resurrectionsong

January 19, 2004

Gephardt Quits the Race

With Gebhardt quitting the race for the Democrat's presidential nominee, can Lieberman be far behind? Lieberman's showing--below Kucinich, Clark, and undecideds--has to be tremendously disheartening.

The three surprises of the whole thing have to be Edwards' strong performance and Clarks' disappointing numbers combined with Dean's absolute destruction. Though the signs over the last few days had been for Edwards to pick up ground, this had to have been better than he might have hoped. Clark, on the other hand, was considered to be making up ground on Dean, who many thought would still make a good showing in Iowa. Neither Dean nor Clark were even close to the front-runners.

Final thought on the subject for the evening: with Gephardt dropping out early and pledging his support to whomever the Democrats nominate (in fact, promising to do anything in his power to help that person), could he be positioning himself as the vice presidential candidate of choice? I'm officially out of the prognosticating business (until the next time I forget how bad both my early nominee predictions and all of my NFL predictions for the year have gone), but I was a little surprised that he didn't stick it out for a little bit longer.

Posted by zombyboy at January 19, 2004 09:20 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Gebhardt dropped out? Have turn on Fox News to watch the reruns. Or turn on at 11am(my time) to watch Fox & Friends.

Posted by: Laura at January 20, 2004 01:48 AM

I don't think that we can read anything into the Clark numbers since he didn't participate. How he does in NH will be of far more importance since he has been actively campaigning there over the past several weeks.

I agree with you that Gephardt is trying to position himself fir Veep. Why not? The only candidate who he was harsh to during the campaign was Dean, who may not get the nomination. He's been around long wnough that there is tremendous general support for him in both the party establishment and the party as a whole. He has enough experience that he can shore up any weakness that the eventual nominee has. He dropped out eraly enough that he looks gracious. Since he will never run for President again he has nothing to lose by running as Veep. I think that the eventual nominee, regardless of who he is, would be insane to not consider him.

Posted by: StumpJumper at January 20, 2004 05:13 AM

Same with Lieberman -- I don't think he expended much effort there, and is looking toward New Hampshire instead.

But my Magic 8-Ball™ says he'll probably drop out after that.

Posted by: McGehee at January 20, 2004 07:54 AM

Neither Lieberman nor Clark actively campaigned--so I didn't expect either of them to be at the top of the pack. I did expect both of them, with their base of support, to have done better than Kucunich, though. Kucunich is about as far to the left as you can get--it shocked me, even though he campaigned there--to see him above those names.

It may not be as meaningful as I'm taking it, but for Clark to lose out to Kucunich under pretty much any conditions can't be seen as a positive.

Posted by: zombyboy at January 20, 2004 10:56 AM

Z: With respect to Kucunich vs. Clark, I would agree with you if this had been a primary, but a caucus is very different. Since Kucunich was physically there with his people he was guaranteed a small percentage. With Clark not even there he has no such guarantee. Of course, I've never been to a primary caucus nor lived in a state that used them, so I'm only guessing.

Posted by: StumpJumper at January 20, 2004 01:04 PM

You're probably right--and this might be my own blind spot--but I have a hard time understanding how someone who is supposed to be a serious, internationally known candidate could manage to do that poorly. Kucinich is such a fringe candidate that I expected him to be buried throughout the race.

Like I said, I know it's probably my own blind spot, but I would've thought that someone that generates as much media buzz as Clark would've done reasonably well even without actually setting foot in the state. Could be a lack of imagination on my part.

It surprised me less with Lieberman: he gets very little press and seems to have veery little backing. Coupled with his decision to not campaign in Iowa, I expected him to do poorly.

Hell, it just continues to prove that my prognostication powers aren't terribly impressive.

Posted by: zombyboy at January 20, 2004 01:12 PM