What campaign would recognize and react to the best idea ever?

Don't jump to conclusions yet; it's early.  Look where the "special" campaigns ended up in 2004.  I agree that the netroots people are a big part of the equation now, but not the only part.  I still think that, for now, Edwards has the winning message.  A lot can change in the next two years, however.

Political operations do matter in the long run...and Clinton certainly did it right in every respect, but as you point out political operations are not the end all and be all and they should not be taken as a sign of governance. George Bush had probably the most outstanding political operation in history in 2000 and 2004 and just look at how he turned out.

Running a campaign and running a government are extremely different things.

Sorry, Matt, I don't agree that Edwards' progressive position is not real. To cite just one example, he has been working his butt off to help unionize service-sector workers. Sure, there may be some self-interest involved (he wants union endorsements), but so does everyone else, and what have they done to help grow the labor movement?

I think that Edwards is a true southern liberal.

If anyone had a progressive position that didn't pass the smell test, it was Howard Dean. I should add that I love what Dean has been doing at the DNC, but this does not change the fact that he was not nearly as liberal as people thought in 2003.

It was Dean who generated an image as far more progressive than he actually was (according to his record as governor--my brother-in-law lived in Vermont for most of Dean's tenure there). Dean governed as quite the centrist on fiscal and social issues (he never led on gay rights, contrary to his image). He flip-flopped on issues such as the death penalty, contrary to his image as someone who was steadfast in his principles.

A large chuck of Democratic activists broke off from the party in Vermont while Dean was governor because they were so pissed off about his lack of leadership on environmental and other issues.

I spent much of 2003 arguing with Dean supporters, telling them that Kerry's record was much, much more progressive. Dean's opposition to the war, which I give him full credit for, was the single issue that earned him the support of many progressives.

Big difference. At this point in the campaign, in early 2003, Dean was playing the insurgent role. He was trying to shake things up and broaden the discussion of Iraq and other issues in the primaries.

I do not think he seriously entertained the notion that he could be the nominee until the summer of 2003. He was just trying to make a difference in the campaign.

Edwards knows he's a serious contender.

Are you going to measure the effectiveness of a campaign this early in the game?? Edwards announced less than a month ago. Obama less than a week.

Keep one thing in mind. Hillary Clinton has been in the public light for over 15 years. Obviously, she's going to have a strong calibre operation through the Clinton's network of friends. Not surprised here at all. But the true measure of a campaign is how they perform long-term.

And one thing you can't substitute is the quality of the candidate. Money can't buy that. This brings back memories of the Virginia senate primary race between Jim Webb and Harris Miller last year. By all indications, Miller had the best campaign operation but he still lost. Jim Webb was the quality candidate despite his campaigns' many handicaps and it wasn't a suprise that he won.  

Give each campaign time to oil up. It's way too early to make judgements.

I personally think it is too early to say. It is January 2007. As I recollect, not much was clear about the candidates in January 2003. There was some mention of Dean in the news. Had Gore even announced he would not run yet? I remember hoping he would drop out (my feelings about that are different now) so that it would open up the race. I was also hoping a maverick would step to the plate. If I remember correctly, it wasn't until about May or June 2003 that the Dean campaign really caught fire and took off. And with Clark, I remember quite a big discrepancy between the different Draft Clark operations and the actual Clark operation that came together when Clark stepped into the race.  

desmoinesdem wrote:
"It was Dean who generated an image as far more progressive than he actually was.."

This is so true.  One of the things that intrigues me about Hillary Clinton is that she does the opposite. She generates an image as far more conservative than she really is.  I read so many articles written by Republicans who caution against Hillary being the ultimate leftist Democrat. The Republicans know she is a poseur.  I have spent time researching Hillary's ratings and her voting record.  She is rated 100% Liberal. Yet the netroots and, I suppose, many of the grassroots Dems (who aren't online) portray her as traitorously Republican-lite and, well...you know all the adjectives.

