A messy, uncontrollable and confusing development in the 1992 presidential campaign takes place Tuesday: People will vote.
Before people vote, anybody calling himself a political expert can speculate without regard to reality. And many do.
Starting Tuesday night, these speculations will have to deal with some reality, small dose though it may be. What follows is an effort to increase that dose. Call it a consumer protection warning designed to insulate consumers-citizens-from fraudulent labeling:
1. Forget the ”E” word, which this year is ”electability.” According to many experts it was his supposed electablity that made Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton the Democratic front-runner for a while, and it is Paul Tsongas`s lack thereof which eventually will do in the former U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
Not hardly. New Hampshire voters are citizens, not strategists. They preferred Clinton not because they found him the most electable but because they found him the most appealing of the five Democrats. Now they`re not so sure.
As for Tsongas, no one can know whether he is electable until there is an election. Considering that he now is favored to win the first election, Tuesday`s New Hampshire primary, calling him unelectable seems absurd on its face.
Tsongas`s face and his voice, neither of them impressive, do present real complications to his continued success. But a complication is not an insurmountable barrier.
2. Forget delegate slates, filing deadlines and the like. This is politics, not arithmetic. If the voters of either party prefer a candidate, they and he will find a way to get him nominated.
Tsongas`s failure to field full delegate slates in every state is another complication for him, and filing deadlines will be a complication for anyone who joins the race now, especially if they don`t join it by Thursday, the filing deadline in Ohio.
But there are other large states with later deadlines, and there are caucus states in which candidates can win both delegates and headlines without worrying about deadlines and slates.
3. Don`t exaggerate Southern peculiarity. The South does have its regional eccentricities. So do New England and the Rockies. But Dixie is a lot less different than when it was much poorer, more rural and less educated than the rest of the country.
The people who will vote on Super Tuesday (March 10) watch the same television programs, eat in the same chain restaurants and work at-or have been laid off from-the same kinds of jobs as the rest of the country.
4. Forget ”brokers.” With the Democratic situation uncertain, many experts are sure to predict a ”brokered convention.” But there are no brokers anymore, and there haven`t been any for years.
A convention that lasts more than one ballot is not impossible but is highly unlikely. Both the party`s rules and the age`s realities-television, for instance-work against that.
5. What party leaders? People so identified are likely to be quoted at great length and will be described as being engaged in intense efforts to create a nominee. They have no such powers.
Some of Rep. Richard Gephardt`s (D-Mo.) colleagues can help pursuade him to enter the race. But most of them are party followers; Gephardt himself is a leader, and he`ll make up his own mind.
6. Never say never. A month ago one of the things that couldn`t happen was Tsongas winning in New Hampshire. Now that seems likely. In this business, things that ”can`t happen” occur quite regularly.
