LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: YOUR '08 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

*weeps again*

*for the nth time in two days*

*fuxk you, take your dirty thread elsewhere, I can't deal with this right now*

"I accept the candidacy. As president I resolve to kick alien ass whenever our great country is threatened with extinction. Thank you."

"common sense Hoosier Values"

My elitist, blue-state response:

"Go fuck a goat, you hick piece of shit."

(someday, we will all heal.)

1) the Base Drums ticket - Clinton/Obama (or Feingold)

Powerful, star-quality individuals that the base will love, with real swing-voter appeal downticket to mitigate HRC's negatives (and where can she go but up?).

2) the Swing for the Fences ticket - Bayh/Sebelius (or Salazar)

A more conservative ticket with much less star quality aimed at swing-state region voters but with appeal to base interest groups.

A theme makes more sense to me, but maybe we can mix and match.

I think Dean doesn't have the skills - he's best off becoming the Democrats' Ralph Reed (or one of them) - and Richardson isn't charismatic or middle American enough - he'll end up at State.

Fuck it, I'm joining the Austrian Green Party.

Of course you don't. You, I assume, are pretty happy with the core of ideas that are proffered by the DNC such as universal healthcare. And maybe on a generic level, those ideas are so central that they cannot leave the forefront for the DNC--maybe simply repackaging an idea such as universal healthcare vis a vis new marketing/positioning or simply a more engaging candidate would tip the scales to the Democratic side. Indeed, with the division what it is in the electorate, that's probably a winning strategy. But for the long term, I think the DNC would be better off to either hijack some RNC issues and repurpose them, if not come up with outright innovative ideas. That Slate article about responsibility is really compelling to me; I wouldn't mind my taxes getting raised if I thought there was going to be some accountability coming with it.

i agree things SEEM to be really changing over there that suggest this may be the intention. but hopefully it is illusion.

Please.

Don - if that's a Democratic party you can get with, that's all well and good, but I don't think you're the target demographic

Colin - what's a Clinton Democrat and who above does or does not fit the profile? who do you want, if anyone?

and we don't (and probably will never) know if Bush really won

Powerful, star-quality individuals that the base will love, with real swing-voter appeal downticket to mitigate HRC's negatives (and where can she go but up?).

If this election has shown us anything, I think it's that swing-voter appeal down-ticket is not enough. Full disclosure: I've never believed that Hilary would be a compelling candidate, but especially after we just saw a liberal senator from a Northeastern state go down to defeat (and fail to carry a single southern or midwestern state), I think the Dems would have to be crazy to nominate another one in the next election.

The Party needs a charismatic candidate -- and a strong organization around and behind such a candidate -- who is willing to portray a progessive, liberal agenda as the only moral, patriotic, honorable and NORMAL American option. There are plenty of folks in the Democratic Party who already think this way -- but too many of them think that that's not an electable position, and you've got to speak in a matter that appeals to voters whom you don't respect and think are irredeemable and can only be duped, never converted or educated.

The nature of debate in the United States has changed utterly changed over the last twenty years -- that was the result of hard, concious effort by ideologues, Republican Revolutionaries, not a natural or necessary -- OR IRREVERSABLE --evolution. The American Left -- and in your heart of hearts, gabbneb, you're one of us -- can and must start believing in and organizing such a counter-revolution.

I don't know if any current Democrats really fit this profile, but it's not a magic candidate that's gonna save the Party or America. I like Obama, anyway.

I wish I could claim credit, but a guy I know printed up t-shirts with this slogan as a piece for an art show a few years ago.

He could always tell them how much RR loved 'Born In The USA'.

I never bought into the idea that Edwards actually had such appeal.

I've never believed that Hilary would be a compelling candidate, but especially after we just saw a liberal senator from a Northeastern state go down to defeat (and fail to carry a single southern or midwestern state), I think the Dems would have to be crazy to nominate another one in the next election.

I have many doubts about her - it would be against instinct for me to pick her - and I'm not sure I especially like her. But surely you see personality differences between her and Kerry? Kerry essentially had no personality, by nature and as a matter of strategy. And to some extent that worked for him in a way it would not for her. But no one got excited about him. A lot of people can get excited about her.

I could care less about her "moral center," just like Bill. Long as they do things that are good for the country, I could care less about them as people. That's what infuriates me about the whole Bush "likeability" thing. 99.9% of the people in this country will never even meet him in person, so who gives a shit if he's a swell guy. People in 1930's Germany thought Hitler was a pretty likeable guy, too.

Perhaps what's old can be new again? He really is the biggest Dem name in the South, which isn't our best swing region, but still has a number of opportunities for us.

And if not him, who is like him?

While I didn't think Dean was a good choice during the primaries, in retrospect, he did energize people in a new way and developed something of a movement within the party. He handled the embarrassment of the screaming incident very well and all but made people forget about it. He also destroyed Sean Hannity in a deabet on Fox News. After getting his supporters to go for Kerry and attempting to neutralize Nader in the NPR debate, the DNC owes a lot to Dean. The nomination, or some position as a party leader should be given to him if they're smart.

His whole thing was that he supposedly and especially "energized the youth vote" but, as we keep seeing, people ages 18-30 just don't come out to vote. And I bet they really wouldn't bother even if Tony Hawk was running for president. Hunting for beer, weed, pussy, and dick is more important than voting. I never saw Dean as having enough broad-based appeal within the Democratic party to win. Ask a lot of people age 65 and over, one of the biggest voting blocs, and they'll say Howard Dean was too nutty.