She is playing a clever game to win, and while she has taken the risk of alienating the netroots in doing so, I think she will use the coming months to convince the doubters that she has not betrayed them - certainly not at the levels to which she is accused.  Hillary knows how to beat the Republicans.  She has been doing it for her entire political life.  She's a pro.  She and Bill Clinton are loved even by their once vicious enemies. Haven't heard too much scandalizing lately directed at Hillary have we?  No raging "Monica's Lover Wants to Take Over The Whitehouse Again" kinds of headlines.  Sure Rush and Coulter; Hannity and Falwell will continue the smears but Hillary is immune to the rightwing whackjob haters.  She laughs at them.   Unless Bill gets caught with his pants down; or unless Hillary slips up seriously, and I do not expect that to happen, she's the best we have for winning.

Given the results of the Nov. election and who voted Democratic (can we say 30% of White Evangelicals? and many many independents), she is doing what is necessary to win. And, in my view, even though I have some problems with Hillary, she has the best chance to win the Whitehouse for the Democrats. I am sorry to say that after long and horrid Republican rule, that is more important to me than electing the perfect Dem President.

If Hillary wins, and I do expect a groundswell of support for her once she and Bill hit the campaign trail, then we are on our way to ending the rightwing regime.  Her choice of VP, which I believe will be Bill Richardson, will be the coup de grace.  We will have Hillary as Pres; Bill as First Gentleman or First Ambassador; Bill Richardson as VP and, quite frankly, that ain't bad.

An interesting point about John Edwards and it underlines some of what matt has said in his article ... I was blogging on the Edwards' site back in December and I asked, what for me, was a serious question of John Edwards.  (I was on his personal blog).  It was a question about the deficit.  He replied "Not taking the bait."  It wasn't "bait". I was really disturbed that he didn't at least try to give me an answer.  I was very polite. I like John Edwards and he is either my first or second choice in the primaries.  
 

...of Edwards' Web site was 'accidental' at all. It generated extra media coverage for one more cycle than he would have had otherwise.

Remember that Dean was just a blip on the radar screen at this point. He was an asterisk.

So sit back, watch a bit, and then when you've made up your mind, say so. There is a new people-powered organizational institution, and it's not one person's campaign, it's the netroots.

It'd be easy to just wait for a new Howard Dean to roll in, but that doesn't seem to be happening, so you're going to have to make up your mind soon, help motivate the base (if there's anyone you have influence with, it's the base; in fact I'd say MyDD is the base of the base), and help them transition to helping the eventual nominee (like we had to do when Kerry won). Take it as a compliment and a credit to democracy (big or small D) that the people are more loyal to the people-powered movement than an impermanent campaign, and they're waiting to choose just like you are.

If someone wants to take down Hillary, they only need to run a short TV ad showing a truck headed her way as she stands frozen in the middle of the road with a "deer in the headlights" look of fear and panic in her eyes. The truck can represent whatever you like: Iraq, abortion, gay marriage, health insurance, civil rights. On most if not all of the big issues of our time (flag burning and video games notwithstanding), she has failed to lead or take a stand.

And that is how I think she would run her presidency, without courage, conviction or direction, endlessly vacillating between one focus group-tested position and another, waiting for someone or something to show her the way (sorry, Roger Waters, it's such a good line), and then second-guessing herself and micromanaging and changing course once she's made a decision.

This has nothing to do with her being a woman or a "liberal", which are total red herrings, and everything to do with her political character--as in her lack of it. Absolutely nothing about her feels real and conviction-based anymore. We can hardly afford yet another one of those as president. Four in a row is enough.

clinton/cheney '08

No offense to Stoller and Armstrong but your analysis of the campaigns seem pretty superficial.  You "like their websites, they don't return our calls, the organization is top down", etc.

And you guys rip the pundits for talking only about the horse race and polls!

Do you realize how many people are giving "free advice" to any of these campaigns right now? Or better yet, sending in resumes to be the campaign media advisor when they haven't ever created a political ad in their life but they have made kick ass beverage ads.  

