Tuesday, January 20, 2004
What the Heck Happened? We'll probably never know how the "dead heat" in Iowa turned literally overnight into a Kerrey-Edwards drubbing of Dean and Gephardt.
But one thing that's striking about the result is the failure of the storyline-obsessed mainstream media to come up with even an intelligible theory that accounts for what transpired. The coverage by some of the biggest fish in the pond--the New York Times and CNN--has been especially short on plausible answers.
In a prescient 6:16 pm post last night, Josh Marshall presented something close to an explanation. Not sure I buy it, but it's at least a candidate for the truth.
It will be interesting, in the coming days, to watch Dean adapt to his new circumstances. But unless his advisors know a lot more than the press, he'll have to make his adjustments with knowing precisely what went wrong.
