You're a Dean fan, but if you want him running for president, you should want Vilsack to beat him for the chairmanship.

I think Kerry was a pretty good candidate overall.
If he can persuade Sasso to be his campaign manager this time, his '08 campaign should be way superior to this one.

While it gave him the nomination this year, Iowa, as opposed to NH, wouldn't necessarily be favorable ground for Kerry, depending on the competition. It's rural and midwestern. It might give him an edge against southern candidates, tho not necessarily Edwards.

I never heard anyone else describe Vilsack as Kerry's candidate.

Kerry probably have a more favorable opinion of Dean than the more dlc-ish Clinton, Richardson, Edwards, Bredesen. They allegedly like each other nowadays. He might prefer Vilsack to Rosenberrg I suppose. I'd guess he's ABI - anyone but Ickes.

That's a whole lot of disagreements. I realize Jerome probably has forgotten more about US politics than I know. :) I agree Vilsack would likely be a poor choice.

Kerry just doesn't connect that well with enough people; lots of his votes were simply anybody-but- Bush votes. He had his chance and he couldn't make it happen. I like the guy but I don't think we can resurrect him for another run. If we end up with only Hillary and Kerry for nomination choices I'm going to slip into a black funk.

I don't want to go through that again.  The too-long voting record in the Senate, the Swiftvets ... no thanks.

Get some fresh blood in the race or bye bye.

What sparked people in the last election? Dean's feistiness that, unfortunately, did not sufficiently infuse Kerry's lackluster, traditional political campaign. This is war, folks. You don't "work with" people who define bipartisanship as "date rape". My view is that if the Democratic party is able to make needed changes, it will be despite rather than because of the DNC.

The question that must be considered at this juncture is whether the DNC is capaable of change, or whether it will continue to advocate the same (ineffectual and counterproductive) strategies that have worked so well in the past. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the expectation that the results will be different THIS time. That dog don't hunt.

Let's face it, the Rove/Bush crowd are the master political strategists of our age and no Democrat has been able to put together and execute a plan to beat them as yet.  They will be a force next time as well, probably for Jeb(his denials notwithstanding), but certainly for whoever gets the nomination.  We will have to beat them again.

Having been through this process, Kerry has at least three advantages:

1. By the end of the campaign he had realized his strategic and organizational errors and corrected them by bringing in the Clintonistas who resurected rapid response and message discipline.

2. Slams like the Swiftie crap are hit and run jobs. By the time the truth comes out to refute them, the news cycle has moved on to other things. (Nobody noticed it in Oct. when ABC sent a film crew to Vietnam and found locals who confirmed Kerry's version). Kerry has seen the worst of it and can blast them next time.

3. Kerry is a great debater, extremely tough and motivated, and his antiwar background will be a much bigger asset after four more years of bungled warfare when we will surely have an Iraq Vets Against the War movement brewing.

My pick is Simon Rosenberg: he gets the netroots and the Latino vote, he's not tied to old-school networks of elected officials in any debilitating way, and he doesn't come with high negatives (as Dean, though it's by no means his fault, certainly would). I'm going to go write Mike Erlandson (MN DFL chair) and say so.

I'm not so sure that Kerry underperformed.  If we had responsible and honest media, we would have a level playing field, and Kerry would have clobbered Bush.

Bush and his administration lied to the nation about nearly every aspect of the Iraq war; they mismanaged its execution; and they have taken an enormous budget surplus left by Clinton and turned it into a $500 billion deficit.  Those failures alone should have been enough to insure that Kerry won hands down.  But our corrupt media whores gave more airtime to the Swift Boat liars than they did to Kerry's legitimate wartime record.

Given the blatantly unfair dynamic set up by our mainstream media, there was no way Kerry could compete.  Add to that the suspicious voting issues in FL and OH, and there is just no way our guy could even get a fair fight, much less a victory.  I think Kerry and the Democrats did their best, and I'm reluctant to blame them for what happened.  We just have to build new media in this country, or we are permanently screwed.

However, being the vice-presidential candidate on a past losing ticket is a strong plus. I would have to rate John Edwards as the leading Candidate for 2004. Does he count as a non-Senatorial candidate? He will only be a Senator for 7 more weeks. Will he run for Governor or Senator again in the intervening years? Or will he set himself up as a pundit and opinion leader ala Al Gore?

