I DID WHAT? WITH WHO?:

How ‘None of the Above’ won: Mark Steyn says that New Hampshire picked the uninspiring John Kerry because he was the least unelectable of the contenders (Mark Steyn, 1/31/04, The Spectator)

According to the exit polls, the Ketchup Kid won because Democrats were looking for someone with ‘electability’. What this means is they settled on Kerry because he has less obvious unelectability than Dean (too angry), Lieberman (too Joe-ish), Clark (too freaky) and Edwards (too unknown). As I said here months ago, this was a race to find ‘None of the Above’, and the trick was always to position everybody else as ‘The Above’ and you as the ‘None’. On Tuesday, Kerry pulled that off. [...]

Traditionally, the role of the New Hampshire electorate is to rattle the front-runner and thereby make him a better candidate, as they did with Bush in 2000. But this time round the candidates seem to have rattled the electorate. Kerry is this year’s Bob Dole — the guy you make do with. It’s summed up by one of the Senator’s campaign buttons: ‘Dated Dean, Married Kerry’ — i.e., sure, Dean’s great for a few drinks and a couple of wild parties, but when you want to settle down for keeps you go with a solid citizen like Kerry.

Well, maybe. But I’ll bet on Wednesday morning more than a few of those voters who ‘married Kerry’ woke up feeling like Britney Spears. If Kerry clobbers Edwards in South Carolina next week, there’s no way to annul.

Here's where you see the danger of front-loading the primaries--as Mr. Steyn says, if John Kerry has a big night on February 3rd, it's over and they're stuck with the guy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 29, 2004 4:11 PM