Iowa Death Trip, Day 3

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Everybody must get slimed

Gisleson: It's not like they're being at all subtle. Drudge throws up a banner link to a story at the Sun Myung Moon owned Washington Times about John Kerry's once proposing the "abolition of the U.S. Agriculture Department." A Friday story to influence the Monday night caucuses. Just enough time for Kerry to scramble and defend himself while the rest of the Democratic pack attacks.

I'd love to see Dean, Edwards, Gephardt and Kucinich jam this back into Karl Rove's face like a Mack Sennett cream pie, but they won't. By the time this diablog posts the recriminations will have begun and the final weekend before the caucuses will be what Karl Rove wants them to be about. A brazen maneuver by a desperate man who knows better than anyone else on this planet just how many Bushbombs are waiting to go off in the coming months.

As usual, maestro Karl's timing is impeccable: today's Des Moines Register story on Kerry is about taxes and energy policy. Tomorrow's Sunday headlines will be less kind. It's rank punditry on my part to say this kills Kerry, but I do fear that Rove has just dispatched one of his two most feared opponents: Senator John Kerry, Vietnam veteran with three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and the Navy's Silver Star, and an early member and spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

To be candid, I doubt either of us will go to bed tonight teary eyed over this bit of media manipulation, but it wouldn't hurt to think of this in terms of the end game. To paraphrase Pastor Niemöller:

First they came for the Arab immigrants, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't an Arab.

Then they came for John Kerry, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't into Skull & Bones.

Then they came for the other candidates, and I didn't speak up, because my guy was still in the running.

Then they had an election, and by that time there were no candidates from the left to speak up for me.

Can Karl Rove again steal what he cannot win honestly?

Perry: Yeah, Drudge has certainly been entertaining the last few days. Only one problem: Without any major exceptions that I'm aware of, this is not Rove and the Republicans doing the "opposition research," as it's called. It's the Democrats themselves, most especially the Clark camp. Didn't you look at that NYT piece about Chris Lehane I mentioned yesterday? (There's a link in yesterday's post.)

It's a very good story, and one of the things it suggests is that the other Democrats usually know when they're on the receiving end of Wes-slime. Clark's decision to stay out of Iowa and let the others fight among themselves might have proven a good idea--except that his fingerprints are all over Iowa at this point, and the others are mad as hell at him about it. When the focus shifts from Iowa to New Hampshire and beyond, it will be interesting to see them take turns going upside Clark's head. He'll get treated very roughly, I think. About time.

There's another testament to Wes's "character" buried in here, too. He has gladly cultivated a reputation for staying out of the mud in his public utterances about other Democrats; meanwhile his pet lizard is handing the press all the scabrous-sounding bullshit "scandals" it can turn up.

Incidentally, what I'm hearing from our City Pages reporters in Iowa is that Dean seems to be in real trouble where public enthusiasm is concerned. Many cite his comment about the caucus system from a few years back--which, of course, was dug up and disseminated by Chris Lehane.

Gisleson: While I have no doubt whatsoever that Chris Lehane could be the source of this information, I think you're being far too kind to the Rovemeister. I'll give Lehane his due on the Canadian story - no advantage to Rove to leak that one this early - but let's face it: the RNC's opposition research team has had the Alexandria Library of Political Dirt sitting on some inside the Beltway hard drives for some time now, and we all know how much the Republicans love to manipulate the Democratic nominating process (can you say Edmund Muskie?).

I am in a bit of a quandary about my caucus predictions. If Dean holds up, then this Kerry smear should make my predictions come out right on target, but as little as I support Kerry and as much as I think Rove's pulled off yet another fait accompli, I can't help but hope that Iowa Democrats prove to be as angry as touted. It would be too sweet if savvy caucus-goers gave Kerry an upset win on Monday night to send a clear message to the rest of the party that this year it's not about politics, it's about getting rid of the hyperpoliticized Bush and his corrupt gang of crony capitalists.

Of course that wouldn't necessarily give us a three-man race, it would just mean that the media pack would annoint Kerry, trash Dean as a lo-o-o-o-oser, and New Hampshire would turn into a three-way brawl with the potential to put Kerry or Clark in the driver's seat headed into South Carolina, assuming nothing happens in Arizona, Delaware or Missouri to further complicate the picture. Spinning this all the way out to mid-February, Wisconsin could experience its most important primary since 1968.

Or Dean will prevail in Iowa, win New Hampshire, survive South Carolina and roll to the nomination.

Perry: I'm not sure I even understand your analysis of the post-Iowa picture. And I'm not making any predictions at this point. Since the caucuses are so much about organizing, one would expect that the Dean campaign with its touted grassroots network should outperform in the caucuses its real level of public support in Iowa. So that's one thing we'll see tested--is Dean's organization really all that?

But I think it's already clear that the Democrats will come out of Iowa damaged as a group by all the mudslinging, and that redounds to the benefit of the absentee Clark going forward--for a little while, until the others start carving pounds of flesh from him.

And while I still would not be surprised to see Dean win Iowa when it's all said and done, it's clear that his public honeymoon is over. You can chalk a great deal of it up to the dirt in the campaign; also to the press's efforts to get Dean, not only because he's the frontrunner but because he is not part of the Democrats' capital gang.

But you have to place some of the responsibility on Dean, too. I think his personality, or lack thereof, becomes a bigger issue the more people are exposed to him. Dean really despises campaigning nationally, the whole circus aspect of it, or so I'm hearing. And it does seem to fit what we know of his temperament.

I happen to like these things about Dean. But they don't seem to spell a long and resilient campaign. Even if he comes out of Iowa having weathered the storm, I have a grimmer sense of his "viability" (his stomach for the process is what I really mean, not his electability) than before. Qui bono? I can't see Kerry or Edwards or Gephardt seizing people's imaginations; they're the same piece of cardboard cut into three different shapes. As much as it revolts me to say so, it seems pretty clear that for the near term, Clark benefits most from the clusterfuck in Iowa.