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January 27, 2004
NEW HAMPSHIRE PREDICTIONS
Okay, it's 12:30 pm EST, and I guess I need to get my predictions in on the New Hampshire primary. I'm feeling a lot of pressure; I was decidedly inaccurate in my pre-caucus Iowa predictions - I got first and fourth positions right, but beyond that I was a Tiger, not a Red Sox. If I want to seize my destiny as Tim Russert's eventual succesor on Meet the Press, I have to redeem myself in New Hampshire. No pressure or anything. So here they are...
First, the order of finish and the numbers: 1. Kerry 39%; 2. Dean 24%; 3. Edwards 14%; 4. Clark 11%; 5. Lieberman 10%, Kucinich 1%, Sharpton <1%.
Undecideds are largely breaking to Kerry, from everything I have read; as soon as Dean went negative on Kerry, he began raising doubts once again in voters' minds about his temprement and electability. Kerry, meanwhile, seems poised to take the geographic advantage; while Dean too is from a neighboring state, most of NH's population gets its media from Boston - and that's had to help Kerry. As for 3rd, Edwards' positive message may not carry him as far here as it did in Iowa, but with Kerry and Dean swiping at each other over the last weekend, and Clark belittling Kerry for only being a junior officer, I am going to predict that enough voters will buy into the positive thing to give Edwards a third place finish - and put him in a very intriguing spot heading into next week's southern contests.
Clark... while he's my second choice personally, I think he's stumbled. The Kerry win in Iowa took a lot of his wind from him... I think he finishes 4th behind a late-breaking Edwards bump. By the way, if you're ever interested in losing a campaign that seems yours to win, call Chris Lehane. Gore in 2000, atop the best economy in a generation and with the advantage of incumbency... hired Lehane, and he lost. Kerry, the prohibitive front runner in spring 2003... hired Lehane, and virtually became an afterthought by the fall, rebounding only after firing Lehane... Clark was the darling of the media when he first jumped in, was a popular choice for anti-Dean Democrats to rally around, and commanded respect from the entire field for the potential explosiveness of his numbers... hired Lehane, and is about to limp to a 4th place finish in New Hampshire, even after spending two straight months campaigning there. Lesson learned: Chris Lehane is probably the least succesful and least credible political strategist in modern memory. You'd have to go back to whoever told Dukakis to sit in that tank to find counsel this inadvisable.
Lieberman... he does have geography in his favor, and there is the fact that conservative Democrats don't really have anywhere else to go. But let's face it: watching the water in the tray freeze into ice cubes is more exciting than Joe Lieberman on the stump. Plus, there's that whole really being a Republican thing. The last numbers I saw said that only 5% of those undecided but leaning to one candidate were leaning to Lieberman... I don't think that's going to be enough of a late break toward him to lift him out of 5th.
We'll see in about 9 hours just how accurate I can be this time. Until then, mi amigos... (now THAT's a question for a new poll: what should I call the denizens of this little corner of the Web? Parrotheads is taken... so what are we? Grumps? Oscars? I'm open to suggestion.)
