Help me out with this argument about Clark.

[PeaceProgProsp]

At the risk of starting a big fight, I've got a question about something I don't understand. I guess I should make it clear that I don't think this is all that relevant to the issue of the day (who should be VP) but I think it's important that we're all honest about what happened in the primaries so that we're all smarter voters and smarter amateur political strategists.

So here goes:

A lot of people here argue that Clark got the shaft from the media and that's why he didn't do well in the primaries. I agree that the media shafted him. However, I'm not sure that it's true that Clark could have done better had the media been different. Incidentally, I don't think any candidate got good media except Dean up to the point when it became clear that he wasn't going to win Iowa.

Isn't it the case that Clark was doing great in national polls in December and January? I just did a quick search and found a Gallup poll from Jan 2-5 which had him closing in on Dean 24-20 nationally and there was another one with him at 18% in NH at about the same time (he ended up with around 12%).

I might understand an argument that the press was so bad he didn't get a chance to catch fire. But I get the impression that he, like Dean, got a chance to shine. The worst coverage of Clark that I remember was just after he announced. Regardless of that coverage, Clark built support strongly over the following months. He raised money, and there was something about him to which many people responded passionately before the serious campaigning started.

So what happened in the last three weeks before NH? Can you blame bad press? I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I'd say that a lot of the things people found appealing about Clark, they decided that Kerry satisfied. Kerry had the military record, but he also had the long track record in politics, which people might have decided formed an identity which was easier to grasp. Maybe they just decided that Kerry was more rounded: he was "Clark, plus."

I think the mantra for people was "I just want to beat Bush" and Kerry's win in IA was transferred into "winnability" vs Bush, and there was nothing in any of the other candidates that was better than what Kerry offered them.

So, I'd understand arguments about, perhaps, the General having bad strategy (ignoring IA, focusing too much on taking Dean out). But I don't understand the argument that people didn't know enough about him because of bad press. The bad press didn't stop him from building support up through the time when the campaign started in earnest in January.

All things considered, I think Democratic voters in the early primaries did a remarkable job of discounting the pressure on them by the media to nominate a candidate Bush could easily defeat. I think Clark was battling on a relatively level playing field with the other candidates and probably finished where he would have finished if you had rerun the primaries over and over again, even if you changed various factors in his favor. (Eg, what if he did go to Iowa? He probably would have either finished roughly the same as in NH, and/or, if he did worse than the expectations set by national polls, he might have ended up going to NH even weaker than he had for not going to IA.)

Any thoughts?