The General's Fading Star2. Liberals Are Morons!
Not that left-wing America-Hating liberals would EVER nominate a career
military man, but...
The General's Fading Star
By ***** Morris
November 12, 2003
Old soldiers who run for president, to paraphrase MacArthur, never die,
they
just fade away. Wesley Clark has just faded.
The latest Marist Poll taken at the end of October shows the former
general
fading from a tie for first place to fifth in the Democratic primary
field,
dropping to 8 percent of the Democratic vote nationwide, well behind
Howard
Dean who led at 16 percent of the likely Democratic primary voters.
Other recent polls confirm the same trend. The ABC/Washington Post poll
last
week shows Clark fading to fourth place and the Fox News/Opinion
Dynamics
poll records a drop in his favorable/unfavorable ratio from 24-11 at
the end
of September to 25-19 at the end of October.
Since Clark is not running in Iowa (Jan. 19) and likely not in New
Hampshire
(Jan. 27) either, he had to keep his national standing intact to have
any
hope of entering the process on Feb. 3, when five states (Arizona,
Delaware,
Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina) have their primaries.
Clark would need to do very well on that day and in the rest of
February, as
Tennessee, Virginia and Utah hold their primaries - because on March 2
it
will be all over. That's when New York, California, Texas and Ohio all
vote.
This is too steep a hill for Clark to climb with fading popularity,
limited
financial resources and no early primary victories for momentum.
Clark's slips, reversals, disavowals and denials have begun to catch up
with
him. The war? He first said that he would have voted for it, then
flipped to
say he would have voted no.
Political party? He's a Democrat, but he backed Richard Nixon and
Ronald
Reagan and didn't fully decide on his party until right before he
entered
the race. Bosnia? What was he doing posing with a Serbian war criminal
swapping hats like old buddies? A face, a rank and a former uniform are
not
enough to make up a presidential candidate.
In September and October, the ultimate media candidate - Clark -
competed
for national attention with the leading grass-roots (cyber roots)
candidate - Dean. Each had his face on the cover of Time and Newsweek.
But media coverage was all that Clark had, while Dean had amassed a
solid
base of 500,000 online supporters and 285,000 campaign donors (most
campaigns are lucky if they get 10,000 contributors this early).
Instead, Clark had the Clintons. Not officially, not formally, but
everyone
knew that where Bruce Lindsay was and the Clinton campaign operatives
were,
Bill was not far behind.
The massive mobilization of gay activists and peaceniks impelled a
surge in
Dean's candidacy that has continued while Clark's boom faded.
Now there is precious little to stand between Dean and his nomination.
All
depends on Iowa. If Dean defeats Gephardt in the Missouri congressman's
back
yard, the momentum will sweep him to victory in New Hampshire. Having
won
the first two states, with Clark gone from serious contention, there
will be
nothing to stop him from sweeping the front-loaded nominating process.
The delicious irony is that the primary process is front-loaded
precisely to
keep the Howard Deans of the world out. The Democratic bosses figured
that
with the big states voting so early in the nominating process that a
candidate could not come from out of nowhere, jump start with a win in
Iowa
or New Hampshire and then build the momentum to win the big states. He
just
couldn't get the money together in time. The process was set up to
advantage
a Gephardt or Kerry or Lieberman.
It didn't work that way. Dean raised the funds he needed online before
the
first primary happened. Before New Hampshire or Iowa, he won the
activist
primary through the internet - and that made all the difference.
--
Left-wing liberals are EVERYTHING they accuse the right of being.
They are mean, vicious, hateful, greedy, cold-hearted, selfish,
intolerant,
bigoted and racist.
.
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