There are a bewildering number of ways in which a presumably comfortable and confident presidential campaign can run off the rails. Just to pick one example from the vault: 1972 Democratic front-runner Sen. Ed Muskie's tears.
An emotional Muskie held a press conference in which he rebutted a letter printed in New Hampshire's largest paper that alleged he'd laughingly used the term “Canuck” at a campaign stop. And another editorial piece the paper printed that attacked Muskie's wife.
On Feb. 26, two days after the letter and editorial appeared, an enraged, bareheaded Muskie addressed a crowd of journalists and supporters outside the offices of the Union Leader. As the snow fell, he denounced William Loeb, the newspaper's publisher, as a “gutless coward” for publishing the letter and a separate, unflattering item about Jane Muskie, the senator's wife.
“That letter is a lie,” Muskie declared, Naughton reported in the Times.
As he stood outside the newspaper office, Muskie may have cried — The Washington Post's David S. Broder reported that tears were “streaming down his face.” Naughton wrote that Muskie at one point “broke into tears,” while other accounts made no mention of crying by the candidate. In the years that followed, Muskie insisted he did not cry and that it was melting snow, not tears, that reporters saw on his face. Recounting the scene in the Washington Monthly 15 years later, Broder wrote “it is unclear whether Muskie did cry.”
Real or imagined, those “tears” are said to have undermined Muskie's campaign and help launch eventual nominee George McGovern to prominence.
Why the history lesson? Because another Democratic frontrunner, Joe Biden, is determined to make a major unforced error in a New Hampshire primary. As Politico's Jonathan Martin writes, Democrats reconfigured their presidential primary calendar, removing both Iowa and New Hampshire from the traditional starring roles on the early voting and instead starting the contest with South Carolina.
Iowa agreed to the demotion. New Hampshire refused, and is going ahead with what's now unofficially the first Democratic primary. The winner will get no convention delegates – a Democratic National Committee penalty for disobeying orders.
And, as head of the party. Joe Biden did not file and will not (officially) particulate on the New Hampshire primary.
But a new challenger, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, did pay the $1,000 filing fee and is on the ballot. And that's where the fun begins:
Taking it all in with a look of foreboding was Terry Shumaker…as he watched a self-funding, idealistic, slightly quirky 54-year-old lambaste Washington's “grotesque” fundraising industrial complex while vowing to take questions from New Hampshire voters one town hall at a time, well, the old hand has seen enough races here to know what resonates in an independent-minded state where independents can swing primaries.
“His advisers and the D.N.C. made a big mistake, this was not necessary,” Shumaker said of the president's inner circle and the national party. “There was no reason to displace us.”
It's understandable that Shumaker — whose support for Biden goes back to the president's first presidential bid in 1987 — would fault staff members. But I'm reliably told it was Biden himself who wanted to reorder the party's nominating calendar to make South Carolina the leadoff state, rewarding the state that revived his 2020 candidacy and elevating the more moderate Black voters who shape Democratic primaries there.
Rewarding friends is one thing. Giving an opening to a challenger who otherwise has no chance of winning the nomination? That's got a “Muskie's tears” vibe to it.
And Biden supporters in New Hampshire who understand this have started a write-in campaign for the president:
The write-in campaign is being spearheaded by veteran Democratic operatives and politicians including Jim Demers and Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic Party chair. And it's backed by a who's who of other top New Hampshire Democrats — including every Democratic state senator, both Democrats running for governor and former Reps. Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter. The group filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission under the name “Granite State Write-In.”
What should have been a non-event for the incumbent suddenly is a big deal. The outcome may not derail Biden's eventual nomination. But far humble things – a few tears, perhaps – have upended even the most formidable presidential campaigns.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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