride that momentum to the nomination. But Wesley Clark's entry into the race adds a new wrinkle. With media buzz, 34 years of military experience and an air of extreme competence (or something), Clark seems destined to become the best possible anti-Dean. This prompts the Kerry/Lieberman/Gep campaigns to re-evaluate their strategies. Each thinks they'd rather be in a 2-man race with Dean than with Clark. So a new strategy arises: push Dean to the center, and push so hard that Dean beats Clark to the center. This de-fangs Clark a bit, as his role as a Dean counterpoint is stunted. By some miracle circumstance, the thinking goes, Clark would be out of position for the nomination, and the race would come down to a 2-man showdown between Howard Dean and either Kerry, Gephardt, Lieberman or Edwards.

You know what? File the end of #2 under #1, because this is stupid and won't happen. Not only did they just do Dean a huge favor, but they've practically sealed the fate of the race for the Democratic nomination: It's gonna be a Dean vs Clark showdown. Between then and the Convention, that's the harder part to predict.

(* - though unlike Bush, I don't consider Dean an "extremist" on anything, maybe because I'm a liberal, maybe not)