The only way Hillary would jump in is if no candidate achieved a majority of delegates. Then she could jump in and save the convention from chaos. Gore could serve the same purpose. I dare say that if no candidate won a majority of delegates, that they would pretty much have to go with a candidate they could mostly agree on, and only Hillary and Gore fit that description.
I think this is pretty insignificant. The actual number of additional people who are unemployed as a percentage of the population is very low - maybe 1-1.5%. Not enough to bother with. What is more important is the feeling of the majority of the population that they might become unemployed, or have fewer options etc. This depends on direction and sentiment, as above.
The number of people unemployed don’t take into account folks whose careers have backslided – folks who manage to stay employed only by taking a salary cut, for instance.
And it’s also worth reminding that the unemployment figures don’t take into account unemployed folks who have given up looking for work, also. I suspect that that’s not an indignificant number of disgruntled voters right there.
Yep. There are plenty of underemployed folks out there, not accounted for in unemployment statistics- folks who used to pull down the large green, but who are now greeters at Wal-Mart, or ticket-takers at the local theater, or are maybe struggling through various low-grade forms of self-employment.
But hey, I hope the Republicans keep trying to tell Americans the employment market is in good shape. Then voters will realize that Bush '04 is just as out-of-touch with the real world as was Bush '92.
rjung & spoke-,
Of course there are people who have taken pay cuts or lower paying jobs. There are also people who have gotten pay hikes and better jobs. On a larger scale you have to look at the numbers instead of relying on anecdotes. I imagine that pay raises have been pretty low over the last few years, though still positive overall, and magnified compared to very low inflation. And I doubt if there has been a big increase in Wal-Mart greeter jobs as compared to better paying ones. If you guys have any actual numbers, feel free to whip them out.
What is of greater significance on your side is that a lot of people have not lost their jobs but are nervous about this possibility. Or feel that their career options are limited by the general downsizing environment. The bad news for you is that this is one of the first things to turn around. Pretty much as soon as companies start hiring more people than they are letting go, the mood changes in this regard.
Keep on whistling, Izzy. 
The official unemployment rate is 1.5% right now? Really? I’d actually like to see a cite for that.
I said “additional people” meaning the amount more than in 2001. Actually in looking up the data (linked on page 1 of this thread) I see that it is more like 2%. Still a very small number (and one that could well be lower by election day).
Still too early to count Edwards out. The latest poll of South Carolina Democrats shows him with a 9-point lead (though there are still a lot of “undecided” voters).
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I think it’s already down to Dean, Clark, and Lieberman, with an outside (but genuine, IMHO) possibility of a deadlocked convention that begs Gore to re-enter the race.
Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, and Sharpton never stood a chance. Graham’s not excited anyone. Edwards has actually lost most of what support he had over the past several months; if he’d had any brains, he would have declared for Senate, rather than for President, the other day.
Kerry and Gephardt are still alive in terms of money, and have stable poll support. But neither can seem to expand his popular support. In Gephardt’s case, I think that’s too bad - despite his lack of personality, I think he’d make a good President.
I’d handicap it like this:
Dean, Clark: 2-1 against.
Lieberman: 4-1 against.
Convention draft of Gore: 12-1 against.
Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards: 30-1 against.
Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, Sharpton: odds too long to compute.
I’m a nonparticipant in this one, but the Census released Income in the United States: 2002 just last week. Have fun, everyone.
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I guess I was wrong about Graham.
I really don’t understand how he’s failed. He’s been saying all the right things to the base, while still being a moderate in his Senate career. He’s from a southern state, a very successful two-term governor, and the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee at one time.
And yet Democrats are swooning over the supposed qualifications of Wesley Clark. Clark has nothing on Graham when it comes to being qualified to be President. I’d put Dean over him too, Dean’s served many terms as an executive.
U.S. Economy: Jobless Claims Decline as Growth Strengthens
Of course, it goes without saying that these are tentative signs and the labor market could turn down again. But again, the general consensus of economists seem to be cautiously optimistic, and the signs to this point seem to confirm this optimism. The next number to look for would be next month’s consumer confidence figures, to see if the economic optimism is spreading to the public at large.
That’s a pretty comprehensive report full of all sorts of extraneous data. I’m not sure if you are actually claiming to have support for any position in there or are just helpfully directing interested parties in a useful direction. For myself, I have no intention of reading this unless you can point to anything specific that you think is relevant.
Well, all the flow charts, pundits etc aside (Im an Independant by the way) , if the Dems want Bush to have a second term, nominate Dean. Youre kidding yourselves if you think he has a chance, and I dont mean that in an insulting way; just trying to be pragmatic.
Posted by Voodoochile:
Voodoochile, could you please expand on that? Why is Dean less electable than the other Democratic candidates? Because he’s against the war? I think you’ll find that wins him more votes than it loses him.
