Undecided? Don't worry, Iowa and New Hampshire pick anyway
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published January 19, 2004
Today, the people of Iowa will decide which of the Democratic presidential candidates we in Florida will NOT get to vote for when our primary comes around March 9.
The main purpose of these early contests is to weed out the also-rans, not to name a winner. (Sorry, you Dennis Kucinich fans.)
But Florida's election might as well be in November, for all the difference it will make. It seems unlikely that the headlines on the morning of March 9 are going to say:
FLORIDA STILL CRUCIAL
Entire nation crosses fingers for Sunshine State
U.N. sending in poll watchers, Jimmy Carter
* * *
Nope. The whole idea of the primary schedule is to decide the nominee early. It's kind of like using spring training to decide which baseball teams will make the playoffs. There's not much of a regular season.
Less than three weeks ago, we were celebrating the new year. Now we're supposed to be paying attention to presidential politics. The whole shebang keeps moving earlier and earlier.
The Iowa caucuses come today, then New Hampshire a week from Tuesday. South Carolina, the first state in the South to vote, holds its primary Feb. 3.
The results today probably will be close. Howard Dean, John Kerry, Richard Gephardt and John Edwards will finish in a cluster.
The spin will be either that Kerry finished strong and Dean disappointed or that Dean held on and Kerry faded in the end. They'll blame Kerry's hair or something.
Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman will pin their hopes on New Hampshire. Al Sharpton and Kucinich will pin their hopes on divine intervention, maybe a nice pillar of fire. Carol Moseley Braun already is pinning her hopes on a nice job in Dean's cabinet.
With a cluster of front-runners coming out of Iowa, experts and commentators will get all excited about the prospect of a long-running, undecided race. The dream of every politics junkie, after all, is an "open convention," in which no candidate has won enough delegates during the primaries.
Old-timers long for black-and-white film footage and smoke-filled rooms. They sigh over memories of Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley interviewing correspondents on the convention floor after they just picked up a hot tip in the Utah delegation. Something about a surprise credentials fight.
Not gonna happen. It would be a surprise if the thing wasn't about sewed up by South Carolina.
That's what the Democrats intend with their front-loaded calendar, and it's what the Republicans intended the last time they ran against a sitting president. The less time spent bleeding one another, the more time they have to focus on the guy in the White House.
People complain about Iowa and New Hampshire getting to do the early winnowing. But having spent time stomping around those states during their campaigns, I am reasonably content to let those states do it.
At least the candidates have to stand in front of actual groups of voters and answer tough questions. They can't hide behind slick TV ads as they would in Florida or California; TV ads alone do not work. The campaign is intensely personal. (I am a bigger fan of Iowa than New Hampshire, which is more of a media circus and a self-parody. Enough with Dixville Notch, already.)
This is a perennial complaint, but it seems like all of the video coverage and even too much of the print coverage coming from Iowa has been about who is winning and who is saying bad things about the other, along with other superficialities.
I do not care in the slightest that Dr. Judith Dean is practicing medicine instead of campaigning or that she has never been to Iowa or even that she wears blue jeans. Sorry, New York Times.
On the other hand, for the first time, it occurs to me that there is at least an outside chance that the next president of the United States will be named "Howard." With the exception of William Howard Taft, who doesn't even count, this is unprecedented, and its ramifications must be considered carefully.