All well intentioned but probably not viable or relevant at this point in their campaigns.

Matt -- a few observations.   First.  Both Hillary and Edwards have been putting things together literally for years.   Obama probably really did not think a year ago that he would be running for President.  Not saying he hasn't been putting things together for a long time -- its possible -- but I give him the benefit of the doubt.    When you look at 1984 -- Vice President Walter Mondale had the same kind of machinery built over years that Hillary has today -- I ran Iowa and Pennsylvania for Mondale that year -- it was the best organized Presidential campaign that I have ever worked on.   I remember working at the Democratic Senate campaign committee in 1988 when John Kerry was chairman of the committee -- and one of his senior staff talking about how they were building a direct mail fundraising list that they planned on using when he ran for President.   When I asked "He's running for President? When?"  They said -- "Oh not now -- probably 10 or so years from now - but the earlier we start to build the list the bigger it will be when he goes."   So Kerry had been running for President and putting things together for at least 16 years by the time he actually ran in 2004.  They both won the nomination -- but in both instances they ran extremely safe -- by the numbers campaigns -- and both lost the general election.   Interestingly both were nearly knocked off their game -- their careful planning made nearly irrelevant by the relatively "fly by night" operations of Gary Hart (1984) and Howard Dean (2004).   Hart and Dean (very different styles and personalities) ran bold, outside the box campaigns -- that scared the daylights out of the "sure frontrunners" but in the end did not win the nomination.   Having worked in both cycles -- I really beleive that the problem was not the "bold, outside the box" campaign -- it was the disadvantage of having to build the campaign "on the fly" that hurt both campaigns the most.   If a bolt is loose on one of the wings -- the wings start coming off.

The Clinton operation has been tested -- they have even rolled the plane a few times and pulled out of a few multi G dives -- and they know how bad the turbulence can get coming out of Iowa or New Hampshire -- or a string of losses in Colorado and Connecticut -- and still keep the damn thing in the air.

Edwards mitigates some of this advantage having been through 2004.   Obama has little idea of what he is about to get into.

The other thing is that Dodd and many of these candidates can not possibly get back to anyone -- even their friends -- The Clinton operation again has an advantage -- systems have been set up for years to deal with this.   Dodd is literally a one man operation with a few staff who is trying to figure out what the drive time is between Des Moines to Davenport.

All this does not mean that Obama or one of the others can't succeed and get past Hillary.  But the advantage is hers.  

It is true he does not have as many known activist supporters as Obama and Hillary. However, polls have shown he is getting most of his support from young people, perhaps new activists. He is also still doing best among moderates and Republicans.

Edwards is also going to win some Union endorsements this time. He will not win them all, but he is going to get a few, more than last time certainly.

This whole campaign is going to come down to the last few weeks and probably the last debate before Iowa. As long as Edwards builds a good ground opertion, wins union endorsements, and does well in the last few weeks like he did last time, he should be able to win Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada and pull it off.

I do also think the campaign is about the people, bottom-up. He is telling crowds to take action, that the country is the responsibility of everyone. That is why so many young people, who were never involved in politics or even voted, came out to the Iowa Caucuses in 2004 and voted for Edwards, even when the media was not even covering him. He does inspire leadership.

Matt wrote:

I have a well-placed friend today, a state operative not in a primary state, who got a call from a top Clinton strategist to tell him that Senator Clinton was going to call him in the next few days.

Would that operative happen to be from, say Connecticut or New Jersey?  States which have lots of big donor cash, and establishment Dems who would seem to be a natural fit, due to geography and demography, with Hillary?  

I think we need a little more information before we beat up on the Edwards camp for not calling your friend back in what you deem to be a timely manner.

Interesting considering that Edwards and Clinton have been building their organizations for the last four years.

It probably does give a glimpse into how they would govern since it largely reflects their judgments in who they picked to run their campaigns.

