A Funny thing Happened On The Way To New Hampshire

Now the race is on and here comes pride up the back stretch,
heartaches a goin' to the inside,
my tears are holding back,
tryin' not to fall.

My heart's out of the running,
true love scratched for another's sake,
the race is on and it looks like heartaches,
and the winner loses all.
- The Grateful Dead, although I think it might be a Bill Monroe cover

Has there ever been a moment in American history when one American city has had, at the very same time:

The favorites to win the World Series,
The favorites to win the Super Bowl, and
The favorite to win the Presidential nomination of one of our two major parties?

Well today, the Red Sox are a slight favorite at 9-2 to win the World Series, the Patriots are heavy favorites to win the Super Bowl, and John Kerry, the junior Senator from Beacon Hill, the waffling war hero, the man that I today saw described as "a lot like Lincoln, after the assassination", is the frontrunner in the Democratic Race.

I love Presidential races. They've got tradition, rivalries, corrupting influences, scandal, big money, upsets, an archaic and flawed system. Really, it's a lot like college football, and I have to admit that I'm a CNN junkie for this kind of thing, even if I do think that they heavily promoted a war that could only increase their ratings. I saw Dean's concession speech (he seemed to think he was being backed by a metal band), and Gephardt's, all while flipping back to the Tampa Bay/Colorado hockey game on ESPN2, in which I dropped money on a penalty shot in overtime. Who ever heard of such a thing?

Here are the current odds to win the Democratic nomination:

John Kerry 6-5
Howard Dean 8-5
Wesley Clark 7-2
John Edwards 7-2
Joe Lieberman 20-1
Hillary Rodham Clinton 30-1
AL Gore 75-1
Dennis Kucinich 1000-1
Al Sharpton 1000-1

For my money, Dean is done. It's the old dog food argument. You can do extensive studies on what makes quality dog food. You can have well-planned marketing strategies. You can put a fancy label on the can. But if the dog won't eat the food, then the dog won't eat the food. Dean spent over 3 million dollars in Iowa, had enormous national coverage, and a half-dozen super high-profile endorsements, and still got trounced. If the race had gone on another week, I'm quite sure that he wouldn't have received any votes at all. So Dean is out.

Many of the CNN pundits think Kerry will get a big bounce in New Hampshire from the Iowa results, but they seem to have forgotten that residents of the "Live Free Or Die" state know Kerry well, and probably have the same luke-warm feelings about him that us Massachusetts residents have. I think Wesley Clark has a hell of a chance there, and that will set him up nicely for the first big group of primaries on February 3rd:

FEBRUARY 3, 2004
Arizona - Presidential Primary
Delaware - Presidential Primary
Missouri - Presidential Primary
New Mexico - Presidential Caucuses
Oklahoma - Presidential Primary
South Carolina - Presidential Primary
Virginia - GOP Presidential Caucuses

Don't you just love how the Democrats keep urban voters out of the nomination process? How much sense does it make for a party built on American cities to have Phoenix as it's major metropolitan area for its first NINE STATES?! Anyway, I bet Clark plays well in those areas too, so I like him at the 7-2 odds.

I'll be doing more Presidential race news as the race continues, provided that there's some kind of angle I can add to the discussion that makes it palatable, maybe even interesting, for my mostly sports-oriented readership.

Dave's Email