Yes, but Dean still has the support of his base and lots of cash, for a Democrat. He won't go gentle into that good night, and he'll probably take at least one other candidate with him. Speaking from a partisan point of view, Kerry and Clark are raw meat anyway and the GOP would cultivate Lieberman like a rare hothouse flower if they could; that leaves Edwards, and, well, that works for me.

I agree. But Phil Gramm had money in 2000, too. All it does is buy advertising; you still have to have a product people like. I personally liked Gramm a lot; there were four of us.

Lieberman is polling in the single digits in New Hampshire. He'll be out of the race this time next week. Dean is going to do no better than second in New Hampshire; but he'll come in fourth or lower in South Carolina. He's done.

Perot? Perot? Perot? (in a Ben Stein voice)

Yep. All the talk of "buying elections" is nonsense. Did it help John Corzine and Michael Bloomberg? Oh, yeah. They wouldn't be in office without their bankrolls. But, ultimately, all they did was convince voters that they were worth voting for.

I'm not denying what you're saying, but I think that you may be underestimating Dean's support (I blog with one - she's a bright, friendly, nice person who doesn't call me names, but she's also calmly prepared to follow the campaign over a cliff, if necessary). If Dean can get and keep 15%, he's in this game until the convention, and then it all goes to sh*t faster than you can say "floor fight spills out into the streets: film at 11".

Which isn't all that fast, really, but you get my drift.

As for northern liberals, keep in mind that although they don't survive the South in general elections, they often get the nomination just fine: Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis all won the nomination.

(And then got trounced. Sigh....)

You may be right on Dean's tenacity. But, if he comes behind Kerry and Clark in New Hampshire, I think he implodes quickly.

Good point--although only Dukakis did it in the "Super Tuesday" era.

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