This time last year I had my eyes on Bob Graham and Wes Clark as strong candidates who could invigorate a New Southern Strategy for Democratic Party. But Graham will be over 70 in 2008 - I doubt he will be reentering the fray. Clark will be 'only' 64, and with a bit more polishing could be a strong contender.

I counted both Kerry and Dean out this time last year because I thought a 'liberal' northeasterner couldn't get the nomination - even though I knew that both of them are firmly on the moderate side of the party. That judgement was wrong, northeasterners can win the nomination and at least half the country will vote for them. So Dean could very well be a player (although I'm hoping he'll devote his considerable energy to revitalizing the party as chairman of the DNC - we need big wins in 2006). There may be some current or former northeastern governors (in addition to Dean) who could emerge as strong candidates.

Don't overlook the military. This year saw unprecedented numbers of ex-military officers stand up for the Democratic nominee. The supposed stranglehold of the Republican party on military loyalty is shattered - Democrats a far from a majority among the officer corps, but are a rapidly growing minority. Their continued loyalty to their troops and the criminal mismanagement of the military by the current administration will drive many capable ex-senior officers with outstanding leaderships skills into Democratic politics in the coming years. Wes Clark may have just been the vanguard of a new Democratic leadership.

So no, I don't agree that Kerry under performed. He had a mountain to climb and nearly got to the top. He was only a few thousands votes from winning after seeing off hundreds of millions of dollars of negative advertising, a compliant SCLM, so many lies it was impossible to knmock them all down before they had gone around the world twice, the power on the incumbancy and all the rest.

I wasnt that impressed with Kerry at the beginning of the campaign, but by the time he was done I think the man had demonstrated a lot of character, I Do Not see any evidence that he intends to hurt the Democratic party so he can have another run in 08.

when there is evidence of that happening, then I will appologize to you, until I am just disappointed, coming from a blogger I really respect.

A lot of the excuses for his loss that I'm reading sound like the same excuses that each democratic primary candidate could give for the reasons that they lost the primary. They're going to have to come up with something better than that if they want support from the grassroots.

Given what we know about the Republican Party's utter ruthlessness and commitment to winning at all costs, given many documented instances of dishonest and unethical behavior in this area over the past three election cycles, I'm unable to comprehend why so many Democrats seem content to accept the 2004 results at face value and by implication, the continuation of the status quo.

Wake up, Democrats! A large iceburg just tore a huge gash in the side of the ship, and you all are worrying about who the Blue Team should put up as its candidate for captain on the next voyage.

I propose the following 2 tactics.

First,

Mount boycott of MSNBC to get them to even up their balance.

Why. Because if will be war won it will be won in small battles and skirmishes.  The right has Fox, CNN seems to be fairly neutral, but  MSBC bias on some programs tilts heavily  conservative (scarbourhgh, Buchanan, kudlow).  (I tend to see Mathews as fair).Their viewer ship is about 3 million. It wouldn't take much effort to reduce their ratings by 10 or 20%.  We get a more balanced megaphone to voice our opinions and we demonstrate our own clout.

2nd,

Hit em where it hurts.  Fox is hypocritically the mouthpiece of the conservatives AND runs the trashiest, most anti-Christian values network on TV.  We need to conflate these two juxtapositions and let their own Christian right take it from there!

Any takers folks?

Think ahead to how the 24 hour media will play it, if Kerry even looks a little weak they will work on the narrative that the voters are rejecting Kerry once again and for all time with a likely loss or a poor showing in Iowa. Kerry's tendency to be cautious in that atmosphere will bring certain failure. The media will all say, "We have seen this rodeo before and we know how it ends up".

I can only hope the people who will be electing the DNC chair have the polical common sense at this point to realize that even if Kerry had 100 million, he is political dead meat in the national arena.

I agree with all of the statements that have been made about getting rid of the current Iowa and New Hampshire lead in states to the primary season, this does nothing but insure disaster because of the Grand Canyon sized gap between (what remains) of our base and the average Iowan/New Hampsirite.

I am not sure that people realize just how damaged the Democratic Party is at this point.

I believe the parties/Kerry campaign's failure to do anything significant about what I am certain will be proven - widespread election fraud is going to irrepuably damage the Democratic party.

I can see the party losing 10% or more of its traditional base, and that much again among independents who might be potentially interested in a feasible candidate.

I have not heard anyone in the DNC leadership who is even willing to acknowledge that is the current situation. Trying to talk around that fact isn't going to work.

Dean has certain strengths in this situation. He at least has strong opinions and stands up for them. He is able to articulate them clearly enough within the attention span of the average potential voter. Yes he has relatively high negatives and yes some of his stands on the issues are at the very least odd.

