If one thing has come out of the last month, it’s proof positive that the political media in this country are absolutely, positively, butt-worthless. They are pretty much doing what they’ve always done: pick the simplest possible narrative and cling to it like a pit bull to a rival gangster’s leg. Now, who are you going to believe: some spittle flecked idiot who’s full of himself howling at anyone who will listen, or some pundit who isn’t me?
(Remember who told you about Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee back when Cal was a top-5 team? Well then.)
Okay, first things first. Primaries since 1984. I was there. Every single one. People tend to forget, because the last seriously contested primary season before 2004 was the Dems in 1992, and the sort of idiots who get on TV don’t have a memory past about six weeks, so expecting them to know what a real primary is like is rather like looking for a seven-leaf clover. Mondale and Hart went right down to the wire in ’84. Super Tuesday in 1988 was supposed to select a nice safe moderate and instead kept Jesse Jackson in the race all the way to the end. And in 1992, the leading Democratic contenders were a has-been, a never-was, a nutter or five, and a well-fed country boy, all overshadowed by the guys who didn’t run. And they threw elbows, too – people always think of Lee Atwater as the mastermind of the whole Willie Horton furlough story that helped sink Dukakis, but that little nugget was first thrown out in the Dem primary – by Al Gore. Dukakis himself leaked the tape that branded Joe Biden a plagarist. Gary Hart savaged Mondale for the “failed policies of the past,” four years removed from Mondale’s turn as Vice-President, and Mondale’s famous “Where’s the beef?” reply basically ended Hart’s campaign (of course, his digs against New Jersey in the run-up to June didn’t help).
Yes, June. It used to take six months, boys and girls. In fact, time was, Iowa was in January, New Hampshire in February, Super Tuesday in March, then on to Illinois, then New York, some others, and California and New Jersey in a bicoastal parlay that sealed the deal. Not everything in one mad dash of less than 40 days, with a year’s worth of run-up and a nine-month campaign to follow.
I say all that to say this: under normal circumstances, a primary race lasts a long time, goes through several states, involves multiple participants, and is generally not conducted on the level of high tea at the Savoy. There is absolutely nothing going on in the Democratic primary right now that is unprecedented, unexpected, or out of bounds for the game in question. The attempt to suggest otherwise says more about the press than it does about the candidates.
Also, I make it a point never to pay at the Savoy.
More later.