General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Who did you support and VOTE for President in 1992? Primary/General [View all]karynnj
(59,533 posts)The FACT that he was suppose to win Iowa - or come a close second to Gephardt AND he lost with 18% to Kerry's 38% was the real cause. That was in spite of Kerry getting far less media support and having far less money in Iowa. The ONLY media - other than an Atlantic Monthly excerpt of Tour of Duty - that Kerry got in late 2003 was speculation of whether he would drop out before Iowa, after Iowa or after NH. Meanwhile, Dean had a lot of the most supportive and some of the most critical coverage because he was the one acknowledged as the front runner.
Why he lost was more that he and Gephardt engaged in murder/suicide negative ads that hurt BOTH of them - each being hurt more by the fact that people said they were repulsed by the negativity of the ads. Blame Trippi or whomever was involved in the decision to run those ads. He was also hurt according to some from Iowa by not being that impressive speaking one to one (or in small groups) with Iowans.
Kerry won precisely because he was very good winning over small groups of people with whom he would stay to answer any question they had. In addition, the margin of his win was likely helped by the event a few days before the primary where the man he saved in Vietnam came to his event - winning in my mind forever - the campaign event that most likely would have been at home in a 1940s (Kappra like) movie.
Iowa is rarely about the MSM. In fact, by its very nature, it often overturns the MSM narrative. This happened in both 2004 and 2008. In 2008, it changed the story from Hillary is the inevitable nominee (and President) to Obama might just do this!
As to Dean winning the general election (which I assume is what you mean), Kerry was by far the stronger candidate. Kerry because of his debates, especially the first on foreign policy, was able to make it a very close race - that would been a major upset had there been enough voting machines in Ohio in Democratic strongholds. If your point is that Dean could have won more of the left - in fact, the left voted for Kerry. More than 9 million more people voted for Kerry than had voted for Gore. The problem - other than cheating and media bias - was that in 2004 the country was not ready for a Presidential nominee who could already foresee a time when the war on terror would be over. Note that this week, we saw the Republicans still aren't -- and no one in the media has mentioned how Obama's speech actually echoes some of Kerry's 2004 comments in the Matt Bai NYT magazine article that spoke of exactly the situation Obama says we are in now. Then the idea that terrorism would be fought by international law enforcement and intelligence for the most part sounded - which should have been seen as a comforting, optimistic future was not believed by enough people as a future goal. This in spite of how terrible the alternative - a permanent state of fear of terrorism was.