Wednesday, February 18, 2004
A Day Dean Dreaded Dearly
In little more than an hour, Dean's going to officially announce his departure from the race for the Dem nomination at a press conference/rally in Burlington, just a mere mile from my condo. There's little suspense in that rally's purpose, yet I expect that all the major media functionaries will be there. Expect much more in the way of analysis from yours truly once I get back from that event, or the expected happy hour hugfests that will follow.
The spin on last night's results in Wisconsin has been put into dizzying rotation - many claim that Edwards' showing was akin to a victory. Sure, it looked awfully close at 9:53pm EST (by my watch) when all the cable news channels projected Kerry's victory when only 23% of the vote was in and Kerry was actually down in the vote count by a few hundred with about 58,000 votes for both himself and Edwards tallied. But the nature of modern campaign physics is all in the exit polling, where Kerry was mopping up with Democrat voters in this open primary. In the end, the tallies came out as follows:
Kerry - 40%
Edwards - 34%
Dean - 18%
Compared to my predictions from yesterday, I'd overestimated Kerry by 5 points, shorted Dean by 5, and shorted Edwards by 1, hitting the trifecta nonetheless on my bet. Not much elegance in my prediction, but at least I was a heckuva lot closer than most of the pundits that get paid untold fortunes for claiming their insight allows them to better toss the darts we all can check out from the bar, so to speak.
What comes from all this handicapping? Well, we're back to where we were one year ago, with the smart money on Kerry and Edwards in a dueling strategies game leading up to Super Tuesday on March 2nd. Few if any postulations in the current timeframe will give you a great forecast for Edwards - running in the 10 States in two weeks will be a big disadvantage for him since few "open Primary" possibilities like that seen in Wisconsin coupled with the time to do the baby-kissing/hand-shaking style of personal contact present themselves from here on out. And anyone that thinks Dean is gonna endorse is once again smoking Nader's stash. So unless Kerry's craps in his pants on stage while grabbing the breast of a 16-year-old intern, I'm ready to predict he's on his way to the nomination. He's got 27% of the delegates he needs right now. Conversely, Dean garnered a grand total of 200 delegates, over half of which were "superdelegates" or unrelated to the Primaries/Caucuses played out thus far. I don't have time to tally how much each pledged delegate cost the Campaign. Rest assured, it's a historic high.
Regardless, time to see what sort of turnout the rally gets. More later, to be sure.
In little more than an hour, Dean's going to officially announce his departure from the race for the Dem nomination at a press conference/rally in Burlington, just a mere mile from my condo. There's little suspense in that rally's purpose, yet I expect that all the major media functionaries will be there. Expect much more in the way of analysis from yours truly once I get back from that event, or the expected happy hour hugfests that will follow.
The spin on last night's results in Wisconsin has been put into dizzying rotation - many claim that Edwards' showing was akin to a victory. Sure, it looked awfully close at 9:53pm EST (by my watch) when all the cable news channels projected Kerry's victory when only 23% of the vote was in and Kerry was actually down in the vote count by a few hundred with about 58,000 votes for both himself and Edwards tallied. But the nature of modern campaign physics is all in the exit polling, where Kerry was mopping up with Democrat voters in this open primary. In the end, the tallies came out as follows:
Kerry - 40%
Edwards - 34%
Dean - 18%
Compared to my predictions from yesterday, I'd overestimated Kerry by 5 points, shorted Dean by 5, and shorted Edwards by 1, hitting the trifecta nonetheless on my bet. Not much elegance in my prediction, but at least I was a heckuva lot closer than most of the pundits that get paid untold fortunes for claiming their insight allows them to better toss the darts we all can check out from the bar, so to speak.
What comes from all this handicapping? Well, we're back to where we were one year ago, with the smart money on Kerry and Edwards in a dueling strategies game leading up to Super Tuesday on March 2nd. Few if any postulations in the current timeframe will give you a great forecast for Edwards - running in the 10 States in two weeks will be a big disadvantage for him since few "open Primary" possibilities like that seen in Wisconsin coupled with the time to do the baby-kissing/hand-shaking style of personal contact present themselves from here on out. And anyone that thinks Dean is gonna endorse is once again smoking Nader's stash. So unless Kerry's craps in his pants on stage while grabbing the breast of a 16-year-old intern, I'm ready to predict he's on his way to the nomination. He's got 27% of the delegates he needs right now. Conversely, Dean garnered a grand total of 200 delegates, over half of which were "superdelegates" or unrelated to the Primaries/Caucuses played out thus far. I don't have time to tally how much each pledged delegate cost the Campaign. Rest assured, it's a historic high.
Regardless, time to see what sort of turnout the rally gets. More later, to be sure.
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