For all of you that took part in the MyDD Presidential Straw Poll, Chris Bowers has his analysis up.
I have a couple of observations, too. It’s obvious that the netroots are significantly further left than the population at large, and the Democratic Party at large.
Russ Feingold, the only Senator with the testosterone to vote against the Patriot Act, consistently beats out much better known candidates in online polls. He beats Kerry and Edwards, our most recent standard bearers. And he crushes our most famous politician, Hillary.
This indicates a couple of things to me. First, our readership is almost immune from voting based on name recognition. We recognize all the names. Only Vilsack is a relative wildcard.
Since we are familiar with the candidates we do our voting based on the issues. And we are also much better informed on the issues.
Biden suffers mightily for his vote on the Bankruptcy Bill. Hillary gets beat up over the war, the flag burning silliness, and her leadership role in the DLC. Kerry and Edwards are probably past the war vote now that they have recanted, but they are seen as failures. Edwards gets less blame than Kerry, and he consistently outperforms him.
Warner and Richardson appeal to a wide swath of people that think Senators cannot get elected.
Warner and Bayh attract people that are convinced we can only win with red state centrists at the top of the ballot.
And into this mix, Wesley Clark gains his votes from all segments. He has never cast a vote in his life, he is not a Senator, he has never lost an election, he comes from a red state, and he has the military pedigree. It’s like you can have your cake and eat it too.
Except he never blinks. Have you Clark supporters ever asked yourselves about that?
