Dean or Kerry? Dean or Kerry?

Great Debates
1

We’ve had lots of threads handicapping the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but they’ve been looking at the whole field of candidates. Since the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, it appears the field has effectively narrowed to two front-runners: Dean and Kerry. At this point it would probably take a miracle for any of the others to capture the nomination. Lieberman will probably drop out soon. Clark and Edwards are more or less tied for third place; they’re probably staying in the race in hopes of being tapped as running mate. (www.politics1.com comments that “Edwards and Clark will be fighting it out to see who emerges as the ‘centrist alternative’ to Kerry/Dean” – but let’s ignore that aspect for now.) Sharpton and Kucinich probably will stay in the race right up to the convention, but just for the sake of getting their messages out. (I’m a Kucinich man, myself, so I can approach all this with a bit of detachment.)

It comes down to Dean and Kerry: both New Englanders; both of patrician birth (Kerry is even a Yalie and a Bonesman); both a bit further left than the Democratic Leadership Council wing that dominated the party in the Clinton years, although how much further left is debatable. Kerry (see his profile at http://www.politics1.com/kerry.htm, and official campaign site at http://www.johnkerry.com/) has been a U.S. senator from Massachusetts since 1991. He is a decorated Vietnam vet. He voted for the Iraq war, but now he’s not pleased with how it turned out. Dean (profile at http://www.politics1.com/dean.htm; campaign site at http://www.deanforamerica.com/) was 4-F in Vietnam. As governor of Vermont since 1991, he has shown himself to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal – more or less – he’s for gay “civil unions” but also for gun rights; and he has been a consistent vocal opponent of the war. Kerry is a lawyer, Dean is a doctor. Kerry is a “Washington insider,” Dean is not.

I think it’s appropriate at this point that we have a discussion thread about only Kerry and Dean, focusing on the following three questions – and keeping always in mind that they are entirely separate questions and the answers to any one of them might have no bearing whatsoever on the other two:

  1. Is Dean or Kerry more likely to be the nominee?

  2. Would Dean or Kerry have a better chance of defeating Bush in November?

  3. Would Dean or Kerry make a better president?

2

Did you mean Kerry or Edwards?

I think Dean is unrecoverable. He’s not going to do well in the South and Kerry is already way ahead in MO. He’s got a solid base among the true angry Dems, but that’s too small a group to win with.

As for who would make a better president, I think Kerry would, but it depends on your prespective. If you’re rabidly anti-war, then maybe Dean would fit the bill better. I think in these dangerous times we want someone with experience at the Federal level to be in charge. That might help Kerry overcome the “Senator curse” in terms of presidential electability.

A Kerry/Edwards ticket would be a tough team for Bush to beat.

3

From your mouth to Og’s ear! :slight_smile:

I agree with you, John (that’s gotta be a first, at least in politics!), in thinking that we can’t count Edwards out of the race yet.

BG, the answers to your three questions, pulled straight out of my rear end (I do not have evidence to support them) are:

  1. Kerry - regardless of relative quality, the more mainstream candidate will usually win; hence Gore and W rather than Bradley and McCain in 2000.

  2. Uncertain. W already did well enough against Gore, and Kerry is quite reminiscient of Gore - much solid worth and precious little glamor. Dean is more likely to alienate, but those he’s likeliest to alienate aren’t going to vote Dem anyway. This election may well come down to who gets the hard cores out to vote better, rather than who swings the undecideds. OTOH, I’m a bad one to judge - I never could see how anyone could even stomach W, let alone vote for him!

  3. Although I like Dean’s policies, I think Kerry is probably better suited to the office. Very cool under fire, and the presidency is nothing but.
    But let’s not write off Edwards just yet. He’s got far more going for him than W did in 2000 (except for a very rich, very wellknown Daddy and a lot of Daddy’s friends).

4

Bit o’ spin there, John. These “true angry Dems” that are too small to work with, for instance. Wouldn’t these be precisely the group that raised Dean to national prominence in the first instance? May I presume that you identify these poor misguided souls with those you term “rabidly anti-war”? Do you mean to compare these unfavorably with the “mildly anti-war”? Or perhaps even the “entirely rational Dems who recognize the brilliant leadership of Himself and maybe won’t even vote Democrat”?

“Rabidly anti war”? Well, you probably mean me and my ilk (got ilk?). Those of us who regard sending our soldiers into harms way over a geopolitical fantasy as disgraceful and repellant? Those who regard every returning body bag (ooops! “transfer tube”, in the latest corrected parlance) as evidence of criminal folly and heartless waste?

Shouldn’t the term rabid more correctly refer to those who’s belligerence has no foundation in fact? Those who ignored any evidence or testimony that might contradict their chosen course? Those whose behavior blithely ignored reason and sanity in favor of death and mayhem?

But it’s us who are “rabid”. I think not.

