Maine Results

[MAS117]

Does anyone have any results from todays Maine election?

[Beet]

Early results show
pro-government Kucinich with 14%,
Clinton Democrat Edwards with 8%, unfairly maligned by media Dean with 25%, and
Dukakis Democrat Kerry with another decisive victory at 48%.

About 25% precincts reporting.

[Nation]

Kerry 46%
Dean 26%
Kucinich 13%
Edwards 9%
Clark 4%

[Reaganfan]

Kucinich did good this weekend.

[Nation]

Yeah, Kurckick's campaign is picking up.

[Gustaf]

Yeah, Kurckick's campaign is picking up.

Lol...Kurkick is gonna stick around as a name, isn't it?

"Whoever gets some delegates will have a chance to win the nomination" - Kurkick

[emergingDmajority1]

Clark really went into the toilet this weekend in Washington, Michigan, and Maine. I know expectations were low, but at least Edwards did respectable. Clark wasn't even a blip on the radar.

tomorrow at 11:30 I expect "the announcement" from his campaign.

[© tweed]

I hope clark drops out NOW, because then Edwards will win Virginia and Tennessee and still have a chance.

[emergingDmajority1]

nah, whenever Clark wants to pull out, Gert and the internet crew just drag him back in. I have a feeling he's fed up with the whole process.

I hope he doesn't take 2nd in Tennessee tomorrow, because then he'll probably be talked into sticking around even longer. 2 3rd pace finishes would do him in though.

[zachman]

I feel bad for Clark, he is a really nice guy and was abandoned by the media this month. Of anyone running he would probably make the best president, and he split the vote here in NH with Edwards and Dean of every scouting voter. He should be angry at the system.

I wish he dropped after Feb. 3, that would have given Edwards steam. Instead, Edwards has been the victim of the schedule, and will be in a tight race tomorrow with Kerry.

I don't mind Kerry- although his rallies havre been miserable. I don't know what block of voters chose him here in NH- I still haven't met any.

[Beet]

"Again and again, the principal factor is Kerry's rise and coalition is his electability. In both states, he leads the other candidates in strength of support and in the perception that He can defeat the President." - John Zogby

This seems the most confusing of all. Kerry is the 2nd least electable major candidate other than Dean. He threw his medals onto the ground, voted against the Persian Gulf war, has a more liberal voting record than Ted Kennedy, opposes the death penalty, and is from the only state to have gay marriages. He supported the war and opposed it too. He's boring compared to Edwards and Clark, hell even Gephardt had more passion. Now read the Zogby quote one more time:

"Again and again, the principal factor is Kerry's rise and coalition is his electability. In both states, he leads the other candidates in strength of support and in the perception that He can defeat the President." - John Zogby

WTF?

[elcorazon]

Beet,

I don't agree with your entire assessment of Kerry, but I do agree with the basic idea of your comments.  I think it is a mistake to try and pick a candidate who is "electable", particularly when picking between legitimate candidates.  I suppose I could see not voting for Kucinich because he is not "electable" but if he was my guy and I was in Iowa, I'd still vote for him.  I do agree however that Edwards would make a very strong candidate and a strong president.  I hope that the public is right about how "electable" Kerry is, however.

[Nym90]

This election will be about competence, not ideology.

(Oops, on 2nd thought, maybe that's not a good quote to bring up...)

However, polls show that more Americans believe that Bush is too conservative than believe that Kerry is too liberal.

And Dukakis was actually right, ideology certainly isn't everything. It helps to be a centrist, but having strong convictions is important too, and ultimately the election will be a referendum on the incumbent and his performance. As long as Kerry is not made out to be an idiot, then whether he wins or loses is mostly dependent on Bush and the perception of how things are going in the country. The most important numbers to watch are the question about "Is the country going in the right direction or is it off on the wrong track?"

Carter tried to do that to Reagan, paint him as too extreme, and it almost worked. He led most of the campaign, right up to the end it was still very close. Then Reagan pulled ahead when voters started realizing that they weren't better off than they had been 4 years before (although things hadn't been that good 4 years earlier either, in fairness to Carter). Voters care more about results and performance than they do about ideological labels.

Bush needs to run a positive campaign to win, he can't win by just attacking Kerry. Republicans liked to say that Dean couldn't win with just a negative campaign...well the same goes in reverse, Bush can't win with just a negative campaign either. At some point the administration will have to defend their record; even if Kerry is perceived as liberal he will still win as long if the voters are dissatisfied with Bush.

It's silly to suggest that a Massachusetts liberal can't win. If a Texas conservative can win, so can a Massachusetts liberal. The main reason that liberal Democrats lost in the past was not because they were too liberal, but rather because conditions in the nation were not favorable for their party (Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale) or they ran a really bad campaign, failing to respond to attacks (Dukakis).

[elcorazon]

This election will be about competence, not ideology.

(Oops, on 2nd thought, maybe that's not a good quote to bring up...)

However, polls show that more Americans believe that Bush is too conservative than believe that Kerry is too liberal.

