Who is running or likely to run for the Democratic ticket in 2004? Who has the best chances of getting the nomination? Who could beat Bush? What would be their best platform?
jkusters has turned me on to former Vermont governor Howard Dean, and I’m interested in learning more about who might be in the field next year.
PLEASE NOTE this is not intended to be a forum to debate Democratic and/or Republican and/or any other differences, nor the candidates thereof, including President Bush. If you want to go Dem-bashing, there are plenty of other threads out there for it. I’d just like to hear who’s out there, what they stand for, and how successful they’d be either getting the nomination or winning the presidency.
I think Dick Gephart would be the strongest candidate in the general election. I think security will be the biggest issue, and a candidate percieved as anti-war would not do well.
It’s kind of a long list right now. I’ll just give the names:
Howard Dean
John Edwards (Senator from North Carolina)
Dick Gephardt (Rep. from Missouri, former House Majority (and then Minority) Leader)
Bob Graham (Senator from Florida)
John Kerry (Senator from Massachusetts)
Dennis Kucinich (Rep. from Ohio, former mayor of Cleveland)
Joseph Lieberman (Senator from Connecticut, Al Gore’s running mate)
Carol Moseley-Braun (former Senator from Illinois)
Rev. Al Sharpton
Howard Dean is using the internet effectively. For example in Texas recently he just got 3,200 people to show up to one of his speeches. For a comparsion at the same point when Clinton was running Clinton had about 75 people show up to his speeches.
For Howard Dean I’d say his biggest platforms are healthcare and fiscal responsibility. The fact that Dean has both balanced the budget and increased overall healthcare in Vermont lets him appeal to both sides like McCaine did. I’d say it is also possible that he could beat Bush on national security considering the things surrounding the Iraqi war.
I think Rev. Sharpton is the super longshot for nomination/presidency. Am I breaking the rules for saying I really, really wish this wasn’t so more or less for the same reason I want Ah-nold to run for governor in California?
I saw Howard Dean last night. He didn’t speak for very long (not that I have a good gauge of how long a stump speech should be, I haven’t seen that many), but he hit a couple interesting points… universal health care, balance the budget, equal rights for minorities and gay folk. This is what I want to hear from a Democrat… unapologetic about being liberal, because liberal ideas are what this country needs.
I’ll probably have a look at the web sites of John Kerry and John Edwards over the next few days and see how they stack up. I already know I don’t like Lieberman.
A few observations from a conservative Republican who won’t vote for any of the Democrats, no matter which one wins the nomination:
Three of the current contenders are jokes, with no chance at all of winning the nomination: Sharpton, Braun & Kucinich. I’ll just ignore them, and so should the Democrats.
Of the remaining candidates, Dean is the weakest… but all six have a legitimate shot at beating Bush next fall, given the right combination of circumstances.
I say Dean is the weakest because his entire candidacy depended on the Iraq war going disastrously wrong. There’s still a chance of disaster in Iraq, certainly… but only a bloody quagmire would have given Dean a genuine shot at winning, and I don’t see that happening.
There isn’t a democratic hopeful that I have seen yet that I think has a chance. I don’t say this with glee. I’m a democrat. I like what I have heard from Dean but I’m not convinced that he is strong enough to beat Bush.
I want a candidate that is willing to stand up against Bush and put up a really good fight and nobody strikes me as that person yet. There have been very few democrats that have been willing to do this so far, at risk of being branded unpatriotic.
I’m hoping that someone will come out of the woodwork, as Clinton did, and surprise everyone but there isn’t much time. Regardless, I will pretty much vote for anyone that runs against Bush. This administration is way too creepy for me.
Al Sharpton is more of a provocateur than a serious candidate. Out of all the candidates, he’s the most entertaining, and he does at times have an interesting point of view, but he won’t make it past a few primaries.
If it is given that for some of us the important thing is to get rid of President Bush and his playmates and handlers, and establish a rational and progressive social agenda and a cooperative foreign policy, almost any of several Democratic hopefuls will do once we take out the more wild eyed (meaning Kucinich and Sharpton). However, it is clear that President Bush is going to run for reelection as the Great War Leader in the style of Winston Churchill (never mind that some of us see him and his administration as the Great War Leaded in the style of Napoleon III). In view of this, it seems to me that the Democrats have to put up someone who is a social progressive, an internationalist and cannot be tarred with the “soft on defense” brush. Once you apply that standard I think Senator Kerry is the best choice.