As to the matter at hand…I’ve been a big admirer of Kerry for about 30 years, for reasons I have already outlined to the point of tedium. That would be reason enough. But I further take counsel from the Devil Himself: Karl Rove. One must respect intelligence, however dark the machinations. If Mr. Rove could choose his opponent, he would pick Kucinich or Sharpton. That not being possible, he would choose Dean, who carries loads of exploitable baggage. Its about electability.

This is going to very tight, most likely. The Forces of Darkness have an enormous advantage of money, being a wholely owned subsidiary of MammonCo. The only force that can meet and defeat money is raw people, people motivated to talk to thier neighbors, knock on doors, send in what small amounts of money they can. This requires unity. Perhaps we can unify the “rabidly anti-war” with the “somewhat annoyed and rather piqued”?

If the race were a cake-walk, the FoD would be happy to conduct the election with reserve and propriety. But it won’t be, so expect them to pull out all the stops. Big time and downtown. They will wrap themselves in Old Glory at every conceivable photo-op. GeeDubya will continue to give pep-rallies for death on every military base in the country, pouring praise over our troops and standing just close enough so that it will splash onto him as well. Whether or not this amounts to an obscenity I leave to another discussion.

But Kerry has been there, done that. When GeeDubya was protecting the skies above Amarillo from Viet Cong aircraft (in itself a dubious proposition), Kerry was in The Shit. That strikes a strong resonance with many Americans, especially those who served when and where he did, and have come out in force to his support.

So it is very telling that “electability” is so important an issue. It means that amongst the Dems there is unity, solidarity around the central fact: GeeDubya and his handlers must go! Unity has always been the Dems downfall (“I don’t belong to any organized political party, I’m a Democrat” in Will Roger’s words)

The Dems have that now, they don’t think in terms of which candidate most closely represents thier ideological bent, but which can do the job. Kerry can, Dean might. No contest.

5

1- Kerry. Nobody has ever won Iowa and New Hampshire and then had been denied the nomination. Dean has an unshakable loose cannon image.

2- Kerry. Kerry would do much better with the Reagan Dems and be much more competitive in the South. A Democratic win is much likelier than a lot of people think. Looking at John Edwards’ map , it isn’t too hard to concoct a Kerry victory. Start with the map colored in as it was for Bush-Gore, the Republicans win 278-260. Put Gephardt in the VP spot, Missouri’s 11 votes look reachable. Ohio’s 20 votes seem ripe for the picking, and Florida’s 27 votes aren’t out of reach either. West Virginia with its 5 votes is also a potential blue state. Any one of the first three red states turns blue, and it’s hello President Kerry. Conversely, the only blue state that I see with a chance to go red is New Mexico with its 5 votes. If I was George Bush, I’d be concerned.

3- Kerry. Dean just doesn’t have the temperment to be president.

All that being said, I think it is premature to discount John Edwards’ chances.

6

I just told someone at lunch today that I think that would be the winning ticket. We get someone who is Presidential along with a strong contender as VP who can follow up after the second term as the President himself.

Now that’s thinking long term.

7

Dean is currently ahead in the number that matters: Delegates. He could concievably come in second or third for several primaries and still win the Dem nomination. Now that would be comedy.

8

Enough to raise him to prominence, sure, but not enough to get him the nomination. His main issue is the war (in the anti- column). But there are still plenty of Dems who supported the war, and those types are more likely to fall in line behind Kerry.

Rabid in the sense of being unable to carry on a rational discussion without shrill cries of “BUSH LIED ABOUT WMDs”. And you are correct that there are rabid partisans on the other side, too. Look, there were plenty of good reasons to take out Saddam and there were plenty of good reasons not to. Being unable to acknowledge either side as having valid arguments is what makes someone “rabid”.

9

A Kerry-Edwards ticket just ain’t gonna happen, in my opinion. Edwards has unequivocally ruled it out. Can’t see him changing his tune.

My best guess, if Kerry wins the nomination, is that he will name Max Cleland (former Senator from Georgia) as his VP nominee. Cleland has been with Kerry at every stop along the way on the campaign trail. I expect Kerry will want him on the ticket to appeal to Southerners.

However, I don’t believe Cleland could deliver even his home state of Georgia (my own state). My standard take on Cleland is that he is more loved than respected in these parts. He is an affable, likeable fellow, but he is not exactly a political heavyweight.

10

IIRC, just about every VP candidate in recent memory has “unequivocally” ruled out being a VP candidate, back to Lyndon Johnson. Would Edwards rather spend 8 more years in the Senate, or 8 years in the White House?

11

A false dichotomy!

The third possibility is that he would sit out Kerry’s (IMO) doomed campaign, and then run again in 2008 on the “I told you you couldn’t win without the South” platform.

