Southerners voting for a Northerner... blacks voting for a white while a black candidate is in the race... Martin Luther King spoke about judging people by the strength of their character rather than the superficial differences... and it seems that his meme has finally caught traction.
A big lesson from recent weeks for future Presidential candidates is that you can no longer "cherry pick" states or demographic groups. Here is some evidence:
- Clark and Lieberman sat out Iowa and got creamed in NH and on February 3rd. Lieberman's now out, Clark is merely prolonging his exit.
- Edwards focused on South Carolina with a flurry of attention to Oklahoma and Missouri but sat out Arizona and New Mexico. He just got whacked twice in one night in his own region.
- Dean sat out the February 3rd contests and specifically stated it was to build in Washington... then, behind in the polls in Washington, he later ignored that state too... then he said it's do-or-die in Wisconsin, with email fund appeals and panic buttons... now that he's way behind in Wisconsin polls he's saying it's not really do or die...
But the pattern and lesson here is: You can't cherry-pick anymore. You gotta eat the whole salad.
I'll say this for Kucinich. He's developing footsteps behind the others right now in the same way Kerry did before Iowa, albeit with less resources. But he's the only one other than Kerry running a national campaign. At some point, voters in some state will take notice, just as the South did tonight with Kerry.
