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Yeah, it's still early. Right?

By Mark Kilmer Posted in 2008 — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Team Biden has been heartened by this Op/Ed from the Los Angeles Times: The Heisenberg primaries: Candidates and media beware: you can't measure what hasn't happened. It can be summed up by an early sentence and the closing one:

The absurdly early start of this primary season has a lot more to do with entertaining bored political elites than with persuading actual primary voters. … [T]rying to measure the variables now, for a campaign that for most hasn't even started yet, can lead to a net loss of knowledge.

I concur, and it's been one of the theses bouncing around in my prose this year. Team Biden, badly trailing everyone everywhere, draws hope from this notion. I got the following 'graph in a fundraising e-mail from Team Biden last night:

(Read on for the Biden paragraph and for the rest…)

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times explains that early polling for the presidential election is essentially meaningless, citing John Kerry's 2004 nomination as a prime example of pundits and pollsters getting it wrong. The article highlights the fact that "more than two-thirds of the Democrats who voted in the 2004 Iowa caucuses didn't decide who to vote for until a month before the caucuses." The LA Times further reveals that John Kerry found himself in third place in Iowa weeks before the election but soon "more than doubled his vote in Iowa and nearly quadrupled it in New Hampshire - all in less than 20 days." After a surprise showing in Iowa that propelled him into the media spotlight, Kerry sailed through the other early primary states and won the nomination.

Joe Biden has a point, but he misses the one which matters. It is true, John Kerry's campaign was declared dead by the mainstream media, having been crushed by the Dean & the Deaniacs juggernaut. He lent himself Mama T's money, taking out that mortgage, and he came back and won the Democrat nomination.

Joe Biden misses a minor point. John Kerry won the nomination almost by default, as he was the only non-lunatic thought electable in that field. "YEAAARRRRGH!" Joe Biden has to deal with Hillary & the Bill Machine as well as Obama, who has some rare dynamic going on.

The big point he misses, though, is that John Kerry lost the 2004 General Election. Why does Joe Biden want to be compared to a miserable failure? I suppose we can ask Joe Biden.

Also of note: the LATimes Op/Ed was written by Mike Murphy and Mark Mellman. The paper describes:

MIKE MURPHY is a Republican political consultant whose clients have included Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Jeb Bush. MARK MELLMAN is a Democratic pollster who has represented Sen. Harry Reid, Sen. Barbara Boxer and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, among others.

Something important was left out of Mr. Murphy's brief bio. Mike Murphy was the media guy who put Mitt Romney on the national map. In fact, it was Murphy who, in 2005, told National Review mag's John J. Miller:

"He's been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly," says adviser Murphy.

I would blame Mitt if he had asked Murphy for distance after the strategist said that the governor was a liar.

This does tie together. Joe Biden could conceivably win the Democrat nomination. Mitt Romney could conceivably win the Republican nomination. John McCain could conceivably move back into the race. Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter, the two candidates to whose blogger conference calls I listened yesterday, could move into the thick of things. It is, of course, not too late for Fred Thompson to officially enter the race. It's not too late for John J. Miller to get in, for that matter.

How realistic the notion of the candidacy must be is up to the candidate and the staff he can pay. Team Biden has been heartened.