And Dukakis was actually right, ideology certainly isn't everything. It helps to be a centrist, but having strong convictions is important too, and ultimately the election will be a referendum on the incumbent and his performance. As long as Kerry is not made out to be an idiot, then whether he wins or loses is mostly dependent on Bush and the perception of how things are going in the country. The most important numbers to watch are the question about "Is the country going in the right direction or is it off on the wrong track?"

Carter tried to do that to Reagan, paint him as too extreme, and it almost worked. He led most of the campaign, right up to the end it was still very close. Then Reagan pulled ahead when voters started realizing that they weren't better off than they had been 4 years before (although things hadn't been that good 4 years earlier either, in fairness to Carter). Voters care more about results and performance than they do about ideological labels.

Bush needs to run a positive campaign to win, he can't win by just attacking Kerry. Republicans liked to say that Dean couldn't win with just a negative campaign...well the same goes in reverse, Bush can't win with just a negative campaign either. At some point the administration will have to defend their record; even if Kerry is perceived as liberal he will still win as long if the voters are dissatisfied with Bush.

It's silly to suggest that a Massachusetts liberal can't win. If a Texas conservative can win, so can a Massachusetts liberal. The main reason that liberal Democrats lost in the past was not because they were too liberal, but rather because conditions in the nation were not favorable for their party (Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale) or they ran a really bad campaign, failing to respond to attacks (Dukakis).

Nice analysis.  I would even argue that Dukakis was unlikely to win as the country was still quite satisfied and Bush was a near incumbent, although that wasn't enough to get Gore into the oval office.

[Nym90]

I agree, Dukakis would have had a tough time winning, but he could have won with a good campaign. Bush wasn't a very strong candidate. When there is no incumbent running for reelection, however, the candidate of the incumbent party does not get as much credit for the successes (or blame for the failures) of the incumbent.

Whenever there is no incumbent, the race is much more volatile. When an incumbent is running for reelection, the election is always (or at least has always been in the past) a referendum on the incumbent's performance.

[Beet]

Nym,

That is an interesting analysis, and I hope you are correct. Part of my wish for the Democratic party to nominate a moderate may just be due to my own moderation. However, looking at the three Democratic wins since the 1960s, there is no evidence to suggest that a liberal Democrat from the Northeast can win. Jimmy Carter faced a relatively good (although steadily declining) situation in 1976, and won by just a hair's breadth of 50% of the vote. His biggest majorities and support came from Southern conservatives; he wouldn't have been able to win on the backs of Northern/Western/Midwestern liberals alone. Even if you look at Clinton's 1996 win, it was in the wake of his signing welfare reform and adopting large portions of the GOP 1994 platform. In 2000, Gore proposed a massive ($800 billion) tax cut and the economy was at its best in a generation. The 4 years between 1996 and 2000 were the best 4 years of any period in the nation's history. Yet Gore suffered massive defections from 1996, as a look at the county map on this website reveals.

[Beet]

Beet,

I don't agree with your entire assessment of Kerry, but I do agree with the basic idea of your comments.  I think it is a mistake to try and pick a candidate who is "electable", particularly when picking between legitimate candidates.

I would be disposed to agree most of the time, yet this doesn't explain why voters choose Kerry for electability, over Clark and Edwards. It certainly doesn't explain why he has huge unique, huge, and repeated majorities on the "electability" issue. If the media reported the actual issues instead of treating it as another episode of "Survivor", I think things may be different. My opinion of the media has plummetted over the past 2 1/4 years. Their coverage in the aftermath of 9/11 was commendable. Then they started falling into becoming an entertainment tool, harping on silly child abduction cases, wallowing in spin, worthless celebrity scandals, horse-race politics, and now picking presidential nominees.

[Nym90]

The media had already been doing that for a long time before 9/11 too. They've always focused on what they feel people want to see, to go for the ratings. They have the idea in their minds that people don't have long attention spans and need quick sound bites and sensationalism in their news stories.

Well, as for why Kerry would be more electable than any of the other Dems...he will have plenty of money as he didn't take the primary matching funds, only Dean would have been able to match him here, Clark and Edwards would both have been hamstrung in their fundraising and spending. All of the Dems who gave money to other candidates can turn around and give money to Kerry now, right up to the convention. He has a military background, which only Clark had among the others, as Dean and Edwards have no military experience. He has domestic policy experience, which only Dean and partially Edwards had (Edwards having only been in the Senate for 6 years has some but not a lot) and which Clark lacked. And he has experience in foreign policy issues, which only Clark and partially Edwards have, Dean has none there. So he's the only Democrat with experience in foreign policy, domestic policy, a military background, and money. The only advantages that Clark and Edwards have over Kerry are the fact that they are from the South, Edwards is more charismatic, and Clark had a more lengthy military record. So it's a bit simplistic to say that they are more electable since what you are saying is that geography is more important than experience and money. Dean's only advantage would have been that he could run as a Washington outsider.

If 9/11 had not happened, Edwards and Dean both would have been much better candidates than they are now, since military and foreign policy experience would not be as important. Likewise Clark never would have been taken seriously as a candidate if not for 9/11.

To sum up, Kerry is the most well-rounded of all of the Dem candidates.