I don’t see a thread on it, and it’s been a week since the election.
So, who should it be, folks? Who should be elected to follow the current occupant of the Oval Office? And Why?
Bernie Sanders! The furthest-left critter in Congress! He won’t be lining up the rich in front of firing squads, but you can be sure he’ll get us universal health care! And he’ll keep us out of Iran. (Assuming it’s not too late for that by 2009.)
Oh, please. We could have Marx in the candidate pool and whomever the Democrats nominate will be “The most liberal [persontype] in the [placetype].”
-Joe
Irrelevant. The debate is about who should be the next POTUS, not about who stands the best chance of becoming POTUS.
Most of the future candidates haven’t even declared that they’re running yet, so if more people drop out like Feingold and Mark Warner, this thread could look very silly in a few months. 
That said, if I had to vote tomorrow for anybody, it’d be Barack Obama. We generally agree politically, and I think he’d be an inspiring leader who could change America’s mindset and move us forward.
Joseph Biden or Russell Feingold. The latter has officially declined to participate.
The smart money is still on Hillary to be the candidate. But there are others seriously interested like Evan Bayh, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards.
I don’t know HOW to evaluate Obama right now. He’s clearly not closing the door but he’s not leaving it all the way open, either.
It’s going to be an interesting run.
Did he? Can you give us a cite? I hadn’t seen that yet.
The story only broke yesterday. Here’s an article.
I have mixed feelings. I like Feingold a lot, but I doubt he’d be able to win. Better for the Dems to nominate someone more winable, although even if he just ran in the primaries I think he would’ve added a lot to the race.
I have the same sentiments. At this very early date, he would have been my top choice if Obama didn’t run. Feingold would never have won, but I do want all perspectives to be in the race.
First tell me if we’ll still be in the Iraq quagmire during the 2008 primary season, and then I can tell you if it’s 1972 again.
[url=http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061113/NEWS99/61113004/1009/NEWS07]Feingold has sent his regrets already.
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Make other plans, folks.
Pity.
I would be OK with Edwards, Clinton, Gore or Obama as President.
However, I think Clinton is not electable, which leaves me choosing from among Gore, Edwards and Obama (should they choose to run).
I think odds are pretty good that we will be. So, you’re saying that the Democratic anti-war candidate will win only one state and get <40% of the popular vote?
I think Obama would be a good VP nominee. He doesn’t yet have executive experience, but he does have eight years of state and federal legislative experience, during which he was noted for the ability to work with both parties. He’s strongly religious, black, and from Illinois, which looks to me to be in the middle of the US in terms of population, i.e. skewed towards the East Coast. I don’t really know yet if he would be a good president at this point, but I do think he would strengthen the Democratic ticket immensely
I think that the next POTUS should be Obama. He’s got the moxy and the mo right now. Hillary, while I think she’s fine, would engender so much hateful vitriol from the peabrain contingent that she’d be unelectable.
I won’t vote for him, but I wouldn’t be terribly bothered if McCain won it. Anybody but that crooked, two-timing f*ckface Giuliani.
We’re talking about who the candidates would be, John. If you want to take the next step and predict a winner, go right ahead. Use whatever assumptions you like.
The war, if we’re still not out or almost out, will define what the winning platforms and personalities would be, and that would define who the candidates would be. 1972 would be a reasonable parallel to that, although certainly no analogy is perfect- it had a get-out-now guy against an “As the South Vietnamese stand up, we will stand down” guy.
1968 works too, if you like the analogy to a discredited lame-duck President and to an Administration loyalist vs. an antiwar intraparty insurgent in the primaries, defeated by a “peace with honor, but get us out” guy.
No, we’re not. We’re talking about who would make the best president.
You can’t separate that from the issues, BG.