As has been pointed out before, I am one of those poor benighted soles who thinks that anyone who wants to run the country had better have been on the firing line, or pretty close behind it, when there was fighting and dying to be done. I am afraid this view has a major effect on my choice of political candidate.
Kucinich is a noncontender as stated, and so is Sharpton, but they still have a role to play as lead blockers for the eventual nominee. By taking positions so far to the left, they make the other nominees look practical, reasonable, and moderate, therefore more presidential, more so than if their views were assessed by themselves.
You see similar dynamics in almost any other primary campaign - Bush needed Buchanan and Bauer to make himself look acceptable, for instance.
I’m betting on Dean at this point (not enough to wager anything real though), actually - the long-term congresspeople will be seen as too compromised, too much a part of the problem to be part of the solution, just like in most elections. Every President since Kennedy has made it by way of a governorship or the Vice Presidency, not from the legislative branch.
Edwards isn’t a long-timer but won’t be credible as a seasoned executive with a set of accomplishments to list, the way a governor can be. Kerry hs the money but doesn’t attract real popular support - he can, though, serve another typical election role, that of the hatchet man who concentrates on damaging the image the opposing-party candidate so the real eventual candidate can appear to be above the fray.
But it’s early - surprises can certainly still happen. I don’t see the Iraq mess, not only the lies but the deaths in the occupation, cleaning itself up in time to keep it from dragging Bush down, btw, and that’s not including the possible outcomes of the 9/11 investigation that Congress owes us.
My thoughts exactly. Kerry is my early favorite for the nomination. If he gets it, I also think he stands a pretty good chance of beating Bush II in the general election, in no small part because his wife’s fortune enables him to compete financially with Karl Rove’s fat cat donor list.
Dean is interesting, but anyone who thinks he’s electable needs to put down the crack pipe. Gephardt has a pretty decent political infrastructure, but nobody outside that infrastructure likes him. Edwards is interesting, but hasn’t done anything at all to create the interest in his candidacy that could overcome his position as a virtual nobody. The other candidates aren’t even worth talking about.
I’d like to see Kerry stay in the spotlight for a while, even if it is only as a vice-president on someone else’s ticket. Anyone willing to go bare-knuckles against the Bush Bullshit machine gets my respect.
minty: Did you think Clinton was electable at this point 12 years ago? Not many did. But a lot of us can see similar dynamics shaping up this time, and without using crack pipes.
Perhaps I’ve seen Kerry too close up for too long, living in Mass., but what’s always impressed me is how little ability he has to gain genuine popular support. He’s always come off as too calculating, too careful of his image, too aloof to really take off among people who don’t know him - or sometimes being an empty slate to most of the electorate is an advantage in this game. His wife’s money will only help him if he can still manage to seem genuinely interested in real people’s problems - it ain’t easy to look like Nelson Rockefeller. I actually think that’s going to backfire a little. His harping on his Vietnam service won’t help unless he can put together a credible, attractive, comprehensive foreign policy strategy in sharp contrast to Bush’s.
Kucinich et al may be too far to the left to be electable, but I think it’s likely they’ll have an influence on the platform, ultimately. Most of the ‘major’ candidates [everyone except Dean, who at this stage is a player in my book] supported the war on Iraq, and the the vast majority of the anti-war constituency is NOT going to vote Republican. So I imagine the Democrats will make some sort of effort to appeal to them - though what kind I can’t say.
Minty, I gotta disagree with you about Dean. He could implode in the coming year, but to me Dean is looking more and more electable. In fact, despite his anti-war stance and despite his embrace by the left wing, Dean is the only D candidate that I would even consider voting for over Bush. In my opinion, the only reason the left wing swooned over Dean was his anti-war position. Dean actually has a moderate and fiscally conservative record as governor of Vermont, and his pro-gay record is a plus for me. He may be liberal but he isn’t a wooly-headed tax and spend liberal.
It seems to me that Bush vs. Kerry is a win for Bush. Bush vs. Dean could go either way. So the smart move for the Democrats is to nominate Dean. Dean is a good speaker, he doesn’t seem fake, he doesn’t seem confused. Maybe he’d lose, but you’ve got to swing for the fences in this game.