I’m a Kucinich man myself, because he represents my own views and values better than any of the other eight candidates, but not because I’m genuinely optimistic about his prospects. I fear that if Kucinich ran against Bush in 2004 he would lose, sure as McGovern lost to Nixon in 1972, and for the same reasons: The American people are not ready for a sharp turn to the left. But I do have hopes that if Kucinich stays in the race through the primary season and makes a respectable showing, we might be running a Dean-Kucinich ticket in 2004 instead of, say, a Dean-Clark ticket, and a Dean-Kucinich ticket could win, because it would get the centrist vote as well as the leftist vote – labor, the Greens, everything. Besides, I hate to say it, but Dean looks like a president. He looks a lot more like a president than GWB does. Kucinich looks like Alfred E. Neumann.
Looking at it from my point of view, it utterly confuses me when so many people compare Dean to McGovern! Dean may be against the war but he’s not any kind of radical or pacifist. He’s a centrist, just like the whole crop of Dem contenders, except for Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun. Dean is, at most, one or two degrees left of the Democratic Leadership Council.
But you, Voodoochile, apparently are looking at the race from an entirely different perspective point. What is it about Dean that makes him resemble McGovern in your eyes? Or, more broadly, what is it about him that makes him unelectable?
**Well, all the flow charts, pundits etc aside (Im an Independant by the way) , if the Dems want Bush to have a second term, nominate Dean. Youre kidding yourselves if you think he has a chance, and I dont mean that in an insulting way; just trying to be pragmatic.
**
Don’t be so sure. Dean is a man of a variety of ideologies, he’s not easy to pigeonhole. If he concentrates more on what he’s actually done in Vermont than railing on about Iraq, he has a chance.
Dean will win the Democratic nomination.
Corrado’s First Law of Nominations:
Divide each party into its moderate and extreme wings. If a candidate from one wing of that party loses the general election, the party nominates someone from the other wing next go-round. This has occurred in every nomination since 1960, with one exception.
(1960: Moderate Nixon loses. Next time, extremist Goldwater is nominated.
1964: Extremist Goldwater loses. Next time, moderate Nixon is nominated.
1968: Moderate Humphrey loses. Next time, extremist McGovern is nominated.
1972: Extremist McGovern loses. Next time, moderate Carter is nominated.
1976: Moderate Ford loses. Next time, extremist Reagan is nominated.
1980: Moderate Carter loses. Next time, extremist Mondale is nominated.
1984: Extremist Mondale loses. Next time, extremist Dukakis is nominated. This is the only time the flip does not occur.
1988: Extremist Dukakis loses. Next time, moderate Clinton is nominated.
1992: Moderate Bush loses. Next time, extremist Dole is nominated.
1996: Extremist Dole loses. Next time, moderate Bush is nominated.
2000: Moderate Al Gore loses. Ergo:
As Dean is the only viable extremist candidate in the race, the nomination will fall to him.
Corrado’s Second Law of Nominations:
Whomever is perceived by the media to win New Hampshire wins the nomination. Since 1972 (the first season primaries dictated the winner), this law has only failed once: in 1992, when Pat Buchanan was perceived as the winner for the Republican New Hampshire primary.
There are really only three candidates in this race: Dean, Kerry, and Clark. Kunich isn’t even registering- no one I talk to (and most of the people I talk to are very informed about the race) remembers who the hell he is. Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely-Braun are splitting their base, and neither is doing much other than fighting the other for their base.
Joe Lieberman is too conservative and religious for the party to deal with, and Dick Gephardt is too much of a loser (no offense, but he’s run and lost once before, and he’s the guy who couldn’t win the House back even after impeachement and the 2000 election fiasco.)
Bob Graham has pulled out, and John Edwards is following a strategy that has never won any candidate the nomination. He’s holding back and hoping for a big Southern victory on Super Tuesday to pull in the support. Al Gore tried that and failed in 1988. -spoke is wrong: Bill Clinton didn’t do that. Bill Clinton was perceived as the winner of New Hampshire even though Tsongas got more votes; because everyone thought Clinton’s campaign was a train-wreck, his pulling out a close second was seen as a real victory, and Clinton got the bump that Tsongas otherwise would have. Edwards is hoping that he can end-run New Hampshire, and that trick has never worked. Never.
That leaves Kerry, Clark, and Dean as the only viable candidates. But Clark isn’t nearly as viable as the numbers make him out to be; he may be the great white hope for the Democrats, but that’s because no one’s forced him to actually discuss the issues. It wasn’t four years ago that Clark self-identified as a Republican, and once Clark is forced to start naming his beliefs- or starts showing how inept one can be on the stump if you haven’t been training for it for a decade- his support will shrivel.
So that means it’s Kerry v. Dean. But Dean has the left field all to himself; he’s the only candidate on the extreme side of the party being taken at all seriously. Kerry is fighting Clark- and Lieberman, and Edwards, and Gephardt- for the middle ground. So when NH votes, Kerry’s base will actually be split between five candidates, while Dean’s smaller base will be more unified, and Dean will come out looking strong. And again, as the media isn’t taking him seriously yet, that means he’ll be the upset candidate that is deemed the true ‘winner’ of NH.
The only way Kerry will pull it out is if two or more of Clark/Lieberman/Gephardt/and Edwards pull out before January.
Great analysis. But I still dispute that Dean is that much of a leftist.
He may be thinking the same way you are, to an extent. He needs to look like a leftist, then ditch that mantle when he wins the nomination. His actual governing of Vermont was not exactly a model of what the far left wants to see.