Uh-Oh! Dean dizzy from death spiral...

Howard Dean's decline
Robert Novak


January 19, 2004


DES MOINES -- If Iowa were kicking off the Democratic presidential
selection with a regular primary election instead of Monday night's
caucuses, the fabulous campaign of Howard Dean would suffer a possibly
mortal wound. Thousands of anti-war activists who have come here from
all over the country to work for the former governor of Vermont,
directed by his elaborate network of precinct captains, may save him.
But talk of Dean roaring out of Iowa into New Hampshire and clinching
the nomination by the end of January has ended.


The last week has been a nightmare for Dean. Beginning with a run-in
on Sunday, Jan. 11, with a Republican heckler, he has looked
increasingly less presidential. Dean's broad-brush painting of his
Democratic opponents as warmongers has backfired, diminishing his
identification as the essential anti-Bush candidate. He has failed to
significantly reduce support for Rep. Richard Gephardt as his
principal opponent, and instead lost backing to revived candidacies of
Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards.

The extraordinary volatility of Democratic voters here is explained by
their leaders as evidence of their passionate desire to defeat George
W. Bush in November. "Electability" is the characteristic most
mentioned by Iowa Democrats as what they seek in a presidential
candidate. Support for Dean has slipped so sharply here because he is
viewed as markedly less electable in view of his recent conduct.

Dean's problems nationally started when he dismissed the importance of
capturing Saddam Hussein. But his Iowa slide began, says one prominent
Democratic neutral, on Jan. 11 in the town of Oelwein, when a
Republican heckler called Dean "pompous," accused him of "mean
mouthing" and then interrupted him. Dean erupted, shouting: "You sit
down! You had your say! Now, I'm going to have my say!"

That exchange may have been responsible for a lackluster performance
by Dean at the "black and brown" debate that same day. Nearly a week
later, I heard the Oelwein story repeatedly retold by disapproving
Iowans. It was followed by Dean's angry declaration that he no longer
would be a "pin cushion" and by his attack television ads against
opponents (ads that his campaign said it pulled but were still running
on Des Moines television Friday night and Saturday). The Des Moines
Register poll, released Saturday night, stunned Dean's supporters by
showing he had fallen to third place in a four-way race.

Just a week ago, Dick Gephardt seemed likely to benefit from Dean's
decline. The winner of the 1988 caucuses, only Gephardt has the ground
organization to challenge Dean's. His campaign is run by 33-year-old
John Lapp, a political prodigy from northern Virginia and former aide
to Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack who is considered the hottest political
organizer in the state

At Marshalltown Thursday night, leaders and members of 21 labor unions
conducted an old-fashioned rip-roaring rally for Gephardt. To these
supporters, this is a cultural war. Chuck Rocha, the Steelworkers
Union political director who is running Gephardt's labor effort in
Iowa, asks whether blue-collar Iowans will relate to a brother
unionist who works the same job and has the same calluses or to a
body-piercer from Seattle.

Polling and anecdotal evidence, however, show that the Dean defectors
are going to Kerry and Edwards, not Gephardt. The rise of Edwards
since his unexpected endorsement a week ago by the Des Moines Register
was equally unexpected. That may have countered suspicions that
Edwards, though matching the Iowa standard of niceness better than any
other candidate, appeared to be too callow.

But it is Kerry who has been the hot candidate, belatedly hitting the
stride he had shown in past Massachusetts campaigns. Capitalizing on
his Vietnam War record as never before, he has mobilized veterans.
While Kerry does not have Dean's precinct organization or Gephardt's
labor battalions, veteran Iowa Democratic organizer John Norris has a
plan to get his voters to caucuses.

InsiderAdvantage, which previously has polled mainly in the South,
says the contest may not actually be that close in Iowa. Calculating
second-choice preferences that may be decisive in the complicated
caucus system, the poll gives Kerry 33 percent of the actual caucus
vote to Dean's 26 percent. Instead of a quick knockout here, Howard
Dean is struggling for survival.