The following is a revised and extended version of a
diary I wrote the night before New Hampshire, looking ahead past that primary to the Feb. 3 contests. I've updated it to take account of New Hampshire (which did not require much updating, as my assumptions about the outcome of NH basically held) and added sections discussing the key Feb. 7 and Feb. 10 primaries.
Feb. 3 (written before New Hampshire and revised)
The Awesome Foursome came out of NH basically the way everyone was expecting them to: KD, then C and E within a fingernail's width of each other, then Lieberman lurking back in the pack and pathetically trying to stay relevant.
All this being true, where do they put their resources on Feb. 3? Dean, Kerry and Clark may have enough money to compete in all five major states (more on that in a moment) but I don't expect anybody except perhaps Clark to make a serious attempt at winning all five.
But first, the two minor states. North Dakota (14 delegates; caucus) and Delaware (15 delegates; primary) are so small that most campaigns probably won't bother seriously contesting them. In Delaware, though there's been no polling, Dean is assumed to be favoured simply because he actually has staffers in place. He will probably see competition from Clark, who has his own cadre of enthusiastic net geeks, and maybe Kerry. Gephardt had staffers here before he dropped out, and Kerry might scoop up the Gephardt organisation more or less intact, which would be enough to make him competitive. Delaware up to this point has been a Dean-Lieberman race; Kerry should now join the pack and make it basically a Kerry-Dean sideshow with Lieberman for garnish.
That leaves five states, in descending order of delegates: Missouri (74), Arizona (55), South Carolina (45), Oklahoma (40), New Mexico (26).
Missouri (primary)
Every one of the four candidates will undoubtedly commit to Missouri. It's a big prize, it's wide open, and it strengthens any candidate's electability argument.
Edwards in particular would like a win here to demonstrate that he has broad appeal; if he wins South Carolina but loses every other state on this day, he will need a strong showing in the hostile territory on Feb. 7 to prove he can win outside his native South.
Dean used to look strong here but after Iowa and NH, who knows? The other factor which may drag on him here is that I read a quote from Steve Elmendorf (Gephardt's strategist) saying there's resentment of Dean in Missouri because it's felt he kicked Gephardt around and thus ran him out of the race. He will presumably run well in the cities, but he'll need to run very well to offset a likely Clark/Edwards strength in the interior.
Kerry will presumably have access to Gephardt's rolodex and those of his supporters, which include both the unpopular incumbent Governor and the State Auditor who's challenging him in the primary. He may not get Gephardt's formal endorsement, but the endorsement itself is not what matters here; it's his access to the statewide political networks. And then again, maybe not: The Scrum says that Kerry is "planning a big endorsement on Wednesday in Missouri", and we can all take a pretty good guess at who that's gonna be. And if for some reason it's not Gephardt, but Holden (the only other Dem with enough stature to command the adjective) that will probably be a disappointment to expectations.
Clark has no institutional advantages here, but it should be good territory for his message. He may have a strong appeal, or he may fall flat after his fairly limp showing in NH; or he may concentrate most of his attention on OK, AZ and SC and slip by default. He's the only candidate with strong positions in all five major states, but that just means he's spread thinner.
Overall: EDCK? CDEK? EKCD?
Arizona (primary)
Arizona seems to be shaping up as a three-corner fight. Lieberman was banking on this state as one of his firewall states way back when, but as he's slid into irrelevance, his strength here has slumped as well. He shouldn't be a significant factor in the primary, except perhaps as a mosquito pricking Dean particularly, but potentially also Kerry.
Dean really, really wants to win Arizona -- in fact, I think this is the state he'll pour the most resources into on Feb. 3. He's always had a strong position, but was wounded by the post-Iowa fiasco. However, he should bounce back here; his NH showing was enough to avoid hurting him. I really would not be disposed to argue with that warchest, especially in a state that doesn't yet have Dean fatigue, but a lot will depend on what happens to Kerry -- see below.
Edwards bounced up from the margins to a solid third or fourth place, depending on which poll you look at, powered by his Iowa showing. And it's not like Arizona is exactly hostile territory for him. But I think he has another problem: lack of resources. Dean has the Net.Gazillions, Kerry has his mortgage, and Clark has his lesser Net.Gazillions, but Edwards can't self-fund and he isn't raising net money at Dean- or Clark-like levels. Assuming he's tied to South Carolina and wants to contest Missouri and maybe Oklahoma, I don't think this leaves him with enough money to fight for Arizona.
