While some party animal bloggers head off to Vegas, here are some recent utterances for all of us to ponder:
“Some rank-and-file Democrats fear Clinton bid —Activists express doubts about whether senator should be party’s nominee”-from Tom Curry on MSNBC.
Public opinion polls, as well as inside-the-Beltway punditry, suggest that Sen. Hillary Clinton is the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
A Gallup Poll in February found that 39 percent of self-described Democrats and Democratic “leaners” would be most likely to support Clinton for the 2008 nomination. The next closest Democrat was 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry with 15 percent.
But recent interviews with dozens of active Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that hold the first caucus and primary of 2008, reveal that many party members who vote in those early contests don’t want Clinton as their nominee.
Coincidentally(?) “Warner Questions Clinton’s Viablity” pops up today.
Mark Warner (D), who is eyeing a possible 2008 presidential bid, “questioned in a television interview last night whether Senator Hillary Clinton has widespread enough appeal to prevail in a national race,” reports the New York Times.
“After saying he had ‘tremendous respect’ for Mrs. Clinton and calling her a ‘formidable candidate’ for national office, Mr. Warner said that Mrs. Clinton was not the presumptive Democratic nominee.”
And Jerome Armstrong steps out front and center with a revealing interview on The Huffington Post.
HP: I would think that Howard Dean and Mark Warner are very different people, coming from a different place and running or beginning to run very, very different campaigns, does your support of Warner show a change in thinking on your part? A more pragmatic approach perhaps?
JA: Well, I’ve always been pragmatic, because Governors are who win Presidential elections, and the early Howard Dean was quite different than Iowa’s Howard Dean, in the sense of his demeanor. I still believe though that Howard Dean would have won in 2004 had he gotten the nomination, because the main issue was Iraq, and certainly the move to invade and occupy Iraq was not a pragmatic choice.
The movement around Dean’s candidacy within the Democratic Party was a key component to the revitalization of the progressive agenda. It brought into politics a whole new generation (not by age but by activism) of political involvement. And now that vanguard has grown from a notable opposition (for example, to the Iraq policy) within the Democratic Party to the current Republican policies to becoming the position of strong majority. There’s no choice but to change the course of what we are doing in Iraq, and that’s not an issue of debate among Democrats.
But if we are going to really change the direction of this nation, it’s going to be through winning over many of those that have been voting Independent and Republican this decade. I want a proven turn-around artist in this regard, and Mark Warner stands out among the other potential ’08 contenders. He’s someone that’s not only changed the map and won with the backing of those types of voters, but he’s turned that mandate into progressive solutions for the problems that Virginia faced.
HP: What if Howard Dean gets tired of taking the Metro to the DNC and decides to run in 2008? What do you do then when the Deaniacs call?
JA: The line will be busy.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean tells Al Gore, “Keep Fighting.” .
Hurricane season has arrived — and two fresh studies point to a link between global warming and an increase in the number and power of storms like Hurricane Katrina.
What are Republicans doing about it? They’re smearing former Vice President Al Gore.
One right-wing pundit compared Gore to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist. Another right-winger, who’s been on the payroll of corporate special interests, likened Gore’s pursuit of solutions to global warming to Adolf Hitler’s pursuit of genocide.
I’m sending Al a note this week telling him to keep fighting, to keep standing up for the truth no matter how vicious the attacks. I thought he might like to hear from you, too. Sign on to this note of thanks, and add your own note of encouragement here.
How can Warner do that and still keep the votes of the Progressives who Dean brought into the party in the first place? He’s not going to win if he takes the left’s votes for granted.
xlent question.
If Warner’s the man, the true test of his political skills will be his ability to hold together a coalition that includes progressives and people who truly support the DNC/Lieberman line. This is the nature of the game. We will not get ‘our’ candidate, just as the Abolitionists in 1860 did not get theirs (Seward). Instead, they got Lincoln, who did the job that had to be done when the time came.
Our role as Progressives is to push our agenda as hard as we can, and to ensure that at least some pieces of it get put into legislation or administrative procedures. The reason we failed under Clinton is because the Republicans controlled the Congress, originally by filibuster, and later by majority, and because the President of the United States was subject to a smear unequalled since the days of FDR. Times have changed. We have a better chance of regaining control of the House and by 2008, the Senate.
At this point in time there are three issues that dominate everything else. (1) Habeas Corpus; (2) Iraq and (3)the fiscal deficit. These are issues on which (with the exception of Iraq) there is broad consensus within the Democratic Party. Until they are resolved, everything else isn’t worth the bandwidth it takes up.
You said a mouthful, and it was all good.
These are now drastic times, with the world hating the US, the debt in the trillions when it used to be in the negative 5 years ago, the country’s people being cajoled from so many angles to polarize over race, class, immigrant status, gender, values, acceptance and intolerance.
