Enough to matter in campaign advertising, sure.
What? I was a libertarian before I became a socialist. People can change their minds without compromising their integrity.
Isn’t “Zombie Hitler” just the latest euphemism for Vice-Prezident Cheney? 
What makes you so sure about that? 
hey, you tossed that one right over the plate.
In my case, lack of any prospects of personally profiting by such a political conversion. (Libertarians have a slim chance of getting elected to anything in the U.S. – but compared to socialists they’re electoral gold.) Of course, that wouldn’t necessarily apply in HRC’s case . . .
Exactly. As a party, the Democrats have wasted way too damn much time in worrying about what Republicans think. We’re not good at that kind of thing. What’s amazing and depressing is how effective Republican propaganda has been at changing the campaign style of Democrats, and for the worse. This ridiculous myth that the Democratic Party is full of mean-spirited, negative jerks has been pushed so hard that the Party has been bending over backwards to try to seem sweet and lovable, to the point that during the 2004 Democratic Convention, the speakers were hardly allowed to mention Bush, and their speeches were actually vetted to make sure any references to Bush’s collossal fuck-ups were removed. It’s ridiculous and the overall effect was that the Democrats squandered our biggest advantage - Bush’s continual stream of mind-bendingly bad decisions - and made ourselves look like we had nothing to say.
Letting Republicans plan our strategy for us has not worked so far. It’s time to abandon that idea completely. Worrying about whether Republicans like our candidate or not is eminently foolish. The defeatist assumption it embodies is that the Democratic Party is not capable of any kind of strategy and has to try to steal ideas from the other guys. And worrying about what the hard right likes is absolute idiocy - because the hard right voters are going to vote for their own. We should be worried about bringing out progressives and moderates, not trying to come up with schemes to second-guess the Republican strategy machine. Assuming that because the hard-right hates a candidate that the center and the left do too is mind-bogglingly dumb.
Or rather, he managed to lose an election even when we were in the midst of a war that already appeared without end and was known to be based on false claims. He couldn’t even counter the Swifties’ claims, despite the fact that they weren’t even there at the time. Kerry lost that election, and he had every advantage, and I’ll be damned if I vote for him in a primary so he can lose another one.
Exactly. Listen people, Kerry couldn’t even win against GEORGE BUSH. If you can’t beat George Bush in 2004 you have no business in national politics. In 2000 you’ve got an excuse, losing against Bush, hey, maybe he’s not so bad. In 2004 no way.
And George Bush isn’t going to be running in 2008. You’re going to have to run against a Republican governor relatively untainted by association with the inept and corrupt Republican congress and Bush administration. First time since 1952, by the way that no president or vice president is going to be on either ticket.
At that time, the war was still popular, note. Kerry did counter the Swifties claims, but since their lies were rather late in the election, there was nothing anyone could have done in time.
He lost by a cunthair, when GWB was still riding a wave of popularity, Jeb Bush was running Florida, GWB was the incumbent- and so forth- thus GWB had every advantage and still Kerry almost won. Hell, just the “incumbent edge” was just about what won for GWB. If he hadn’t had that edge, he’d have lost.
No one (but Bill Clinton, and he couldn’t run) could have beat GWB back then- that was years ago, dudes! It wasn’t NOW. Now, the Dems have all the cards- it’s theirs to lose. And, they probably will lose it- they’ll run someone so damn liberal he can’t win the “purple” states (those that the GoP won, but only by a bit). Or, they’ll run someone with a skeleton in his closet, whom the Repugs will “out” at just the right moment- or if there is no real skeleton, they’ll make one up, like the Swiftboat. But they CAN’T do that to Kerry, no one will beleive it this time around, and no one will believe a hidden skelton after everyone looked so damn hard last election.
I agree it’s damn stupid to worry about whether or not the Far Right or the Religious Right will like the Dem candidate- they won’t vote for him or her, no matter what. So the fact that those two groups hate & despise Hillary isn’t* the *reason for her not to be the Dem’s choice. BUT, the Dems DO want a few of the Moderate GoP votes- those Swartzenegger Repulicans, those who are socially Liberal/MotR, but fiscally Conservative. For those dudes, the Dems have to run someone acceptable- which means Socially Liberal is fine, but they must be Fiscally at least MotR. Currently Hillary is viewed as being fiscally liberal (health care, you know ), so she’s the wrong person for front-runner, I admit.
Still I ask for the THIRD FUCKING TIME- what’s so bad about Hillary that dudes here think everyone hates her? You know the polls seem to say different- true they do say she’s highly controversial, but she does have almost 100% “name recognition” and that’s better than anyone- even Kerry. 
I’d vote for her myself- if the GoP runs another tool of the Religous Right, which is 90% certain.
Whatever the Dems (and the GoP) do, the big need is to keep the Fundies out of the White House again. Personally, I’d love to see the GoP run someone like Guilani, but he has no chance at all of winning the Primary 
although he’d likely win the general election.
So, if not Kerry than who? Gore? Ok, maybe- he’s tanned, rested & ready, and he lost by no margin at all . But who else? For those that scoff at Kerry or Clinton- now’s the time to state your claim, hmmm?
“Incumbent edge”?!?!? What’s that? Name recognition? It’s not like he’s changed his policies any. He’s screwed up a few more things, but it’s not like everyone didn’t already know he’s good at screwing things up (even when he has the right policy).
If one of the two party nominees doesn’t have 100% name recognition among likely voters, and 90% among everyone else (leaving out the deaf-blind, and the so-recent-immigrant-that-they’re-not-sure-what-country-they’re-in demographic), by the time November rolls around, something is wrong.