Clark has always run strong in Arizona, and he's had his eye on the state from the very beginning. If Edwards does win South Carolina, Clark can turn that victory Pyrrhic by taking the threefer of Missouri, Arizona and Oklahoma. He'll have the money for it, but his performance, too, will depend on what Kerry does.
And I say this because Kerry is in an interesting position. His support in Arizona is all Iowa bounce (and presumably he'll now add some New Hampshire bounce) and most of it is softer than desert sand. The question is: where is it coming from and where does it go? Kerry and Clark share some voters (men, veterans), and Kerry and Dean share some voters (liberals). Kerry himself probably will not win the state, although he's in a better condition for it than he was after almost hitting 40% in New Hampshire. But the pitch of his message will likely determine the winner. If he draws from Dean more than from Clark, Clark wins. If it's vice versa, Dean wins. If he manages to find himself a base that neither Dean or Clark are contesting, or both Dean and Clark are contesting (Hispanics or women, say) it's anybody's ball game.
Overall: DCKE? DKCE? CDKE? CKDE?
South Carolina (primary)
South Carolina should be the most straightforward contest: a bareknuckle Edwards-Clark faceoff.
This will be Edwards' #1 target state; he must win it to stay in the race. It's not clear what his only-just-fourth-place showing in NH will do to his position here. The last pre-NH poll I saw had him with a commanding lead and Clark didn't get a solid enough grasp on third in NH to slow him down.
Clark dominated here for a while, but Edwards' Iowa bounce knocked him back into second place as Edwards recollected some of the voters he bled when Clark jumped in and captured a few from undecided. I still expect Clark to be Edwards' main competition here -- if only because Dean and Kerry will be busy elsewhere and nobody's ever paid the slightest attention to Lieberman. Clark actually doesn't need South Carolina as badly as Edwards, in that while there will be a lot of media attention swirling around Columbia, Clark is favoured to win one other state tonight and has credible chances to win two more.
Below the duel for first place -- that's where things get interesting.
Dean doesn't need to do well in South Carolina; getting more than 15% will probably be considered breaking expectations for him. His nominal inclusion in the first-place tie before Iowa was pure front-runner soft support, and it's evaporated in the face of his Iowa fall. Some of it may come back if he beats expectations in NH, but he's still likely to wind up duelling Kerry for a low slot.
Kerry is now where Dean was last month: he has soaked up some soft support on the strength of his frontrunner status, but it will almost certainly not last, even if he wins New Hampshire handily. One factor that may have an impact is whether he gets Clyburn. If he does, that will probably lame Clark and lock in an ECK order for the top three places.
The big question-mark, of course, is Sharpton, who on polling at least has real presence in this state. He won't win, but he will quite possibly claim enough support to interfere with the Dean-Kerry duel for third place. The question is really: does he come ahead of both of them, or does he fall between the two of them, driving the loser of the Dean-Kerry joust into fifth? Fifth behind Sharpton is not a good place to be unless you've won multiple other states already that night -- in other words, Dean can probably survive it while Kerry probably can't. Paradoxically, while a Sharpton third in SC is bad for the country and the Democratic Party, it's actually better for the viability of the candidate who comes in fifth than a Sharpton fourth would be.
Overall: ECDSK? CEKSD? ECSDK?
Oklahoma (primary)
Oklahoma is Clark's firewall state. He still dominates it, though Edwards will probably rise up to challenge him.
I would not bet against Clark winning Oklahoma, no matter how good the odds you offered were. He seems to have this state as close to sewn up as it's possible to do. Now that the lustre is draining from his candidacy, it might come into play, but there's a big gap between him and the competition.
If Edwards fights for one state on Feb. 3, he'll fight for South Carolina. If he fights for two, he'll fight for Missouri. If he wants to fight for three, Oklahoma is his logical next choice. But there's a definite priority gap here. I do not imagine he'll have the resources he'd need to knock Clark out of the top spot, but he might be able to push it to a very close second.
Dean and Kerry are basically irrelevant here. Dean will probably beat Kerry simply because he's spent time cultivating a base here and Kerry hasn't. If for some reason Edwards doesn't devote any time or attention to Oklahoma, Dean might have a chance of pulling up to second behind Clark, but it would likely be a fairly long-distance second.
Overall: CEDK?
