Chris Bowers has an article up on Russ Feingold. It’s quite good and I fully agree with it. It appears that Russ is getting serious about a Presidential run. And significantly:

He is hoping to tap into the fundraising and organizational energy that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean used to catapult himself from obscurity to the top of the 2004 presidential field.

Does Russ Feingold deserve the support of the Deaniacs? The question is probably best answered by people that supported Dean’s candidacy. I didn’t. But, I greatly admired Dean’s campaign and especially the people that made up his campaign. And I think Russ Feingold is the natural successor to Howard Dean.

As Bowers details, Feingold suffers from many of the same disadvantages that Dean struggled with. In fact, his perception problems may even be greater. He is a twice-divorced bachelor, he is Jewish, and he is much more progressive than Dean. He will have to overcome the fact that he doesn’t fit the media’s conception of a winning Democratic candidate. He is not a southerner, he doesn’t have a bronze or silver star, and he isn’t the darling of the Democratic Leadership Council.

But he has a lot of the appeal that made Howard Dean so popular. He was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act, he voted against the war, and throughout the Bush presidency he has consistently told truth to power…even when it was very unpopular to do so.

He is a very, very articulate lawyer, who is best known for working across party lines with John McCain to enact Campaign Finance Reform. He is known to operate from core principles. He raised the ire of Democrats when, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, he voted to confirm John Ashcroft, but as he explained in 2002:

Q: Any regrets on your Ashcroft vote?

Feingold: No. It was the right vote. When the President picks someone who is his ideological soul mate, that’s his right, in my reading of “advise and consent.” I do think, though, the more you get up the ladder, when someone is no longer accountable to the President, and more importantly, will stay in office after the President, the standard gets tougher and tougher.

Q: You mean for judges?

Feingold: Well, first, independent commissioners. People whose terms go for five years or longer, like FCC commissioners. That’s a higher standard. Then district judges, who are appointed for a lifetime but can be overruled. Then Court of Appeals judges. They’re not the highest level, but they’re almost the final word. And then, of course, the Supreme Court.

And he showed this same independence when he backed John Roberts but opposed Samuel Alito.

Simply put, he is one of the most progressive members of the Senate, but he votes according to his conscience…not by testing which way the wind is blowing. When he crosses his party, it never smacks of grandstanding or opportunism, as it so often does in the cases of John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

Taken as a whole, Feingold has a number of strengths that should have a vast appeal. He has the cojones of Dean without any of the tone-deafness, he has the independence of McCain and Lieberman without any of the phoniness and without giving unnecessary comfort to the enemy, he is a straight talker, highly articulate, and he has a strong record of being right on the issues when most of his colleagues were wrong. He also has a reputation as a reformer. And he is a handsome man.

Because of these strengths, I think he a viable candidate for the Presidency. He will, as Chris notes, have to overcome some predictable obstacles. And if Hillary runs, she will certainly be the early front-runner. But the netroots, and Deaniacs should feel very comfortable supporting Feingold. I plan to. What do you think?