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Forty years ago, when Walter Mondale won 49% in Iowa's Democratic caucuses, far ahead of Gary Hart's 16%, the media spotlight nonetheless immediately focused. With the help of a brilliant spot by consultant Ray Strother showing him tossing a hatchet into a tree, Hart went on to win the New Hampshire primary eight days later, 37% to 28%, and he suddenly became the favorite.
At the time, I thought Mondale's performance was a more significant story than Hart's. But only when Mondale, in debate, lampooned Hart's platform as flimsy by echoing a Wendy's "where's the beef?" ad did the former vice president turn the race around, and he cinched the nomination only in the last primaries that June.
If the Hart precedent held this year, Ron DeSantis, with 21% of the vote, and Nikki Haley, with 19%, should be the focus of media attention in the seven days until the New Hampshire primary and the several weeks until the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary. Each trailed Donald Trump by slightly smaller margins than Hart trailed Mondale.
But unlike Hart, neither outpolled the polls. This cycle's final iteration of Ann Selzer's Des Moines Register/NBC News poll showed Trump leading with 48% to 16% for DeSantis and 20% for Haley.
Taking into account the data showing Haley voters with low levels of commitment and the weather forecast of subzero blizzards, Selzer got the numbers and order of finish right: "If turnout is low, it seems to me that a disproportionate share of [Haley's] supporters might stay at home." In retrospect, the Associated Press and the networks who were so eager to call the contest early could have done so on the release of Selzer's poll.
Nonetheless, the prospects for DeSantis and Haley seem dismal compared to those of Hart in 1984.
One reason is that Democratic voters' ties to Mondale then were not nearly so strong or emotional as Republican voters' ties to Trump today. As Jimmy Carter's in-the-loop vice president, Mondale was universally recognized as experienced (Reagan's debate line promising not to exploit his "youth and inexperience" wouldn't have worked otherwise). His impeccable loyalty to Carter impressed moderate Democrats, and his background as a Hubert Humphrey acolyte impressed liberals.
Contemporary Republicans' responses to Trump are more visceral and emotional. Supporters praise him for keeping all his promises, though he failed to build his big and beautiful wall, and for upholding traditional values that he has famously flouted in his personal life.
They see him as a protector of traditional American values against aggressive liberal assaults, against Black Lives Matter followers who would defund police, against transgender advocates who would allow men in women's bathrooms, against Biden policies that amount to an open southern border.