One advantage Hillary has that is invaluable and few can duplicate is the years watching how the White House works. Why governors tend to make better presidents than Senators, they've had to put together and executive branch team.

As you say, we won't know about Obama's team until he hits the street but it sounds formidable. Chicago Tribune on Obama's Inner Circle

For all the enthusiasm and money  -- including a fair amount of mine -- Dean generated going into the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, for all the bottom-up empowerment it generated, and for all the "roots" he created, it surely failed to translate into warm bodies in church basements in Iowa or voters in New Hampshire, dissappointing a lot us who thought on the eve of Iowa that he had created a new model.  It may be that Edwards and other campaigns have learned something from that missed opportunity.

Must have been looking at a different announcement.  Maybe the operational aspect of the announcement was perfect but the content was dreck.  I don't want a candidate who wants to have a conversation about what needs to be done.  If someone running for President doesn't already have a strong agenda they are in big trouble.  Right now the candidate with a strong message is Edwards.  I am not in his camp yet but I am a lot closer to him than Clinton.  As far as organization, one lesson can be learned from the Dean camp.  It doesn't pay to spend a lot of time and money in primaries and caucuses the candidate may never compete in.  How are the candidate organizations in the early caucus and primary states?  My state (WA) will probably not have much of an impact on this race so if Clinton has a great organization here and the other candidates don't it may not matter much.

While Hillary Clinton got huge national buzz yeaterday, Edwards was reported speaking to 800 people at IIRC Iowa State.  I don't know how Hillary's organization will translate to boots on the ground in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire.  Bill Clinton is the only President in the past 50 years to be elected while winning in neither Iowa nor New Hampshire.  What this all comes to, who knows.

At any rate, I'm not inclined to either write off Edwards or crown Hillary.  It is still way to early to tell.

It appears to me that the event went off as planned. The was a large audience all of the chairs were filled and about the same number were standing as were seated. The crowd was white middle class with about equal numbers of males and females with a very wide range of ages. Not all of them were from Johnson County some had driven a considerable distance to hear Edwards. There were a few union members with signs saying they were health issue voters (it is too early for the unions to commit to a candidate).

His wife spoke, he spoke and then he answered about a half a dozen questions from the audience and that was it. I talked to a few people who were there for the same reason my wife and I were and that was to try to decide if Edwards has the horsepower to win the nomination and the election. At the moment we are undecided on that question.

My expectation is that when the other candidates show up in Iowa City there will be similar crowds looking them over to try to decide is this the person who can make the difference.

Matt, you raised an interesting question about how much political operations matter. For one they show an ability to execute a plan, and despite the ease of counting "net" activists, its much harder to get the non connected, voter of the past 30 plus years out. The infrastructure of the Democrat party is still tough to gauge in many areas. Iowa and New Hampshire suffer from aging populations, South Carolina is more youthful. The ability to master different tactics in urban and rural areas to gather primary votes will be of importance, perhaps weighted by density.

I haven't read the comments, but I absolutely agree with the updates. This is a lesson that can be learned by all campaign. My response to all supporters regardless of your candidate (and right now I am leading Edwards) is grow the fuck up, and realize that no one is perfect, and can learn how to do things better. Peace.

Though I'd probably back Edwards if you forced me to pick someone, the Edwards team is just not competent.  They don't return calls.  Despite being very good listeners, they don't play well with others, they are quite ineffective at coalition work, they are very top-down, and they are slow.  On announcement day, their Plus Three website was down for at least part of the time, and they accidentally slipped up and released it early.  You can smell that the progressive position Edwards is taking isn't quite real - he's trying, but he's not generating a crop of activists, the way Dean or Clark did in 2004.  He could, but there's no sense of empowerment - it's all about Edwards, and there are two other superior quality narcissists in the race.

The biggest advantage Obama has is that he is the fresh face in the contest.   Americans are total suckers for 'who's hot right now,' and Clinton, Edwards and the rest seem like old news compared to Obama.  I'm not pushing for Obama, but I do think he is the one who can most easily generate a buzz and get some Dean-like momentum going.