New Mexico (caucus)
Caucus state. That means Dean, right? Well, you'd think, but of course his organization flunked Iowa. Still, this is probably his strongest state on the night, especially given that Governor Bill Richardson has all but endorsed him. If Dean wins any of the five bigger states, it will probably be New Mexico. The real question is not will he win, it's who emerges to challenge him? (Of course, he might lose, but that would require one hell of a last-minute choke, on the scale of the Iowa fiasco.)
That challenger has virtually no chance of being Edwards. New Mexico is not his strongest territory, it's a caucus (which requires more resources and organizational committment) and there's the infinitely more attractive Arizona primary right next door if he's looking in a Southwesterly direction. He should place a resounding fourth.
On the one hand, Clark has been here longer and has been Dean's main competition in the polls, but...
...on the other hand, Kerry has a team of battle-hardened caucus operatives just lying around looking for somebody to stomp.
Immediately before New Hampshire, Clark indicated he was going to seriously contest the caucus here. This strikes me as counterproductive: he's better off putting his staff and money into primaries. I expect Kerry to give Dean the hardest push here, because he has the staff for it, and he'll be spending a lot of time next door anyway. Dean's mediocre NH finish doesn't really give much in the way of pointers for what will happen here; one of Dean or Kerry has to kill the other eventually, but with the diffusion of media coverage among seven states and Dean's institutional strength here, I don't think Kerry will bother trying for the knockout blow in NM.
Overall: DKCE? KDCE?
Feb. 3 Overall
Feb. 3 looks good for Clark, good to mediocre for Dean, mediocre for Edwards and bad for Kerry. Taking those in reverse order...
There is little in the way of good Kerry territory up on this day. He will need to depend on a solid win in Michigan and a come-from-behind, CW-defying victory in Washington to shore up his position for the late-February primaries leading in to Super Tuesday. He would also be helped if Edwards was able to knock out Clark, thus removing his most dangerous opponent.
This would be a good day for Edwards if everyone else was under the same resource constraints as him; but this may be the moment his fundraising comes back to bite him. He could be a strong contender in the four biggest states had he but the money, but at the moment (unless he had an insane Q4 2003 that he hasn't told us about) he just doesn't. Before NH, he was probably hoping to defy expectations and see a geyser of cash open up, but he didn't and it hasn't. On the other hand, he only needs to drive Clark out of the race to make it to Super Tuesday on March 2, and in that he will have help from Kerry and Dean. If he trips today, he can make it up by winning both states on Feb. 10.
Dean's situation is ambiguous. He's got two good states, a fighting chance at a third, is likely to do well in the two minor states, and will be a potent contender, if not favoured, in the Feb. 7 and 8 caucuses. The more the campaign expands, the more his advantages -- That Warchest, and Those Fans -- come into play and the more his disadvantages (mostly the fact that Those Fans are Chomsky-thumping morons) are muted. Step one of stop-Dean, I always used to say, was denying him Iowa. That's done. Step two was choking him off in New Hampshire -- that's sort of done, although he wasn't defeated as resoundingly as he perhaps needed to be. The third and final step is shutting him out of the major states on Feb. 3.
Clark's main problem is that he's got some strength everywhere, but he's coming out of New Hampshire weakened and spread thin. Still, even in the worst-case scenario he can probably count on winning at least one state and going on to give Edwards heartburn in the Feb. 10 primaries. But his chances at the nomination are fading; there's a limit to the number of seismic shocks you can have in one primary season, and between Dean's rise, then Kerry's rise, then Edwards' rise, that limit is almost hit, and Clark will need to either displace Edwards or displace both Kerry and Dean, both rather seismic tasks.
Feb. 7 (this section and hereafter written post-NH)
Michigan (caucus)
This will be the biggest prize to date, with 128 delegates. It was initially expected to be Gephardt's last stand, but of course, now there's no Gephardt to do the standing. Nearly everybody can tell you why they can win here, but Kerry and Dean probably start out with the most compelling rationales.
Kerry has no intrinsic advantage here in message; on the other hand, he will presumably inherit much of Gephardt's support and will probably come here as 'the Frontrunner'. That's enough to put him in contention; and of course, not being bound by spending caps is not to be sneezed at. He also has the Governor's husband on his side (the Governor herself is neutral).