12

Transfer tube? Transfer tube??? I ride one of those to work every day. Kind of puts a different perspective on the trip. I always did feel like I was joining the dead in the morning, and resurrecting myself on the way home.
Thanks for the link, Brutus. Interesting, very interesting.
As to the questions:

1 - Kerry.
2 - Kerry.
3 - Dean. Because he would revoke all of the tax cuts, and because, having been elected on a firmly antiwar plank, there is no way he would get us into an unprovoked war on false pretenses.
Further to three:
The US is living in a dream world. Our massive deficits are being financed by foreigners. That’s the only reason why the dollar hasn’t collapsed and interest rates haven’t gone through the roof. My firm belief is that we need a President who acknowledges this reality, and gets us back on the right track. Kerry I have doubts about as far as being able and willing to do that, because lots of cod liver oil is going to need to be ingested by the American public to get us out of our current hole.
But as things stand now, I’d have to vote for Kerry, because the first priority is getting that profligate war-monger out of there.

13

Are you sure? I ask because in the CNN coverage of the Iowa caucus last week, they mentioned that only one candidate has ever won Iowa, New Hampshire, AND the White House: Jimmy Carter. (And I’m pretty sure they meant Dems and Reps both.)

14

I was just wondering about Edwards’s denial of VP aspirations, too, having just read his quotes where he said it wouldn’t happen. Glad to hear he was blowing smoke :).

My understanding, Brainglutton, is that nobody who’s ever lost in both IA and NH has gone on to win the WH. Plenty of people have won only one and gone on to take the WH, though. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Daniel

15

What exactly do you mean? That when the U.S. government sells bonds and T-bills, it’s mostly foreign investors who buy them? Cite?

And if this is true – what difference does it make? Bondholders have no particular voice in government policy – do they?

16

I think you’re confusing winning the White House with winning the Dem Nomination. I don’t have a cite, but I also believe I heard that:

win Iowa + win NH = win nomintation (historically)

17

Edwards is (supposedly) very strong in the South. On Tuesday, we have MO and SC. If Edwards does reasonably well there we have TN and VA on the following Tuesday. Things should be shaken out pretty well by then.

Going into Super Tuesday on March 3rd (over 30% of the delegates will be decided then) we may be left with only Edwards and Kerry, not Dean.

Kunich (sp), Leiberman and Clark look to be done.

Anyway, Kerry seems to me to be the most electable of the three (IMO) viable candidates at this point. That’s true even if you throw Clark into the bunch. He appeals most to the moderate center and will be palatable to the hard core left. I doubt that there will be a spoiler ala Nader on either side this time.

Haj

18

pantomsaid:

And BrainGlutton asked:

Yes, much of the U.S. deficit is financed by foreigners. This is fairly well known. For a cite from the Economist The price of profligacy (which requires a non-free membership). To summarize from the article: the U.S. current-account deficit is about 5% of our GDP. That means our external debt increases by 5% every year.

Why should we care? This is of course not sustainable in the long term. Eventually, adjustments will happen: interest rates will rise, the dollar (USD) will weaken, imports will reduce. If these adjustments happen gradually, it won’t be too bad. If things adjust rapidly, the U.S. economy will suffer greatly.

The U.S. dollar has already been weakening. However, certain foreign nations have been keeping their currencies relatively fixed w.r.t. the USD. These nations (e.g., China, Japan, South Korea) have thus built large USD reserves. If they were to dump their dollars onto the world market, the USD would plunge. This is not good–it would lower the U.S. standard of living (imagine the price of everything not made in the U.S. doubling next month).

The next one or two presidents will have some serious economic decisions to make. Let’s hope they do a good job.

As for politics: Bush (and the Republican leadership) has apparently abandoned the traditional fiscal-conservative plank of the GOP. This is a big opportunity for the Democrats to become the fiscal-consertive party. Will they take it? I don’t know.

19

BrainGlutton: a reasonably clear explication of the issue I raised:

China-US: Double-bubbles in danger of colliding

20

John, when every alleged major fact in support of a position has been debunked, and that is discussed continually every day in every major medium, mentioning that is hardly “shrill” or even irrational. Maintaining loyalty to a leadership that has so fundamentally betrayed you is not obviously a rational act, however, nor is it improper to point that out. If that throws your partisanship into question, too damn bad, pal.

Kerry will get the nomination at this point. None of the others have done enough in most of the next 7 states to overcome the “momentum” for Kerry among their electorates, and South Carolina won’t save Edwards. Brutus, the extra delegates Dean has are “superdelegates” - unpledged except by their own choice, not selected by voters or caucusgoers, which are the bulk of the total. Your speculation has no factual basis. Read and learn.

Kerry has a better chance of winning because the Beltway media tribe can’t shape his image to their own satisfaction as well as they can Dean’s, who is a newcomer nationally and hasn’t kissed enough of their asses. Clinton didn’t either and they got after him; Bush sucked up to them and has been slobbered over. Just part of the game. The “conventional wisdom” they’ve spread that a pep rally for his supporters makes him temperamentally unsuited for the job is an example. Kerry’s more electable simply because more voters now think he’s electable, and Dean is the opposite - there’s no better example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or is it a simple tautology?

Dean would be a better President because he has successful chief-executive experience, and is more likely to do a thing because it’s right than because it’s expedient. But either would do a far better job than the current guy. Who couldn’t?