Also known as DAMN for short ;-)
It's occurred to me that in the past year, we have seen a phenomenon which I call "Candidate Centralization": the media overwhelmingly focus on one candidate that they find interesting, bizarre, or just plain odd, and latch onto them like a leech. Also like a leech, they suck out every single tasty morsel that they can and use it to further their own worthless lives.
We saw it last year with the recall in California. Do you ever remember seeing many feature stories on anyone other than the Terminator? The only time any of the other candidates could get any air time was when they attacked Arnold, and even then they got little more than a sound byte. The debates weren't numerous or substantive enough to give the other candidates an opening, either Bustamante on the left or McClintock on the right.
Sound familiar, anyone? It should. Substitute "the Terminator" with "Dean" and you get an eerie parallel to the primaries.
I'm a Dean fan: I love the fact that he's getting so much media coverage. But there's a downside to all this attention, just like in the California recall: all the other candidates, desperate to get some media, no matter how scant, bring up their attacks to a shrill volume and attack Dean.
We've all seen the WaPo, NYTimes, et al. articles detailing the other candidates' attacks on Dean. We know that candidates who try to articulate a positive agenda, like Edwards and Clark have been doing in recent weeks, get scant air time at all.
This is not healthy. Candidate Centralization does not help undecideds decide between candidates. The only effect it has on undecideds is whether or not they like one candidate. In a nine-man race, that is not helpful.