PA Local Caucus; of interest Clark, Kucinich & Dean

[Jerseycoa]

Clark 60%
Dean 31%
Kerry 3%
Edwards 3%
Kucinich 3%

There were plenty of surprises and lessons all around in what was billed by local Upper Dublin Democrats in this mostly white suburban enclave just north of Philadelphia as the first caucus to be held in the nation.

<snip>

While Upper Dublin, with a population of just 25,800, may be small even when compared to Iowa or Vermont, its middle-class, suburbanites (median family income is $80,000, and 58 percent of adults have a college degree) are precisely the battle-ground demographic both parties will be focussing on looking for swing voters, making the results perhaps more important than size might suggest.

In the end, enough Dean, Clark and Gephardt supporters in one ward were convinced by a lone Kucinich supporter of the importance of keeping Kucinich in the race as a way of keeping pressure on Dean and Clark not to shift to the right, that he ended up in that one ward receiving a vote tally equal to that of Clark and surpassing Kerry. Had similar arguments been made at the other six ward tables, it's likely Kucinich would have come out a strong third in the delegate rankings.

These results point to several things: trouble for presumed front-runner Dean, who fared poorly against Clark, risks for both Dean and Clark, whose supporters seem less than ardent about their policies, bad news for Kerry, Edwards, and especially for Gephardt and Lieberman, who both got no delegates, and finally a strategy for Kucinich--to run as the Party's Ralph Nader, perhaps not to win but to keep the leading candidates steering to the left.

Source: Counterpunch 1/14/04

[maddezmom]

1. interesting

thanks, Jerseycoa. :)