I have actually defended Clark's votes for Nixon and Reagan on several occasions for one simple fact. They both won at least one election in a landslide. Also, I have truly not met too many people who would admit to voting for either of them. Thus, someone must be lying about voting for them. I actually compared them to the Spice Girls. Remember them? They sold more records than the Beatles. Do you know anyone who owned or owns a Spice Girls album?
This brings us to Dean, why he lost Iowa, and why that does not mean a damn thing in the future. The other candidates made it uncool to be for Dean. They made it look like a vote for Dean was a vote for Bush. There were many holdouts though. I met a young couple that were precinct captains who said that people who they knew slammed the door in their face. It was very hard to be a Deaniac in Iowa those last few weeks. This is why he lost the Caucuses. It was because deep down inside, many of us want Dean to win, but we are scared to say so, and we surely will not gather with our neighbors and Caucus for him. That would be like voting for Bush.
In a closed primary it is a different story. We can hide our Dean signs and T-shirts, say that we like Kerry, Clark, or some other candidate that stole Dean's message and is declaring themselves the "electable version of Dean". We can then go into that voting booth and vote our conscious. We can vote with our heads and our hearts. (Disclosure: I stole that line from the Clarkies, but it can only be used to describe Dean, IMHO.)
So my point is that in public it is not cool to be for Dean. You are thought of as a Kool Aid drinker if you would even dare elect a candidate who is not afraid of taking on Bush or standing up against an unjust and immoral war. So a vote for Dean is a vote for Bush? The Democrats said that about Ronald Reagan, and we know what happened to Carter after that.