I am looking for someone who’s not a politician, an anti-Hillary, an anti-Kerry, and anti-Bush to be the next president. Our country is going to slide into more poverty and stress as the effects of the Bush Administration and it’s Right-Cruel agenda continue to shape the lives of the lower classes into obedience and submission to the feudal lords embellished by the Bush tax cuts and the compliant Senate and House. The Executive is beyond it’s constitutional limits of power, and the one-party dream of Newt and Delay is now a reality, destroying democracy, as messy and corrupted as it has evolved and devolved over the 2 centuries of American government. We need honest, strong leadership. But that’s my pie-in-the-sky side dreaming. I know better, but it doesn’t mean that such an ideal president isn’t desirable, and that we shouldn’t work for electing such a person!
The reality is that this is a polarized nation filled with all kinds of people who’ve been taught to be intolerant. And it’s not the younger generations I worry about, it’s the post WWII generation the so called “liberated” generation that most concerns me — MY generation. The younger generations are screwed with indentured servitude foisted upon them in this 5-year spending spree on gross corruption, cronyism, and greed on an already undeserving oversaturated generation of cry baby boomers who want more and more and more and more. No one took their ’60’s values seriously, they were just a bunch of pop-followers. My parents generation found great wealth and ease in their post-war lives because they brought thrifty values with them which created a moderate desire and need for comfort and luxury. Today’s “adults” know no bounds to paranoic thinking: was it the Red Scare and nuclear warfare in the ’50’s that created a fear and scarcity which has allowed paranoics like Cheney and Rumsfeld, children of the ’50’s, to become our leaders, fulfilling a zeitgeist of the collective unconscious of those post-war children who didn’t tune in and drop out?
Not everyone was a lefty radical in the ’60’s when they were in college.
We have gotten the power-mad paranoics who read too many sci-fi novels and paid attention during air-raid drills in the ’50’s as our leaders. Their drive and motivation are their fears. And we can’t let go of that fear, we identify with those fears, and it’s reinforced with the goddanm emphasis on “safety” in every damn message, commercial, and sign-off on tv, radio, and print.
Bitch bitch bitch.
What’s the solution? If we promote the doctrine of sharing, there would be no fear, there would be lessened greediness, there would be satiation from slipping into chaos from unmet need driving a psyche.
My presidential choice will be someone FEARLESS. Someone who is not possessive and in fear of scarcity. Someone who will face the vast piles of money, so much of ill-gotten means, and cut the piles into pieces with taxes and fines and jail sentences. There’s plenty to go around for all of us, all over the world, and like it or not, we have to learn better to share this rapidly connecting planet. We are all alike, we all have the same needs, we all need to share our lives and resources.
Are you “in waiting,” or have you noticed anyone who might qualify for your support?
Gore-Warner. I could live with that.
But Gore-Feingold. That’s the dream.
Of course, even better would be Gen. Anthony Zinni and anybody else.
What kind of comment is that? Does that mean Jerome’s line will be busy? Does that mean whose line will be busy?
Anyone?
HP: “What if Howard Dean gets tired of taking the Metro to the DNC and decides to run in 2008? What do you do then when the Deaniacs call?
JA: The line will be busy.”
Does that mean Jerome does not welcome the so-called Deaniacs into the party anymore?
Does that mean if Dean did run, we would not be welcome.
I do hope Jerome does not mean that the way it sounds. Does his attitude reflects Warner’s attitude?
Do I have an attitude when someone says their phone will be busy when Deaniacs call? Is my attitude showing?
Maybe.
sounds like that to me.
I’d love to be wrong.
Perhaps Warner and Jerome need to work on their attitude just like I will try to work on mine. Dean said he would not run, but I sure don’t like thinking I would not be welcomed by a certain blogger and perhaps his candidate if it did happen.
See, I said I had a bad attitude. Will work on it. That was a thoughtless, and perhaps potentially harmful thing for him to say. There are still a lot of us, lots, around and working for the party. We don’t need that kind of grief.
well and that’s it eh. the fact that you’re the voter, and the party activist and it appears your opinion won’t be consulted regarding any potential presidential candidates. That is completely messed up.
Like I said, I hope I’m wrong, but that sure as hell seems like what Jerome was saying.
Keep doing what you’re doing though. It makes a difference on the ground, no matter what the ‘blogosphere’ says.
I recently checked on some figures, not online DFAers, but those who are still around, still on mailing lists, just not very active in their disheartenment right now. There are several hundred thousand, and that is from a reliable source.
Not smart to piss that many people off for something that probably won’t happen.
If he meant if Dean called for his help if he ran, that would be one thing. But the question was what if “Deaniacs” called…plural. Not smart, Jerome. You have changed. Loyalty to VA people is one thing, but dissing us is another.
There I go, letting my attitude show again.
What kind of comment is that?
It’s the comment of a man who believes himself to be very, very important.
I hope Hillary does not run. She cannot win. I would rather see Russ run unless omeone is in hiding who would make a great candidate.