Eric Alterman on Iowa results etc

[Karmadillo]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

What we learned:

1) John Kerry is a lot tougher than most pundits (and many bloggers) imagined. It must have been humiliating as hell for Kerry to have to keep slogging away, sucking up to the media as they bashed his candidacy as over. I rolled my eyes internally when, five weeks ago, I overheard Kerry telling Time’s Jim Kelly that he was “getting a really good feeling about Iowa,” but did not have any internal polling data to support it. He is a bit of a stiff—which will hurt him with Bush—but Kerry has some important and unique assets; nobody in the race is better versed in the issues and nobody in the race has better credentials to claim with progressive voters who make up the bulk of those people willing to show up for caucuses and primaries. (Never forget how relatively small this number is. It’s possible to win a major party’s nomination with only 10-15 percent of eligible voters turning out for you.) And dammit, maybe it’s a rich white boy thing, but Kerry looks presidential. That annoys journalists in his peer group but it matters to voters.

Given his access to nearly unlimited funding, if he can come close to Clark in New Hampshire—something I thought nearly impossible last week—he has a solid shot at winning the nomination and the election. (Yes, I, too, am enormously pissed about the war vote, but I’m over it. As I keep saying over and over, elections aren’t therapy.)

2) John Edwards is a terrific candidate up close. And Iowa, being so tiny, gave him a chance to demonstrate his strengths up close and personal. At this point, I’d say he is the media’s favorite, in part because he is so damn likeable and in part because he is different enough from most reporters in background that he does not threaten their sense of self-importance. His problem is the historic one: money. He can do O.K. in New Hampshire and win South Carolina—though Clark’s presence in the race makes this far tougher—and then be essentially stuck in the face of the vastly superior resources of his three opponents.

Then again, he is the perfect compromise candidate, both for strategic voters looking for a winner who worry about Clark’s level of experience and command of domestic issues, as well as for pols looking for a way to unite the party around an acceptable second choice. Since he is liked by almost everyone, and is not running any negative ads, he has no reason not to stick around until the end, barring an offer for the veep spot in exchange for withdrawal, just in case we really do go to a brokered convention.

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