New realism of Iowa democrats can only be bad news for Bush

IMAGINE the scene. President Bush is doing a dry run before his State of the Union address. Just as he is running through some problem words and phrases, the door opens. It’s Karl Rove, his key political advisor.

"News from Iowa, Mr President Kerry's won it. Edwards second. Dean down in third."

There is silence for a moment.

"Bummer," says the president.

Although Bush is likely to be the clear favourite next November, there may now be a real contest. The Iowa result suggests democrats want a candidate who can win in November, not a radical who makes the grassroots feel good but loses spectacularly.

For a long time, it looked like they'd lost the plot. Howard Dean had major leads in polls taken among democrat voters. And Howard Dean is a loon.

True, he had mobilised thousands of college graduates and raised millions of dollars over the internet. True, he'd won over liberal grassroots democrats with unwavering opposition to the Iraq war and strong attacks on Bush. And yes, he was supported by party grandees. First, his candidacy was endorsed by Al Gore and then, last Sunday, he went to Jimmy Carter's home town of Plains, Georgia, to pray with the man many regard as the Democrats' moral leader.

Neither Gore nor Carter could be described as the world's most influential men, however. Al Gore emerged as a truly pathetic figure in the last presidential election. Exaggerating his achievements (remember him trying to take credit for inventing the internet?). Wearing too much make-up. Slobbering over his wife. And then, when the election was lost, whining about it. Not exactly an all-American hero.

Like Dean, Gore had a privileged upbringing, far removed from the concerns of ordinary people. And like Dean, Gore has a whining negativity about him.

Jimmy Carter is a decent man whose opposition to the Iraqi war was sincere and, in Dean, he sees a glimpse of his own pacifism. But in Carter and Dean, democrat realists see a brand of politics that will not sell to the electorate of post 9/11 America.

Dean cuts a strange figure. He left the Episcopal Church in the 1980s (not over any theological or philosophical issue, but in a row over the construction of a bike-path), yet abruptly found religion last month. He told the Boston Globe he was really a "committed believer in Jesus Christ." Funny that he should plan to feature more references to his saviour in speeches, just before the democratic primaries take place in America's bible-hungry southern states. Funny too that when asked his favourite book in the New Testament, he said "Job."

Wrong testament, unfortunately.

Democrats went along with Dean because his trenchant attacks on Bush made them feel good. This president lights flames of hatred in Democratic Party supporters to match those that warmed Republican Party members in Clinton's time. Democrats hate Bush because they think he stole the presidency and because of his small-government-low-tax policies. They hate him for going to war, and appearing to monopolise patriotism in a time of crisis for America. They hate him for playing it cute by adopting centrist, 'compassionate' policies (he recently announced measures to allow illegal immigrant workers to regularise their position).

But more than anything else, they hate him for being a conservative. Bush carves out an image of a clean-living, born-again Christian, who appoints conservative judges and opposes abortion. Even if the picture isn't always consistent with Christianity proper (for example, his support for the death penalty) there is enough in that package for a 1960s generation of ex-hippy democrats to hate.

But even ex-hippy democrats know that you can only stay in dreamland for so long. And Dean could never win. Having come a poor third in the Iowa caucus (he got just 18% of the vote, as against long-time senator John Kerry on 38% and one-term senator John Edwards on 32%), his race now appears to be over. Time for the serious candidates to step forward.

The momentum is now with Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, and Edwards, the man some democrats regard as the 'new Clinton' because of his looks, brains, charm, way with words but hopefully not the women problems.

Kerry is the more distinguished. He returned from Vietnam a vociferous opponent of the war and came to national prominence when he testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. Last weekend he had an emotional public reunion with a soldier whose life he saved in Vietnam. And politically, he appears to be more astute than his rivals.

Although he supported the 2002 resolution in Congress which authorised the use of force in Iraq, he managed to attack fellow congressional democrats, Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman, for doing the same. He got away with it.

Kerry claimed that by backing Bush's resolution so quickly, Lieberman and Gephardt damaged his own effort to pass a resolution that would have limited Bush's ability to go to war quickly.

Clever politics.

EDWARDS has nothing like the same political experience and may in fact be running for the vice-presidential nomination. Yet he has a number of things in his favour.

He is a southerner, and the Democrats need the south.

No non-southern democrat has won the White House since Kennedy, and Kerry, so far, has very little support there. Edwards will also imitate Clinton by playing up his ability (he made millions as a lawyer taking personal injury cases against negligent corporations), and his relatively humble origins his father was a textile worker and Edwards was the first of his family to go to university. Edwards is a sort of male Erin Brockovich.

But not so fast. The realists may be in the ascendant in the Democratic Party, but there is still the all-important matter of next Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire. Maverick Dean still leads in the polls, and his nearest rival is another weird candidate General Wesley Clark.

Clark looks normal on the surface. He had a distinguished military career and is an effective debater. But is he the Clintons' preferred candidate because he is from Arkansas, or because Hillary wants to back a loser so she is free to run herself in 2008?

"I've been against this war from the beginning... And I'm against it now," Clark declared recently. But in April 2003, he declared that "liberation" was at hand.

"President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt," he exulted then.

With consistency like that, it's not surprising that Clark is supported by radical polemicist Michael Moore, whose own veracity at times leaves a lot to be desired. Clark however is proud of the endorsement, describing Moore as "a fantastic leader." With Dean and Clark still leading the polls in New Hampshire, it's still possible that the Democrats are ready to nominate a maverick. Perhaps the party hasn't awoken yet to the strangeness of some of the pretenders.

Or maybe they are having it both ways giving an early thumbs-up to their favourite radicals followed by realistic, Iowa-style voting for contenders who they believe can actually put it up to Bush.

Next week will tell a lot. If Kerry and Edwards don't overtake Dean and Clark in New Hampshire, Iowa may not be such a bummer for Bush after all.