I actually laughed out loud last night, during the Super Tuesday recap, when I saw that Dean won Vermont, a month after he dropped out, with 53 percent of the vote. And, he made a showing in most other states, around 4 percent, which was more than Kucinich.
So, is Mr. Dean kicking himself this morning?
Well there was a dead candidate last time around.
Sure, but the corpse ran against John Ashcroft.
One thing that I forgot to mention in my OP is the psychology of the people that voted for him yesterday. They knew that he was out of the race, and has been for a month. Yet, they still voted for him. I do not think that this was some kind of posthumus recognition for his efforts.
Whether or not they felt that they were throwing their vote away, a point was obviously trying to be made by these voters. This doesn’t bode well for the Democratic pary, in my view.
This is a sure sign of some sort of splintering. In Dean’s concession speech, he mentioned that this was not the end for him. He mentioned his Legacy, and how his followers should continue to do what they have been doing.
The only outcome that I see, if his Movement progresses further, is to splinter away from the Democratic party and join some no name third party, like Nader and the Green Party, or create his own Ben and Jerry’s Party. This will probably not happen for this election, but could rear its ugly head for the next election. The only outcome would be to suck votes away from the Democrat candidate.
Three factors:
None of which applies outside of Vermont.
Dean can still get the Democrat nomination–if the Republicans take over the Democratic party machine. He’s a made-for-Republican-reelection candidate.
I thought he was telling his followers to stay excited about voting and ousting Bush so that there will be a big Democratic turnout in November.
Dean was the governor of Vermont, so I imagine he had a home-state advantage. He wasn’t taken off the ballot. There was no compelling reason to vote for or against Kerry, since he was going to win the nomination no matter what Vermont voters did. So they voted for their favorite son.
I don’t think this is in any way significant. If Dean had won respectable second place finishes and a few wins, then his supporters might have felt robbed of the nomination. But Dean was summarily trounced once the voting started. He isn’t going to make a fool of himself with a third party run. This is a non-issue.
What is an issue is the tone of the general election campaign. It seems to me that Dean isn’t even going to be a major power broker. He’s washed up. His supporters are going to merge into the Kerry campaign, or quietly fade away. No lasting effect, except changing the tone of the democratic primary and forcing Kerry to take a lot of positions that will come back to bite him in the general election.