Dean did an effective job making the case against the PATRIOT Act but framed in terms of stopping future assaults on civil liberties rather than calling to undo the recent ones. Why isn't anyone calling Edwards on his role in drafting it? Glad to see the way the rhetoric within the Democratic party has shifted over the past few years. Part of that, no doubt, is being out of power; part of that is the success of the "anti-globalization" movement in putting the issue, so to speak, on the map. For Dean to say that we've given global rights to corporations but not to workers is right on; to describe that as having done half the job but forgotten the other half smacks of a disingenuous attempt to reconcile his stance with his record. Kucinich laid out the case for single-payer health insurance clearly and sharply (and effectively dismissed the idea that the Clintons had pursued such a plan), and Sharpton made the compelling moral argument for such a system. What's most interesting to me about the other candidates' alternatives is that none of them mounted an argument (true, they're generally not very good ones) against such a system any stronger than Clark's "Let's fix the one we have."

My predictions for tomorrow: Kerry comes in first, simply because Dean hasn't had enough time to catch up after recovering from whatever combination of his combative stance in Iowa/ his overly-apologetic response to his combative stance in Iowa/ his insufficiently apologetic response to his combative stance in Iowa/ media harping on an imagined combative stance in Iowa/ some combination of the above one may choose to blame for the beating he took in the polls in the past week. Dean comes in second and he and Kerry both pitch themselves as comeback kids; Kerry as usual finds the media more credulous than Dean. Dean comes in closer to Kerry than to the Edwards, who comes in third behind him, lacking the committed and organized constituencies Kerry and Dean have mobilized. Clark does not much, if any, better than he's been expected to the past few days, and likely even worse - in any case drastically worse than he was expected to a few weeks ago before Kerry stole his part as the anointed "Anti-Dean" and his campaign fumbled and failed to advance a coherent vision or take advantage of what could have been a real head start to build a machine in New Hampshire. If Clark does particularly badly, he strikes me as more likely than any of the other candidates to drop out shortly after, thus ending further embarassment and leaving his Presidential run as a whimsical coda on what many see as an accomplished career as a military public servant. Lieberman does worse than Clark, claims that he exceeded expectations, and argues that Kerry and Dean are both soft on defense and that only he represents a real choice between extremists. Kucinich does much better than Sharpton.

One of the more interesting moments I caught in the Iowa Debate was the Kucinich-Dean exchange on single-payer universal healthcare. Dean, to his credit, was up front in stating that voters whose primary issue was single-payer should vote for Kucinich, and then touted the virtues of his plan which, Kucinich rightly argued, would maintain the strangehold of the insurance industry on the practice and policy of healthcare. What perhaps was most surprising about Dean's defense of his plan, however, was its central argument that it was simply the best the Democrats could get away with - that his plan "was written to pass Congress." Dean cited the failures of the Carter and Clinton healthcare plans to buttress his claim. I think Michael Tomasky, in Left for Dead, offers a more convincing reading of the Clinton healthcare failure: ...the A.M.A. and the insurance lobbies fought the Clinton proposal with the same intensity they'd have have brought to a fight against single-payer. A political calculation to trim the sails is useful and defensible if, without sacrificing too much in the way of principle, it gets you more votes. The Clinton calculation did not do that. And in this instance, given the number of co-sponsors single-payeralready had in the House of Representatives and the appeal of the plan's salient features, it may actually have been the case that a single-payer system could have been sold to the public. The seller, though, had to be willing to confront one of Washington's most powerful lobbies - something the Clintons weren't up to; but this, too, is something people clearly say they want their leaders to do more of. Among the people calling on their leaders to do more of that? Howard Dean. Kucinich was right to ask him who, if not the President of the United States, would be in a position to stand up to the insurance industry. Dean, unfortunately for those of us drawn by the strength of his organizing and the clarity of his alternative vision, was left looking not for the first time like what he's referred to rightly as "the Republican wing of the Democratic party."

This NY Times piece - "Mr. Inside Embraces Mr. Outside, and What a Surprise" is one of many analyses that will no doubt proliferate over the next few days trying to explain Gore's endorsement. I think Purdum is on the right track in noting Gore's drastic shift to the left since the 2000 election, as well as his series of strident condemnations of Bush policy over the past months. These have been, by turns, gratifying and maddening, I think it's safe to say, to those of us who were exasperated with Gore for leaving so little ideological distinction between himself and Bush during the actual campaign. Gore's piece in the Times after the Enron scandal tying corporate malfeseance to Bush's corporate politics made the right case - but it's a case that, contrary to what that piece also said - Gore never made on the campaign trail. Those conservatives who think (occasionally rightly) that they can convince American voters that the main fault line in their politics is between civil and uncivil politicians have tried to use Gore's move to the left as evidence that he's bitter and angry at his personal loss. I think it's much more that Gore, like Clinton and other New Democrats, recognize the appeal of Old Democrat values and so fall back on them once out of office both to bring nobility to their legacy and to convince themselves that they at least lost because they stood for something and not because they didn't. Dean's aggressive condemnations of the failings of this administration fit the message that Gore has claimed for himself since 2000. So it's shouldn't be surprising to see him endorsing someone who's ready to carry that message forward - and to see him endorsing the candidate who's running the kind of campaign now that many wanted him to run four years ago. What Purdum's analysis for the Times fails to mention, however, is what may really be the most compelling reason for Gore to endorse Dean now: he's winning. Gore, in the same way as, say SEIU, gains power from picking late enough to choose the one who'll win and early enough to be as formative in that victory as possible. Gore specifically, however, has the chance by endorsing Dean to merge their narratives - one populist fighter has the election narrowly stolen but four years later another arises to take it back - and drown out the alternative - the New Democrat establishment fouls up an election and it's left to a populist outsider to ride in four years later to fix it. Purdum asks whether this will hurt Gore's credibility, and I think the answer is no more than Gore's already hurt his credibility by governing and campaigning from the center and then moving to the left since. More importantly, he asks whether this will hurt Dean's candidacy, and I don't think it will measurably. Dean has successfully enough framed himself as an outside-the-beltway candidate, and campaigned that way long enough, that I think this will come off more as the beltway coming around to the Governor of Vermont than the other way around. More fundamentally, I think candidates can be effectively criticized, in extreme cases, for not repudiating deeply objectionable folks who endorse them, but that otherwise criticizing them for who endorses them is difficult to pull off. I think that Al Gore's endorsement will give Dean's critics on the left about as much ammunition as Jesse Jackson Jr.'s, Ted Rall's, Molly Ivins', William Greider's, et al gave his critics on the right: not a whole lot, in the long term. Speaking as one of those critics on the left, that Dean got Gore's endorsement says to me just that he's an effective organizer. Gore endorsing Dean may give some added momentum and visibility to Sharpton and Kucinich's campaigns, which could only be good for the Democratic party, but I don't see any of the other candidates positioned at this point to use it to frame themselves as the independent choice. What this endorsement does, as I see it, is move a slew of voters to consider Dean - or to consider him seriously - who hadn't before, and deflate much of the criticism from DLCers and others of Dean as unelectable or out of the mainstream. Much as Jackson's hashkachah (certification, roughly translated) marks Dean kosher for some to his left, Gore's will mark him kosher for some to his right. And it may mean that the Democratic establishment is learning not only the lesson of 2002 - what happens when you offer no viable alternative - but also the lesson of 1972 - what happens when the party leadership abandons the party's candidate.