Make it 10 - Wesley Clark for president

[GePap]

Well, rumor is Wesley Clark is about to join the Dem. race for president:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/967357.asp?vts=091620030810

Now its up to ten, and even given that 3 of them are not really important (Ku..whatever, Braun, Sharpton), that leaves 7 white guys left!.

We need some thinning out...I say, a 3 way between Dean (most money and org.), Kerry (has own money) and now this guy (cause everyone fawns over military record, like Kerry). The other 5 are second tier.

[chequita guevara]

Don't discount Joe. He's still the front runner outside N.H. and Iowa. That will likely change after the first two primaries.

Clark says he's not angling for a Vice Presidency, but I don't believe him. I think Grahm and Clark are the two strongest VP candidates, bt a friend of mine says it's gonna be Bill Richardson of Arizona.

[DanS]

As che says, Lieberman polls highest among the group.

I don't think Clark has much name recognition. He'll have to have a lot of other very good skills to make a credible shot at it.

[Ming]

Yawn... this is starting to look like the California Governor's Election

Ten little indians...

[DinoDoc]

Is anyone else going to sign up? The little old lady down the street missed the deadline to sign up for the California Governor's race. Can I tell her it isn't too late to throw her hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination?

[Ming]

Well... if she has 10 million dollars...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Early money and organization aren't going to make much difference. This is the first presidential election in one hell of a long time when the Dems are out of the white house and minority parties in both houses of Congress.

If Bush's poll numbers look good in February and hold into the summer, then the Dems may toss a sacrificial lamb, but if Bush develops any kind of real vulnerability in the polls, you can bet that the party elite will start to really look for an electable candidate and running mate.

That leaves some combination of Kerry, Clark, Liebermann and Graham to pick two bodies from. Dean would be left out in the cold, and the others are just jokes.

[Ming]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
you can bet that the party elite will start to really look for an electable candidate and running mate.

The last Democrat in the White House ran against the party elite... he surely wasn't their choice

The Democratic party elite have no clue what an electable candidate is or where to even begin looking.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The last democrat in the white house ran against a couple of weak old men, and the Dem party elite was a lot more soft and complacent after half a century of running Congress.


The national party has more of a grip on reality than the state and county organizations, which are strictly made up of activists, almost exclusively on the far left of the party.

The national organization has it's share of those idiots, but also gets a lot of it's "guidance" from major donors and senior officeholders - of whom there are a lot less. But guys like Liebermann and Miller and Graham get a lot more attention from the DNC than they do from their own state and local organizations.

It took the Republicans half a century of Dem complacence before they got their acts together and retook control of Congress, but it won't take the Dems near that long. And Republican complacence is already way ahead of schedule.

[DanS]

I have been waiting for the "nominate Gore as our best hope" campaign to start up in earnest.

The reason why the field keeps getting larger is that those on the fence about running think to themselves "I can beat these guys." While that may not mean that it's a weak field, it does mean that there isn't a clear front-runner.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DanS
I have been waiting for the "nominate Gore as our best hope" campaign to start up in earnest.

How could it? (be in earnest )

[GePap]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


How could it? (be in earnest )

Gore beats Bush in the latests polls.

Also, I don;t know from when you people last looked at the polls, but Lieberman does not lead any of them among democrats, certainly not in Iowa or even NH. He is either 3rd or 4th in most of them running behind Dean, Kerry, and vying for that third spot with Gephard.

And given that in the latests polls "unnamed democrat" comes within 3 points of Bush, the notion that Dean would be swept is absurd..I remember all the crap people were saying in 200 about how Gore turned left and was using class warfar and that that would hurt him..and he won the popular vote. What has drawn people to dean is his stance on the war, which he made much better hay out of than Graham, who may have gotten on the wagon too late. On a few social issues he is right of Gore (who again, won the national vote and leads Bush as we speak in polls).

[Ming]

Gore pissed off a lot the Top Dems by not winning last time. He is not on their favorite list. However, if Bush remains strong in the polls... and the economy turns for the better... he might be their best pick for a whipping boy. Why not... He could claim what non of the others can... and nobody else would have to fall on their sword in defeat. And who knows... maybe he will be smarter this time around.

[MrFun]

But hey -- at least Gore invented the Internet.

[GePap]

The thing is Bush is NOT strong in the polls, not as far as asking people whether they will re-elected him. Iraq turned around on him as a political issue, and the economy is growing, but has not been creating jobs, which is what people (not economists) use to measure their well-being.