I'm thankful for stoller.

I hear more impassioned criticism of McCain from the right than from the left these days.  If the social issues are on the wain in 14 months when the Republicans pick thier nominee it will only help the frontrunner, John McCain.  

The race is on.  It will be especially hard to define McCain because he made such a great first impression on so many independent voters back in 2000.  I was in New Hampshire before the primary, and I remember well how a last minute shift of Bradley voters tipped the scales for McCain.  Yes, Bradley voters -- independents who decide every four years if they will vote in the Democrat or Republican contest.

We can't wait to start exposing the real McCain.  

I don't think McCain will be healthy enough to make the race.  Take a close look the next few times you see him.

I don't know why. I'm sure some of them preferred to retain credibility in DC instead of actually dealing with a corrupt and increasingly right-wing political chameleon willing to act in utter bad faith, whereas others were overburdened and just made the choice to lay off $387k in street money given the immense threat of a continued right-wing Congressional majority.

Yeah, that's it.  It's about a nice paycheck.  

Trying to find a rational and/or moral explanation for their actions is useless.

The Bullshit Moose has been proven wrong and publically humiliated so many times it makes one head spin, yet Asshead gives him a gig.

Unbelievable.

Sorry for the bad cut and paste job on Matt's thoughts; connection is really bad today.

It's a long hard road to the GOP nomination for McCain. He can't win as an independent, as the Lieberman dynamic in CT -- where an independent wins when one political party doesn't run a competitive campaign -- is unlikely to happen in 2008.

However, should he take it, he'll be very hard to beat. Clemons's point about how many pundits will be taken in by the cosmetics of a Lieberman/McCain alliance is precient. With the GOP machine and that kind of insider media mojo, they'd crush HRC like an old beer can.

The weirdest thing for me is tying to fathom the motivations of a person like Marshall Whittman, and the only thing I that makes any sense is not, as posited, greed for a paycheck (there are easier dollars), but rather a lust for power pure and simple. Dangerous stuff, that.

Oooooo that is a nasty dirty, thought!  Matt you go stand in a corner and NO PIE FOR YOU TODAY!

Seriously, I think that we should think about the possibility of a McCain-Lieberman ticket in '08.  It is just fake enough to seem appealing to the completely clueless, and in a three-way race such a ticket could be a serious wildcard.

Of course, this ill not be as great an issue if the Democrats do well in the next two years.  So far I like what I'm hearing.  If Congressional Dems can keep their noses clean and deliver the goods (min. wage incrase, health care and education gains for many Americans and some kind of sanity in Iraq) they can set up a dominating '08 cycle for both Congress and the Electoral College.

Abortion, 1996-2006: 0% right (Planned Parenthood, NARAL)
Civil Rights, 2000-2006: 14.1% right (NAACP)
Labor, 2000-2006: 23.2% right (AFL-CIO)

McCain's abortion posture is astonishingly bad--esp. given the Christian Coalition's attacks on him. He has always been anti-choice, even to the extent of supporting SD's total abortion ban on the 2006 ballot--a position to the right of George Bush.

I continue to be amazed by the obsession of so many progressive bloggers over the prospects of a McCain candidacy.  Yet any examination of his views both on foreign affairs and his domestic agenda reveals that he is a dinosaur, and, as several others too have pointed out, a badly aging one at that.

McCain will be seventy-two if he is a candidate for the presidency in 2008, far, far too old for anyone about to enter that high office, as most Americans will quickly come to understand.  One cannot view him through the same prism of the politics of 2000, when he was a media darling and was nevertheless still throttled by Shrub.

In that year, the Republicans controlled the congressional agenda, and the punditocracy, still reeling after failing to get "the one that got away" Bill Clinton, would have done anything to purge the White House of all things Clinton.

Yet, to pull off that purge, it required a coup d'etat on a massive scale.  This meant turning against the popular vote majority (several hundred thousand strong), a disenfranchisement of many Florida voters in particular, longstanding disinformation by way of the Faux News and their Bush family connection, and ultimately a 5-4 decision by the United States Supreme Court, electing to choose their own conservative successors over honoring constitutional law, to make possible.

Now, GWB is already being ranked as the worst of any United States president.  His party has been debunked and demoralized, brimming with all manner of hypocrites on a level unprecedented, even in the most tainted of past administrations.

Throughout these "Dark Ages," McCain, yes indeed, that once thought of as "straight-talking" McCain, has been among GWB's most vociferous acolytes.  And even now, when many a military person whose credentials are every bit as sterling as McCain's is reluctantly admitting that the quagmire in Iraq cannot be won, whatever additional reinforcements can do, Mr. McCain remains doggedly on the wrong side both of the moment and of the long view of history.  He would call for perhaps an additional 100,000 in troop levels.  That would ensure the slaughter of yet another several thousand soldiers in the cause of, presumably, "face-saving."

Such was the rationale of another generation of military advisors at war in Vietnam.  Now, if Senator McCain has not yet inculcated the wisdom of a war in which he was truly a victim, and cannot apply that wisdom to the debacle of the current day, on what attribute does anyone possibly advance him as qualified for the United States presidency?

Surely it cannot be that he is yet a "straight-talker," not when he permitted a fellow Vietnam War hero, John Kerry, to be excoriated by a Right-wing funded group of alleged "swift boat veterans," whose phoniness was easily manifest.

Surely one cannot turn to this "straight-talker" when it comes to his tortured explanation of how, although he is a firm believer in letting other citizens live out their personal lives as they see fit, still, he cannot condone same sex marriage.

Nor can this seasoned senior citizen be left to advise the rest of us as to how to manage our fiscal affairs--not after these long years in which be blindly followed Shrub to the economic precipice, tossing away any hope for our solvency possibly forever.