Presidents have lost election on their second term before. Without the advantage of incumbency, he wouldn’t have won, that’s true. But his incumbency also meant that he bore the burden of all the monumental screwups he made during his first term, and had Kerry run a competent campaign, that would have been enough.
Kerry didn’t “almost win”, he lost. Support for the war was wavering at that point, and it was the job of Kerry and his campaign to make it less popular yet. Weeks before the election, a stockpile of explosives was looted by insurgent troops because it wasn’t guarded sufficiently; that alone should have been used as evidence that the war was being fought badly, but Kerry failed to capitalize. The facts were in evidence - that Bushco had completely fabricated the reasons for the war, and Kerry should have gotten that message out there. His campaign’s job was to argue that the war was fought wrongly from the beginning, and was begun under false pretenses. Instead, he offered wishy-washy half-support for the war, when honesty could have revealed it for the bunch of lies that it was. A campaign is supposed to swing public opinion, but Kerry didn’t manage that.
Kerry shouldn’t have waited idly by and hoped that the truth would come out at some point. He should have offered it up from the beginning - but the Democrats were and still are scared shitless to appear “negative”. And why? Because it pisses off the extremist right. I’m not sure why the Democrats try so hard to campaign without pissing off their opposition, but it’s a bad strategy and that has been revealed in election after election.
But if Kerry’s campaign had managed their message properly, no one would have believed it last time either.
So far, both Kerry and Hillary are better than any other names mentioned, which seem to be NONE. Don’t just knock Kerry- come up with your own idea, why not?
I seriously doubt that she wants to run, and I think she’s smart enough to know she couldn’t win.
Mark Warner and Evan Bayh have both been mentioned in this thread, so you wouldn’t have had to look too hard to find them. I’m not terribly familiar with either, though what little I know about Bayh doesn’t particularly make me like him. Obama is probably not running for either the presidency or the vice presidency this time around, though I think he would be an asset to the ticket if he did. I think there’s been talk of Howard Dean running, though I haven’t been following all that closely.
You seem to be implying over and over that our choices are basically limited to Kerry and Hillary, and I don’t understand why. Plenty of other Dems are considered reasonably likely nominees.
So- who do** YOU** think is the best choice? 
No idea yet. And I won’t be bothering to decide until the primaries, most likely. What’s your point?
The point is- all you have done is bad mouth and naysay other dudes ideas- without coming forward with any of your own.
Thus, since you have no better suggestion, I’m sticking by my idea that Kerry is the Dem’s best choice, since then, by definition, he is.
Well, in case you think I’ve said everyone hates her, I didn’t. My point is that people behave differently in the voting booth than they do with a pollster. Most people won’t admit to a pollster - or probably themselves - that they can’t vote for a woman for president. But a lot of them will find some “other reason” while they’re in there anonomously voting to vote for the non-woman.
Doug Wilder, who’s not a woman, but who is black, had a 9 or 10 point lead in polls when he ran for governor of Virginia in 1990, but won by just a few thousand votes, less than half a percent. It was so close there was a recount.
The facts were in evidence, but humans are funny creatures. It takes a long time to let go of beliefs, even iron-clad evidence to the contrary. Some always believed the far was begun under false pretenses, but of those who didn’t, I bet very few had changed their minds by November 2004. Some are still coming around; most still haven’t.
What the hell are you even talking about? I never “badmouthed” Kerry’s “ideas”. He didn’t exactly run on a platform of big ideas. I came up with plenty of ideas of my own - namely, a more accurate and defensible summary of of the 2004 election campaign than yours.
Several other choices have been named; the fact that you don’t know anything about them is a result of your own ignorance. I’m not sure why you keep blaming that on others - if you feel some need to figure out who all has been floated as possibly campaigning in 2008, you can look around for yourself. I don’t care about that until after midterms at least, so I’m not going to do it for you. I don’t know why you expect me to do your research for you.
You haven’t come up with a response to any of the points I made regarding Kerry’s campaign, which is strong evidence that you can’t. Dismissing what I said because I haven’t backed someone else doesn’t even make sense - why the hell would I be putting my chips behind one politician two years before primary season starts when no one has actually announced that they’re seeking nomination yet? What kind of sense does that make?
Why are you trying to make this all about me rather than engaging in a discussion of what’s actually going on in politics? If you’re spoiling for a fight with me, then go away. If you want to respond to any of the things I’ve said in this thread, go right ahead. Since you obviously can’t, then bow out while you still have a tiny bit of dignity.
You seem to think you and I are having some kind of argument over who the best candidate for 2008 is. If that were the case, and I couldn’t even name one, then yes, you would have won the argument by default. And you’d have all the pride of winning an argument with someone who was obviously the victim of brain damage. But since we aren’t arguing that, and since arguing that would be stupid before anyone has even announced that they’re seeking nomination, your conclusion makes little sense.
Either address the points I made, or don’t. Don’t start these stupid games with me. I’m not interested.
Right, but running a political campaign isn’t about sitting and waiting for the voters to achieve enlightenment all on their own. If Kerry had had the courage to stand up and say that, I think he would probably have done better. Those of us on the Left mostly already felt that way, and we were if anything disgusted that Kerry wouldn’t point out the obvious truth. Those on the right would have thrown their usual temper tantrums, but they weren’t going to vote for us anyway. And I think some of the swing voters would probably have listened.
The point is that Kerry had the advantage of Bush’s abysmal performance as president. But he declined to make that an actual campaign issue. Playing defense over imaginary stories about what you did with Jane Fonda twenty-five years ago is foolish when you have actual issues that you can bring up and score points with.