Dean gets Gored

So, as everyone knows, Al Gore has endorsed Howard Dean. Since there'll be a mountain of punditizing* on what this means, I thought for the heck of it I'd toss on my own handful of gravel and we'll see later how good a tea leaf reader I turn out to be. (No promise to link back to this if it turns out I suck. And no apologies for mixed metaphors, either.)

First, there will still be primary fights. Nobody's going to quit just because of this. But while it won't sew up the nomination for Dean, it comes pretty damned close.

Second, there are three candidates to who it will make no difference at all: Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley-Braun, and Dennis Kucinich. Frankly, at this point I don't think any of them can be running with any serious thoughts about winning the nomination, whatever hopes they may have had at the outset. Now they're running to get their ideas out, get their issues discussed. Which, I want to aver, is a very noble endeavor - and there is zero sarcasm there. Our politics, our democracy (such as it is), our nation, our society would be much poorer without such efforts.

Third, I think it effectively sinks John Edwards and Joe Lieberman. Lieberman and Gore were always something of an odd couple but it just looks way too bad for Lieberman when not only can't he get the support of the man whose running mate he was, he can't even keep him on the sidelines. Lieberman has been counting on the party establishment turning to him to hold off the "too liberal" Dean. (Howard Dean? That Howard Dean? "Too liberal?" That always was a damn hard sell.) But it's hard to get more establishment than Gore.

Edwards, who was already struggling, would have seemed to be the most natural fit for Gore. Having that nod go to someone else is an open invitation to everyone - donors and supporters alike - to treat Edwards as no longer a player and that is death to any but the strongest candidates.

Fourth, Gephardt and Kerry are deeply wounded unless they make really strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively. Again, they have to show they're still players. But neither seems to be going anywhere and, if polls can be believed, are actually losing ground to Dean. Neither is out of the running, but with Gore's announcement the hill just got steeper. If Gephardt holds on to Iowa and Kerry pulls off what now appears would be an upset in New Hampshire, the doors swing open again. But I don't count on both of those happening.

(Interestingly, Gephardt and Kerry - and, more naturally, Lieberman - are apparently among those who think that Dean can be "stopped" in South Carolina. I'm not at all sure what makes them think they will "resonate" with Southerners any more than Dean will.)

So who does that leave? The proverbial, the almost the definition of the, wild card: Wesley Clark. He won't be affected one way or the other by this. Bluntly, at this point it's hard to see how he would be affected one way or the other by anything. So far, the Clark campaign seems to me to be all buzz no sting, all foam no beer, all bark no bite, whatever all-no cliche suits your fancy. He was one of the most talked about non-candidate candidates in memory before he declared and remained pretty much exactly the same thing after he declared. His tactical decision to skip Iowa and New Hampshire was undoubtedly wise but it still means that his effect on the race - which I say here for the record just in case it turns out I'm right will be less than many people think - is unknown.

One last thing about this: Why did Gore do it? He could have simply stood aside and given the usual "I will support the nominee" line. There has been, as I again expect everyone has seen, a lot of sweaty Psych-101 theorizing about Gore's ego and even more grade-school level political analysis about backroom brawls (such as this, which actually seriously uses the moldy phrase "taking us back rather than forward"). But I'm convinced the reason is simpler and clearer: Al Gore does not want to see the Democrats spend the next several months ripping each other to shreds with the RNC taking notes the whole while and Shrub gliding blissfully along "leading the country." Once a candidate became clearly established as the front-runner for the nomination - and Dean certainly is that - he wants the Democratic Party to quickly unify around that person in order to focus all the fire on Bush.

And despite the sniping from what is fast becoming an "anybody but Dean" camp, that seems to me smart politics.

*A reminder: "Punditizing: making authoritative pronouncements about events when actually you don't have a clue what you're talking about and saying something only because that's what you do:say things; political bloviating."