Posted 9:41 AM by Robert

Who's Worrying?

To look at the polls, Howard Dean doesn't seem to do all that badly against George Bush:

"If [see below] were the Democratic Party's candidate and George W. Bush were the Republican Party's candidate, who would you be more likely to vote for: [see below], the Democrat or George W. Bush, the Republican?" If undecided: "As of today, do you lean more toward [see below], the Democrat, or Bush, the Republican?" Names rotated

........................................................George W. Bush...........................Howard Dean
....................................................................%................................................%
11/03..........................................................53..............................................44
9/03............................................................49..............................................46

Indeed, Dr. Dean does just slightly worse than the "electable" General Clark in the same polling question - and General Clark is widely perceived as now losing a lot of steam:

.......................................................George W. Bush............................Wesley Clark
...................................................................%...............................................%
11/03..........................................................50..............................................47
9/03............................................................46..............................................49

So, since Dr. Dean is doing so well with Democrats and not really materially worse than General Clark among the general electorate, why the heck does the media keep running all those "the Democratic Party is so worried about Dr. Dean" stories:

In the wider Democratic universe, however, the prospect of a Dean nomination has sent some party members into paroxysms of private hand-wringing. Not only do they see him losing badly to Bush, they also see Dean hurting Democratic candidates further down on the ticket - rippling into congressional races, and possibly even boosting Republican control of the 100-seat Senate close to the crucial threshold of 60 seats, which would make it filibuster-proof.

"We could come perilously close to a one-party state," says a longtime Democratic activist with no formal ties to any campaign. "We could wind up with two more Antonin Scalias [on the Supreme Court]," he adds, referring to one of the most conservative justices.

Some big-name Democrats have begun to speak openly about Dean's vulnerabilities as a potential nominee. In a Washington Post interview published Monday, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D), who has not endorsed any candidate, says if Dean is nominated, he will have to work hard to show that he's as tough as Bush in handling the war on terrorism. Of the leading Democratic candidates, Dean is the only one to oppose the war with Iraq - the issue that energized his candidacy in the first place. He also has less experience in defense and foreign policy.

Setting aside the issue of whether Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack is a "big name Democrat," perhaps this passage from the same Monitor article offers some insight into the apparent Democratic results/anxiety disconnect:

Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst ... adds that this sense of unease probably mirrors some concern in the Democratic establishment that Dean is too much of an outsider, that he's too angry and can be painted as too far left. .... [O]ne discouraged outpost of the Democratic Party is the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the breeding ground for many of the centrist ideas that President Clinton and Vice President Gore espoused and which appear, in this cycle, to be out of sync with what Democratic base voters are looking for - a clear contrast with a president they cannot abide. Will Marshall, the DLC president, speaks of the "myth of inevitability" that the "Dean propaganda machine" has skillfully cultivated.

So big sources of this anti-Dean anxiety seem to be the Democratic establishment and the Democratic Leadership Council. That Democratic establishment presumably includes a nice big serving of the Clinton-appointed and dominated Democratic National Committee - which Dr. Dean says he wants to sweep clean of Clintonian influence. The Democratic Leadership Council has been the traditional source of Clinton influence - which Deanmania is said to show is now "out of sync." And, of course, the more-electable-but-only-on-paper Wesley Clark is the Clintons' darling.

Clintons, Clintons, Clintons. Those names and connections just keep coming up when its time to start putting Dr. Dean down.

But the Clintons surely wouldn't be encouraging these Dean-anxiety messages by using their influence with a Democratic establishment they largely installed, and with the wide portion of the media that willingly caters to them. Would they? No. No. No. Unthinkable. No doubt that famously selfless couple just wants to be sure that there is someone there to save the Democratic party if Dr. Dean "fades."

[And what the heck is "a longtime Democratic activist with no formal ties to any campaign" supposed to tell us? Couldn't, say, Senator Lieberman's best friend since childhood and current weekly poker partner satisfy this description? Are we to assume that this "longtime Democratic activist" who for some reason won't speak on the record has some informal ties to one of the campaigns? Wouldn't an informal tie bias the opinion in just the way the Monitor reporter is attempting to reassure the reader isn't occurring? Are there no Democratic insiders who are willing to say such things and also be named? If not, why not?]

UPDATE: An astute and knowledgeable reader e-mails a note explaining why these polls are frightening Democrats more than the results might seem to warrant:

These CNN polls showing the Dem candidates close to or even ahead of Bush are bogus media hypes, and the real, electoral numbers show a much wider distance between Bush and the Dems. And the politicians know that.

There are a few reasons for the disparity. One, all the CNN/Gallup polls have a sample of around 1000 adults (not registered or likely voters), which does not give a true picture of electoral strength. Second, if you look at the details behind the headlines, you will find that these samples contain an inordinate proportion of Democrats (in a poll about a month ago, CNN-Gallup had 480 Democrats in a total sample of 1004 adults. I have not checked the make up of the current poll. This is unrepresentative of the general population, where Republicans, Democrats and Independents are about evenly divided.) This oversampling obviously skews the results against Bush.

Another great example of the skewed results was the LA Times poll before the California recall election, which showed Bustamante leading Arnold by about 6 points.

That all sounds about right to me.