Personally I'd rather see Dean as a candidate than as the chair.

There are lots of factors extant now that are hard to factor in.

Perhaps Bush will stop being a failure at everything he does and the American people will start to benefit from his policies. Thats not likely but it is possible and its a political possibility that has to be considered.

But Bush has such a thick skull and is so ideological that he is bound to continue to screw things up royally. But to the contrary the big corporations now have more of what they want and they may give us a four year reprieve in their plans to systematically lower the US standard of living to that of the more compliant Asian labor resource nations.

More likely Bush will get himself and the nation into more trougle than any of us can imagine.

If that becomse the case, I can see the widespread loss of the basic civil order in our society that we tend to take for granted.

A conservative DNC chair in 2007/8 will find it hard to rein in people who have become dissaffected from the whole system, while a more liberal DNC chair will be instantly labeled by the corporate media as someone representing a permanent minority party.

The only hope will be to find someone with strong views and a feasible vision, who can ignore the corporate media characterizations and can help to gather back the critical percentage of our base that we are certain now to lose.

One other observation, the people who appear to have a dog in the game at the leadership level do not appear to be cooperating with each other. The party appears to be critically factionalized at the leadership and personality level. Again, the only hope is that those people who are potential DNC chairs must have the capacity to genuniely unite that party at that level, as well as the capacity to bring back the herd.

Next time around blogs should be able to dictate the story line, and keep it focused on issues and character, not "winnability" and other media garbage.

Blaming Iowa for the Democrats' problems is like blaming Kevin Garnett for pro sports salaries. It's the owners stupid!

Get the corporations (DLC) out of the party and let the people speak. I'll support any DNC chair who opens doors instead of engaging in gamesmanship.

Whenever I hear people on the other side talk (gloat) about this election, they regurgitate the same RNC talking points we all heard during the campaign to justify their vote.  This tells me their messages got through, ours did not.  I don't believe Dean, Hillary or even someone like Joe Leiberman will do better until the Dems and their allies build up a comparable messaging machine.  Even if we did manage to find a "RNC-proof" candidate for 2008 (and I don't believe that person exists), we still won't win back the House or the Senate without a major shift in public perceptions about the two parties.  

I don't want Vilsack as our Chairman because he couldn't win Iowa for us.  But these kinds of disgusting remarks and insinuations about a man who we were going to trust the entire nation to, just a few weeks ago, is starting to make me harden into a Kerry partisan for '08.

I didn't even vote for the man in the primaries, but if ya'll are going to vivisect a man who took slings and arrows for us on an unprecedented scale and almost won an election that nobody can explain to me who could have realistically done better--I'm going to have to do the hard lifting of convincing the people that Democrats are not all disloyal mercenaries, and stick with Kerry.

Sheesh.  We owe it to ourselves to be gentle, people.

It dovetails with what I read weeks ago in the New Yorker on Shrum and Cahill.  Turns out the Clintonites were all wrong, and Big Dog too.

New blood, new blood.

-Arne

Forewarded email:

Kerry's considering unconceding and having a  recount!  He asked people  to send firsthand experiences of  disenfranchisement to his brother's law office  and his office is eagerly  counting calls that are encouraging  him to unconcede  and ask for a  recount!

(1) Kerry can still request a recount in Ohio (and he may have the  best chance of winning with a recount there)and perhaps elsewhere! He has until they count the provisional ballots, and perhaps 11-15 days after counting  the provisionals. When I called Kerry's office, they put me through to someone  who asked for my state:  they are adding them up! Contact Kerry at  (202) 224-2742 -Phone, (202) 224-8525 - Fax  and urge him to unconcede and do a recount in Ohio (and perhaps   elsewhere)  

(2) If you have witnessed or experienced disenfranchisement  you can contact  his brother's law office--they are collecting this information which will be  vital in considering unconceding at CKerry@Mintz.com (Don't  just email  articles or they will be inundated with emails.   They already  know about the  articles.)

Take care,
Cheryl Guttman

Wake up.  Quit trying to demonstrate your political savvy by discussing irrelevant points like Dean's '04 story, or Kerry's or friggin' Warner's potential in '08.

And decide if you want the Dem party to go along as it has or if you think it should change.  Because that's the choice you're faced with, and all other choices will narrow or broaden depending on this first one.  

Jerome sees that.  Poster in this thread have made it obvious they don't.