OK, I'm (still) a big Clark fan. Always have been, since his NATO days. But he got an incredibly bad break with the Iowa results and as a result got thrown off his game for a week at the wrong time. Game over.
For you Dean-heads: Your guy changed the Democratic Party for good. He made our eventual nominee much, much sharper. He has brought into the Party all those grassroots donors that the Republicans have used to great advantage recently. He is a hero and will be a fixture in the Party for years. But he won't be the nominee.
John Kerry got perhaps the biggest piece of good luck of all political time in Iowa. Not only did the two frontrunners there destroy each other with negative ads, sort of like the two leading cars in a NASCAR race colliding with half a lap to go, letting the 3 and 4 cars pass, but he benefitted from the insane CW that now says you can never go negative. The actual lesson from Iowa was: In a multi-candidate field, never give a viable candidate a free ride. If you're going negative, get everyone, because if you don't, the clean candidate will win. Fact is, Kerry has all but seized the nomination mostly by default. Or by luck, take your pick. The only candidate left with a shot is Edwards, and after tomorrow night he might be out, too.
So let's all hold hands and take a deep breath and start over. If nothing dramatic happens with John Edwards, we have our nominee, and his name is John Kerry. He's a Vietnam hero, someone who's been in the public for thirty years and who won't make stupid mistakes. He's tough as nails and a good closer. He hates Bush. It's not so bad.
Starting Tuesday night if appropriate, let's press our collective reset buttons, send some checks in, and start talking him up, rather than down. If Edwards wins SC and Kerry doesn't do as well as hoped in some other places, ignore this diary. But I suspect that won't happen.