I liken McCain's possible presidential candidacy to being in the car with a most admirable senior citizen behind the wheel.  While that person's past achievement is such that one can and should admire his or her past service, one would nonetheless hesitate to permit them to steer across the most precipitous of terrain.  It is not that they are not yet capable of traversing such a course.  It is that you comprehend the fact that said citizen has his or her limitations.

This is not meant to promulgate age discrimination, as the potential of all citizens across the age spectrum remains limitless.  It is meant to face the reality of the peak period of the potency of one's faculties.  

The framers of our Constitution understood that citizens under the age of thirty-five simply weren't at the peak of their intellectual comprehension, and thus permitted only those thirty-five and over of seeking after the presidency.  Yet in that era, life expectancy was decades younger than it is now.

Republicans are wont to note that Ronald Reagan entered the presidency at sixty-nine.  But they often fail to point out that, within a few years afterwards, a far-less heightened awareness had already set in--sadly anticipating his inevitable Alzheimer's.

At fifty-three, I am fully aware of the fact that however I choose to deny it, I should be more cautious in attempting to drive that most taxing terrain.  However, I have the wisdom to understand both my abilities and limitations.

This is what makes now John McCain so supremely unqualified for the presidency in 2008.  Not merely the age factor, but that the wisdom of the war in which he bravely fought, is now clearly absent from him.  And that is what constitutes a political dinosaur.

Giuliani, basking in the false glow of the Rovian imagery of 9/11, will fall to pieces once dissected on a national stage.  And he, like GWB brother Jeb, is far too much a part of all that went wrong with the United States in its Dark Ages.

So, fellow progressive bloggers, kindly cease with the obsessing.  There will be most formidable candidates on the other side in 2008, but Misters McCain, Giuliani and Jeb Bush will not be among them.
 

Sorry to obsess but 72 is not too old to be elected.  You note that Ronald Reagan was elected at 69.  He was re-elected at 73.  Anyway, the point is that McCain is not to be underestimated.

What we need are 'the adults' in the liberal establishment to consistently attack McCain

Who you calling adults?

The unwillingness or inability of liberals to understand the the source of McCain's strength is nearly incomprehensible to me.  It is the same as their own.  Despite differences in views and policies both are cut from the same mold as the effort to reform campaign finance proves.  There is a decided shortage of pitchforks in the land.

The Republican rightwingers know what the leftwing refuses to know.  They despise McCain with a depth that will never be appeased.

You should be following Tolstoy's advice, Stoller.  Let McCain destroy himself.  He is doing a bangup job at it in trying to be kissy-kissy with the fundamentalists.  What a farce.

By the way Lieberman is one of THEM.  Conflating Lieberman and McCain is silly.  There has always been substance to McCain.  Lieberman has none at all.

Best,  Terry

The only "potential" presidential candidate that I have heard is Wes Clark.  He has repeatedly attacked McCain and Lieberman.

It's tricky, because it's actually a good thing if people like McCain and Lieberman draw dedicated-Repub voters away from the Bush wing of that party
All things considered, it would be good for America if the Repub party would be a more centrist version of itself, even if it takes weird and funny convolusions to become that

On the other hand, you don't want the political game-playing of these guys to draw Dem voters and Independents towards a new, more centrist Repub party

So, how do you make this work?  It's not an easy problem to solve.

I think part of the answer is the Dems need to become more and more the party of sane American values, which are generally progressive and populist (though not in a rigid or extremist manifestation) ... that's the American Dream after all, progress for all

When the Overton Window is moved to center on well-understood values of this kind, and the Dems simply present excellent candidates, really strong and inspiring individuals, then Dems will win the majority of races and the country moves forward, suppported by centrist Repubs

If instead of a values-centric and strong-candidate-centric approach, it becomes only just a pissing match, gotchas or whatever, then very tricky operators may win and progress gets sabotaged
What's great about the situation right now is Dems have the opportunity to pass lots of sane, well-loved, widely-loved legislation, all kinds of little things that help and inspire people, and even if Bush vetos all of it, it makes clear where the center of the debate is

One of the tricky things here is that we need a two-pronged approach -- yes we need to start warning centrist voters about his conservative views, but we also need to make sure we do whatever we can to help our good friends Brownback, Huckabee and Romney destroy him in the GOP primary. For instance, McCain and Lieberman introduced a global warming bill that was actually a sane, if modest, piece of public policy. Sane, modest public policy, especially on the environment, is enough on its own to lose you the GOP nomination if word gets out about it. But it's a fine and difficult balance.

This may not only be one of the most insightful articles written in some time, but one of the most important. If the advice given is not heeded, we may well see ourselves, as Democrats, in the minority in 08.  

Any ideas on how the web community can force our elected leaders to follow Matt's advice?

You're right Matt.  Democrats should be very worried about a McCain/Lieberman or even a Lieberman/Bloomberg presidential ticket.  Those special interest groups who happily ignored Lamont (and Schlesinger) for Joe Lieberman's sake may very well come to regret that decision.

Let us start now.

Political McCain--What does he really think.  Saying one thing to one group then changing his tune next month.  How can one trust him.

I would have voted for the pre 2000McCain over Hillary.  But today, I would vote for Hillary over the flipflopping McCain.  If they were the 2008 nominees.

No pundits I know of call CREW the 'Adults.'

So why are you?

What can we do to protect against a so-called 'centrist' Lieberman-McCain ticket?

We've seen how Lieberman can win (at least in Connecticut) by calling himself an effective centrist, and lying about his beliefs. Enough people bought his arguments that he's in the Senate for 6 more years.

And the press' treatment of St. McCain -- no matter what flip-flops he does on issues -- would also enhance his candidacy.

NOW is the time to start innoculating the political body against these two charletans. BUT HOW??

This needs more prominent discussion as a question, in my opinion.