Dean showed strong numbers here at one point, but as always there's the proviso that they were before Iowa. And Iowa raises a second problem. His people crapped out in the caucus there. If they've absorbed their lessons, they might be able to win. If they remain ignorant, Dean is toast. And he must win this state, although it's not particularly hospitable territory to him. Kerry and Dean will both come in, but only one of them will walk out with a credible shot at the nomination.
Edwards has the right message for Michigan, but it's not clear whether he has the other assets he needs. And Michigan's too big to let him pull off the trick he used in Iowa of letting his organization pull itself together out of sheer enthusiasm at the last minute. He's very unlikely to win, but he could place a credible second, most likely if Dean implodes.
Nobody really knows what Clark's plans are for Michigan. He'll compete, but he doesn't really have any advantages to speak of and probably won't do particularly well.
Overall: DKCE? DKEC? KDEC? KEDC?
Washington (caucus)
The Washington state Democratic Party has basically adopted Dean. There haven't been any polls, but I hear a constant stream of buzz to the tune of "we love Howie". Late last year he held a rally here at which 25,000 people showed up -- he could have won the caucus just with the people at that rally. Dean is not likely to lose here unless he's kneecapped on Feb. 3. A Kerry win will be CW-defying, and good for buzz. (Also, this is a big state; it's got about as many delegates as Missouri.) Neither Clark nor Edwards is likely to have much of a shot, especially since they'll be conserving resources for the two Feb. 10 primaries.
Overall: DKEC? DKCE? KDEC?
Feb. 8
Maine (caucus)
This is a sideshow. Neither Clark nor Edwards is likely to do well here, meaning it will go to the winner of the Kerry-Dean duel more or less by default.
Overall: DKCE or KDCE.
Feb. 10
Tennessee (primary)
The field by this point will be narrowing to a Northerner (Dean or Kerry) and a Southerner (Clark or Edwards). The last Tennessee poll I saw showed Clark up one point over Dean, but that was pre-Iowa. Most likely, the Southerner will take Tennessee and the Northerner will finish a rather paltry second. Dean could probably manage to lose with more dignity than Kerry, who is a really bad fit for this state. If by strange confluence of circumstance Edwards and Clark are both still viable, this will be the day one or other of them gets knocked out, and Tennessee will be a race.
Overall: ECKD? EKDC? ECDK?
Virginia (primary)
Kerry doesn't need to win this state, but everybody else wants to. Dean's had staff in place here for a long time and has led the state in most polls, but there hasn't been a post-Iowa poll that I'm aware of. The primary electorate here -- mostly based in the DC suburbs -- is more liberal than most other Southern states.
Right now I don't think Dean could win, but he could well put up a strong second to whichever Southern candidate is still in the race. His worst nightmare is if today is an Edwards-Clark duel to the death sucks up all the media coverage; that will relegate him to third. If Dean does unexpectedly well in the states before this, however, he could come back into contention fast. Numerically he doesn't need Virginia to win, but it's important for his credibility as the nominee.
Most of what I said about Clark and Edwards under Tennessee also applies here. Clark has staff on the ground and may be slightly better positioned than Edwards, but there's still a lot of fluidity.
There are no expectations for Kerry here, and if he makes it this far he will probably have swept the three preceding caucuses, so he can sit back and ignore the state, or push for second if he feels like it.
Overall: EDCK? EKDC? ECKD? ECDK? CEKD?
Late February
Wisconsin (Feb. 17; primary) Expected to be Dean's last stand, or an underline to his recovered frontrunner status, depending on what the other states do. The Wisconsin primary is actually very major, but there's too much between then and now to speculate on what it might do.
Idaho & Hawaii (Feb. 24; caucuses) Will probably favour the liberal candidate, whoever it is at that point.
Utah (Feb. 27; primary) I have absolutely no frickin' idea.
Getting there from here
If you're willing to be reasonably generous, then each of the four major candidates has a way to get to Super Tuesday. Most of the contests here are only partially about delegates: it's all about scoring wins, knocking out opponents, and building momentum. As such, I haven't done the delegate sums here, since broadly speaking only two positions have any worth in each state: first, and "close second". Here are the roadmaps (Feb. 3 / 7 / 8 / 10 / 17):
Dean: AZ+NM+MO / MI+WA / ME / VA / WI
Edwards: SC+MO+OK / -- / -- / VA+TN / --
Kerry: AZ+NM+MO / MI / ME / -- / WI
Clark: AZ+MO+OK / MI / -- / VA+TN / WI