Lieberman, Kerry, Dean, Kerry, Bush.

Good Friday morning Fellow Seekers,

It’s fine to describe Hillary Clinton as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. She is. You could say the same about Rudy Giuliani on the Repub side, although his situation is more complicated.

It’s fine to laugh and roll your eyes when pollsters say that their poll results aren’t predictions, just snapshots of a fleeting moment in political time. But they’re telling the truth.

It’s not fine to talk about either nomination race as if we can see to the end from here. We can’t. Just recall these events from four years ago and take the pledge to keep your shirt on, your eyes open and your heart humble.

In August of 2003, Joe Lieberman held a commanding lead among Democrats nationally for the presidential nomination in a CNN/Time poll (Dick Gephardt ran second in that poll). When Lieberman sank like an anvil, the word “frontrunner” began to be applied to John Kerry.

By this date in the previous cycle, Howard  Dean (a little-known small state governor who started out as the longest of longshot candidates) had caught on with his anti-war message and his inernet-driven fund-raising success. He had raised more money, and had more cash on hand, than any other Democrat. (I guess you could cast Barack Obama as the Dean figure this time around, in some respects — the new face, against the war since before it began, popular with the young, a surprisingly strong fund-raiser. But he’s not — for our current purposes – the designated front-runner heading toward Iowa. 

 A Dec. 8 Pew Research Center poll had Dean leading nationally and in Iowa. Note that just five weeks before the causes, Pew had John Edwards registering five percent support, both in Iowa and nationally.

On Dec. 9, 2003, a month ahead of the Iowa cacuses  Gallup announced that Dean had, “for the first time moved into the front-runner position nationally in the race for the Democratic nomination,” with an eight-percentage lead over his nearest rival, Gen. Wesley Clark. The Gallup analysts noted in the same piece that

“The current poll also underscores the degree to which Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s campaign has derailed; he now receives only 7% of the national Democratic vote.”

You might say Kerry held the status then that John McCain held a month ago, when his campaign was declared dead by some. And you’ll note there’s been a recent adjustment in the conventional wisdom on McCain lately to the not-quite-completely-dead-yet category.

By Christmas 2004, Dean’s eventual nomination was widely viewed as inevitable. His desperate rivals were stepping up their attacks, and being cautioned by fellow Democrats such as Sen. Tom Harkin that they might only be helping the Republicans who would face Dean in the general election.

Every poll in early January confirmed Dean’s lead in Iowa (he was also way ahead in New Hampshire and nationally), but the main question in news coverage was whether Gephardt, who was a respectably close second in Iowa and whose labor support was said to be a big advantage in a caucus state, might nose him out. Dean’s offsetting advantage was the throng of out-of-state college kid Deaniacs, wearing trademark orange knit caps, who had come to Iowa to turn out caucus-goers for Dean.

Gephardt aired some TV ads in Iowa attacking Dean. Dean fired back against Gephardt. One version of the conventional wisdom of what changed the race is that (according to political rules of thumb, this is always a great danger) the person attacking and the person being attacked both lose ground and everyone else (in this case, Kerry and Edwards) benefits.

I was in Iowa for the final weeks. Kerry, with an imposing assemblage of firefighters and Vietnam Vets at his back, had the best two weeks of his life as a speaker. I’m from Massachusetts and have heard Kerry’s deep drone for years. Charisma on the stump is not his strength. For those two weeks, he was a spellbinder. Bigger and bigger crowds of Iowans were getting more and more excited. Edwards, who is a natural stump speaker, had a similar effect on his audiences.

On January 5, 2004, AP political writer Ron Fournier noted the wind at Kerry and Edwards’ back, and dared to note that:

“The conventional wisdom ignores signs that Kerry is within striking distance of a second-place finish. (emphasis added to note that even second place for Kerry was considered outside the conventional wisdom, and this was two weeks before caucus night).

One other thing I witnessed. Iowans, proper and polite midwesterners, were getting mightily annoyed by the Orange-capped out-of-town strangers who were calling them night after night. I haven’t seen many post-mortems that emphasized this factor, but I met Iowans who turned against Dean because they found those kids pushy. I’m just sayin…

The Des Moines Register published a poll the day before the caucuses, showing Kerry and Edwards running 1 and 2, slightly ahead of Dean and Gephardt. Even that was only a snapshot. It ended up being a rout for the top two versus the former frontrunners, by percentage of state delegates won:

• Kerry: 37.6
• Edwards: 31.8
• Dean 18.0
• Gephardt: 10.6

 The Dean precinct captains to whom I spoke as the magnitude of the caucus-night disaster became undeniable were looking at clipboards with names, numbers and addresses of people who had committed to caucus for Dean and just didn’t show up. I talked to some of the orange hatters who had arranged to drive elderly Iowans to the caucus sites who told me about folks who had said yes all along, and on caucus night just said no.

Dean ended up winning primaries only in the District of Columbia, and in his home state of Vermont long after his national bid had failed. Gen. Clark won only in Oklahoma. Dick Gephardt didn’t win any and dropped out of the race and out of politics after Iowa. John Edwards won one primary (South Carolina) and stayed positive, which helped him get the veep slot on Kerry’s ticket, which enabled him to keep running for president, as he still does, pinning his hopes almost entirely on a strong showing in Iowa in about three months (exact date to be determined).

January. Mitt Romney is the John Edwards of the GOP side on that score, since he polls better in Iowa than nationally and is counting a strong Iowa showing to improve his standing everywhere else.

Kerry won all the rest of the primaries, and the nomination, based largely on the conviction among Democrats that, especially because of his war record, he was the electable one. But he turned out not to be electable enough.

In his recent talk at the Humphrey Institute, pollster Andrew Kohut commented on the lessons of Dean’s 2004 collapse for the frontrunners of today. He said that, as a newcomer to national politics, Dean’s support was always more volatile. As a familiar character, Hillary Clinton’s may be more stable.

If you think that Dean’s gaffes were the key to his demise (but please, I beg you, the scream came after the Iowa caucuses and could not have caused Dean’s Iowa collapse) you might think that Clinton is sure-footed and less gaffe-prone.

So what did the polls tell us four years ago today about how things would turn out? Not much. What do they tell us now?