Anti-Climacus

WHY THERE WON'T BE A BROKERED CONVENTION: CalPundit discusses the possibility. I tend to disagree:

1. There are four big candidates in the N.H. race now: Kerry, Dean, Edwards and Clark. Dean has the numbers (right now) and the organization, Clark has the polling trend in his favor, and Kerry and Edwards have the mo.

1.1 Dean and Clark must finish either #1 or #2 to stay viable--Dean has to do well to counteract the perception that he's slipping (so if he's #2, he has to be very close to #1). Clark has to do that well or his momentum will slow down, not a good thing for the further-out primaries.

1.2 Kerry is probably going to finish in the top 2.

2. Obviously, this means that Clark or Dean will not finish in the top 2. If it's Clark, then he's pretty much done--if he doesn't quit officially, his support is going to start weakening. If it's Dean, he'll probably fight on until he gets statistically eliminated, but he'll start to lose his non-fanatic support.

2.1 Every not-top four candidate (assuming #4 doesn't drop out, of which there's a high probability) will drop out either directly after N.H. or soon after.

3. There is a strong (i.e. non-trivial) possibility of a Edwards 3rd place finish in N.H.--anything lower signals trouble for the campaign's long-term prospects.

3.1 If Edwards doesn't finish #1 in South Carolina, he's done. And not just because I suspect he'll be having money troubles by then.

4. What's really going to keep the possibility of a brokered convention at bay is the question of where supporters go when their main candidate ducks out--this is the key question, about which I don't have anything beyond pure speculation, but I see Kerry and Edwards (especially the latter) being beneficiaries as people drop out of the race, and I also see a non-trivial number defecting from the Dean/Clark camp in the near future. The 1-3 dynamics suggest a four-candidate field won't last past N.H., and a three-candidate field won't last past South Carolina, but it's #4 that determines who wins.