[Peace-discuss] CP on NH

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The counterpunch.org site is down, owing to a blown server.  Here's their
take on yesterday's primary.  --CGE]
 
   January 28, 2004
   Campaign Diary
	
   Does New Hampshire Mean Anything?
   Nervous Dems Beg Nader Not Run

   By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
   and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
   
   The facial topography of Senator John Kerry--gravity and the exactions
   of time pulling his features inexorably southward, a forlorn
   Hawthornian feel to the whole ensemble--remind us of another conqueror
   of New Hampshire in 1972: Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, on whose cheek a
   single tear (or was it just a snow flake?) turned into a mighty river
   of defeat as the press derided him for being a cry-baby, chided him
   for not winning by a larger margin and consigned him to history's
   trashcan, same way they're trying to do with Howard Dean.
   
   Other winners in New Hampshire's Democratic primary include Lyndon
   Johnson in 68, with a margin over Eugene McCarthy narrow enough to be
   construed a vote of no confidence. A few weeks later LBJ stepped
   aside. Then in 1992 Paul Tsongas, another son of Massachusetts, beat
   Bill Clinton, who was beleaguered by the kiss 'n tell revelations of
   Gennifer Flowers. As with the Iowa caucuses, victory in New Hampshire
   has been often a portent of doom, which may explain the cloudy cast to
   the Kerry visage.
    
   So the distraught supporters of Howard Dean need not abandon all
   hope--even after the loss to Kerry by 12 points, the resignation of
   his rumpled campaign strategist Joe Trippi and amid the fearful
   pounding in the press for his tiny break with decorum on the evening
   of the Iowa caucuses. The onslaught on Dean in the press, orchestrated
   mostly by Clintonites in the DNC and their consorts in the media, has
   been bizarre. After all, it's not as if Dean is anything other than
   entirely mainstream in his views, most of all on economic policy
   where, as he himself plaintively insisted, he is "the most
   conservative" of all the Democratic candidates.
   
   But Dean embodies two prime threats: first, to a run four years hence
   by Hillary Clinton; second, to the money-dispensing monopoly of the
   Democratic National Committee. Dean has displayed a powerful ability to
   raise money, $42 million to date, though he has spent much of it
   already, $3 million in Iowa alone.
   
   The more hostile the DNC and press acts towards Dean, the more money
   drops into his campaign chest. But after coming third in Iowa he
   promptly raised more than $1 million in the next three days. If this
   stays true, he can stay in the race through to the convention in
   Boston this coming summer. There's a scenario where Dean could finish
   second in most of the states, win only a handful of primaries and
   still capture a plurality of the delegates at the Democratic
   convention.
   
   What comes next? There's nothing much for Dean to look forward to in
   the immediate future beyond other candidates turning on the
   front-runner, Kerry, and drawing some blood. In South Carolina next
   week it will be a time of truth for its native son, John Edwards, the
   lissome-tongued trial lawyer who is now North Carolina's senior
   senator. As Edwards himself has perhaps unwisely said, South Carolina
   is make or break for him. By the same token Dean's camp hopes that
   Kerry will knock out Edwards, thus narrowing the field.
   
   Those who've spent some time in South Carolina say it may be tough for
   Kerry, since he's apparently decided on a strategy of writing off the
   south, which in the case of Democrats means blacks in the south who,
   in most states below the Mason Dixon line, represent a majority of
   registered Democrats. Kerry declared his candidacy on an aircraft
   carrier off Mount Pleasant S.C. and has scarcely been seen in the
   palmetto state ever since.
   
   A person who could at last make some sort of a showing in South
   Carolina is Wesley Clark, the Clintons' stalking horse, who plummeted
   after slipping badly in New Hampshire on the treacherous surface of
   his evasions on whether he supported the war in Iraq. Of course he did
   support it, repeatedly, and the only merit we can find in the ever
   more remote beacon of the Lieberman campaign is that Senator Joe has
   usefully catalogued no less than seven different Clarkian claims to
   have been a peacenik, all of them false.
   
   Clark is also encumbered with an endorsement from Michael Moore, whose
   kiss may be as lethal as was Al Gore's for Dean. But Clark is a
   military man, albeit one in whose "integrity and character" former
   chief of the joint chiefs of staff Hugh Shelton has publicly expressed
   categorical mistrust. There are many black people in South Carolina
   with sons and daughters in the military, and besides, unlike most of
   the other white candidates, Clark has invoked the name of Martin
   Luther King.
   
   Everyone has something to look forward to. Clark can take comfort in
   good polls in Oklahoma and Arizona. Kerry eyes Missouri now that
   native son Gephardt has quit the field. Edwards and Al Sharpton hope
   for a boost in South Carolina and the DNC is already hinting to
   Edwards that he could end up as nominee Kerry's running mate, and
   therefore shouldn't start throwing dirt at the thin-skinned senator
   from Massachusetts. Lieberman? Well, it is hard to detect any silver
   lining for him and for our part we hope for his imminent departure
   since it will stop the noxious slogan, which even some of our friends
   proclaim, "ABL", Anyone But Lieberman. He apparently reposes his hopes
   in the state of ten thousand corporations (most of whom he's probably
   carried water for): Delaware.
   
   It's been bemusing to read the heroic press releases from the campaign
   of Dennis Kucinich, as indomitably optimistic as was Comical Ali in
   the last days of Saddam Hussein. Dennis, a politician whom we admire
   but in whose candidacy we have always entertained 100 per cent lack of
   confidence, now heads back to where it all began, New Mexico, where
   resides his spiritual adviser. His press man is now William Rivers
   Pitt and Pitt promises to be as sanguine as was the former flack,
   David Swanson. As least Kucinich can afford the air fare to
   Albuquerque.
   
   You ask about ideas, the clash of ideologies, of visions? Friends,
   this is a minimalist campaign between Democrats and no doubt it will
   be thus, between the ultimate nominee and George Bush. The night of
   the New Hampshire primary, on a day when six US soldiers died in Iraq,
   not one candidate used the deaths as a rallying cry to end the
   occupation of Iraq. Indeed the "antiwar" candidate, Dean, said the war
   in Iraq was no longer an issue.
   
   Kerry, who supported both the Iraq war and the Patriot Act, defended
   himself against media charges that he was "just another Massachusetts
   liberal" by riposting that he is no such thing, touting his support
   for Clinton's demolition of welfare and Clinton's ramping up of the
   drug war which funded 100,000 cops in urban (ie., black and hispanic)
   neighborhoods. As for Edwards's low-cal economic populism, we've been
   there, haven't we? Truth in packaging. At least Dean 'fesses up to
   being a neoliberal.
   
   This brings us to the Democrats great dread: the return of Ralph
   Nader. As young idealists who have bizarrely hooked their hopes to the
   impeccably conventional former governor of Vermont see him treated by
   the Democratic powerbrokers as if he were a dangerous revolutionary,
   they may throw up their hands in disgust and look outside the two
   parties. Scenting this menacing prospect, this week's edition of The
   Nation magazine carries an unsigned "Open Letter" imploring Ralph not
   to run. From Anyone But Lieberman to Anyone But Nader.
   
   As yet there's no comment from Nader, though a seasoned staffer did
   remark to us that there was certainly "plenty of oxygen" out there.
   
   Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's new book, The Politics of
   Antisemitism, has just been published by AK Press.