The Dems unquestionably owe him a lot in a lot of ways, but politically speaking it would be suicide to maintain him as a viable presidential candidate. He is and always will be a semi-fringe figure.

Yes, they need to put someone in who believes in something. I think Kerry believes in a lot of things but he played his campaign too carefully to let enough people see it. If he made a few more emotional arguments about his positions, he might have fared better. Clinton was great at that. He might have been centrist, but he made it clear that he was passionate about things (and not just tits).

Let's not forget that Gore actually won the presidency with his campaign, and Kerry got 55 million people to vote for him, too.

You're probably right in that that he's perhaps too left of center to to be a viable candidate. I think whoever said upthread that Dean needs to become a kind of Ralph Reed for the Democrats was really really OTM. The party needs its own splinter Christan Coalition-like organization to fire up people who will be hurt by the far right quasi fascists in power. Maybe it's something MoveOn.org could do. Attack the fundamentalist right, make an issue out of the factual details of their far from the mainstream nuttiness.

http://www.washington.historylink.org/wa_images/Nixon68.jpg

http://www.buddycom.com/dinos/images/trexruns.gif

MY CANIDATE

http://www.partyexpress.safeorders.net/images/moonbouncerTRex.jpg

(x-post re: dole)

The answer here is so simple it's ridiculous. Turn your campaign headquarters into the best place in town to hunt for the above. All it would take is a few hired sluts and playboys to attract the first young campaign volunteers, mix in some free condoms, and it would be like a snowball rolling downhill as the volunteers started sleeping with each other.

When the election rolls around, lock them in a room and make them all vote absentee before you let them out.

When the election rolls around, lock them in a room and make them all vote absentee before you let them out.

A stunning idea. Somehow I think Bill Clinton will be involved in this ...

I'm pretty agnostic, but my Dad is a 50-year-old white male Southerner, lifelong Republican, and on the board of directors (or whatever they call it) at his Christian church. On Tuesday, he voted for a Democrat for the second time in his life. He's horrified by the war in Iraq and the notion that any poltical party could be seen as having a total claim on religious faith. He's not progressive, he's just sane.

The Dems have to court people like him by presenting an alternate version of faith and values that embrace progressive principles.

(Also, Dan Perry or whoever said it OTM about fighting the linguistic battle -- let's not run from "liberal," let's reclaim and redefine it.)

i dont like her, im not a fan at all but dont underestimate her power.
(she can also play jesus faster and better then most goppers, the thing that killed kerry was his complete inability to orate like a preacher, to call on god, to pray...and she can do all of those things.

Anyway, I'm still not convinced the grand Diebold vote stealing conspiracy theory isn't true, and I don't care how crazy it makes me look.

remember, jimmy carter considered himself a born again christian, too.

here are two blogs that i never heard of before yesterday, but i'm suddenly obsessed with (and they link to many more interesting ones):

http://blog.badchristian.com/blogs/

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/

http://grammarian.homelinux.net/~mpyne/weblog/personal/disappointment-2004.html

this is really blowing up into the meme of the election and I don't think it's completely true. at any rate, I feel like the democratic party is scapegoating Gavin Newsom when they do it, and it's unfair. I think he made a principaled stand. Believe me, I do think the the dems need to do ALL the stuff people have now been saying, but can we not lay Kerry's defeat completely on Newsom's shoulders, please?

(a year ago I would have never believed I'd be championing Newsom but he's been a real surprise).

This is bullshit. Kerry would have lost a HUGE # of votes if he had done this and middle America wasn't going to buy it anyway. Kerry's biggest problem (and in some ways it was Gore's biggest problem although that was a different campaign) was his inability to find a successful message and stick with it. American's like simple decisions and Kerry refused to make anything simple. That said he still ran a good campaign and he tried his darnedest and I respect him for not taking Clinton's advice and I respect Clinton less for giving it.

i was busy at work all day and couldn't participate much in today's political threads, but i will say that the cause of the American Left needs a frontman. it can't be michael moore, since moore's tactic piss a lot of people off(me included, sometimes) and he works much better as a minority whip. I think Dean would work quite well.

another thing i liked about dean was that the guy had balls. we need an LBJ-type again; perhaps not as a leader but at least a visible figure. we need at least one forceful type who will pretty much say "step the fuck OFF, son," only in language that CSPAN will air. Joe Biden had a great moment like this, when his committee was grilling Rumsfeld about Abu Gharib(the Daily Show aired a few clips of the back & forth). Biden looked about ready to leap over the table and throttle the Secretary of Defense in front of the assembled chambers & tv cameras.

also, i really like blount's posts but i do wish he'd use some paragraph breaks once in a while.

i don't think hillary will be a serious national candidate either. she doesn't have half of bill's charisma but she does have most of his baggage.

if i ran the democratic party, i wouldn't be concerned with geography or even how close to the center someone is. at least those wouldn't be my top priorities. my top priority would be charisma. reagan, clinton and bush all have had it in various degrees -- they represent three very different political ideas, but they all know how to sell their idea. they're good salesmen. they're good characters. that's what the dems need more than anything. a really, really good salesman.

before his first election, clinton went on national tv -- "60 minutes" if i'm not mistaken -- and told the country he had cheated on his wife. can you imagine john kerry doing that? it'd be a disaster. but clinton went on tv and sold a story. find another democrat who can do that, and that's your candidate.