Iowa needs a strong ground game, and its not always about banging doors.

Primaries are front loaded to stop the insurgents from taking the nomination - earned media sweeps the candidate in after almost the first five primaries and its usually a done deal with this thing after 7

I say usually -

Clinton was the exception , was he not?

I have sent emails and made phone calls to campaigns before with no feedback.  Emails are returned with the standard cookie cutter form email.

However, virtually all campaigns act in a top-down snail pace.  Political operations are beuarucratic, filled with red tape, and inflexible.  

Hillary's camp might have fixed these typical errors, but this Upstate NYer has John Edwards back.

For those who are impatient and expecting results. Remember this:  We are over 16 months away til Election Day.  This is light years away in political time.  Trust me, in my previous campaign experience, mistake are made.  It is how campaigns resolve to fix errors early does our expected result occur.  So relax and watch some foosball.

GO SAINTS!  WOOHOO.

I think that Matt is taking superficial and anectdotal information and projecting it onto the ENTIRE Edwards campaign. This is very tempting to do...but wrong. One friend getting his/her phone calls answered equals the whole campaign? Oh brother.

A better way to have phrased this is: I have a friend who has been treated better by the Clinton campaign than the Edwards campaign. This concerns me, particularly because my friend lives in... Iowa.  (BTW, where is your friend located?  Nebraska?)

Matt compounds his error by veering off the roadway of reality with a whole string of unsupported statements.  Let's take these in order.  According to his diary, the Edwards campaign "[doesn't] play well with others" and is "quite ineffective at coalition work."  Who are the "others" he is talking about?  And what coalitions?  His one friend? Three friends?  

Over the last two years and to this day, the Edwards campaign has "played" with Democratic candidates and campaigns around the country, more than any other campaign has in fact.  I personally found it mind boggling how many appearences Edwards made with political leaders around the country over these last two years (minimum wage, congressional candidates, state candidates and even Lamont).  He was everywhere "playing" with people and participating in coalition building.  No other candidate can match Edwards on this count.  

Matt tells us "they are very top-down, and they are slow."  The evidence over the last two years suggests otherwise.  If you saw how Edwards helped others, he was NOT telling the campaigns what to do in a "top-down" fashion.  It was always: what can I do to help the cause?  That is NOT top down.  On a personal level, anyone who has watched Edwards at work in a campaign knows that he leads through enabling and empowering.  It sounds corny, but he loves people, and he wants them to maximize their potential to do good.  His personal style is the opposite of top down.

But maybe Matt wants to limit his "top down" and "slow" criticism to just the first two weeks of the official Edwards campaign.  Even on this count, the evidence suggests otherwise.  Visit Edward web site at www.johnedwards.com and see what you think of Matt's thesis.

Is this slow?  Is this top down?  Give me a break!  If you believe in the causes that Edwards wants to champion, you can join One Corps.  You click on the link and you are connected to a system that very quickly and easily allows people to join local organizations designed to do....to do....what?  You decide!  How top down!  

In fact, when the official campaign started two weeks ago, it was thought by many observers (myself included) that OneCorps chapters would probably spend most of their time working on poverty issues.  But...when the campaign solicited emails a week ago from OneCorps members asking them what THEY wanted to do...an unexpected thing happened.  Many said that THEY wanted to focus on global warming.  And so, the focus of OneCorps seems to have subtly shifted already in response to the roots.  How top down!

Matt questions the sincerity of Edwards by suggesting that he "smells" something.  Respectfully, I hope Matt does not think through his nose.  If you go back and actually read Edward's Plan for America from the 2004 campaign, you will find that he was a progressive in 2004.  The media, of course, decided to focus on only one thing about him in 2004:  his two Americas speech.  Oh boy. Only a low info voter, however, would suggest that this single speech, or idea, was the A to Z of Edwards.

Matt continues by suggesting that the campaign is "not generating a crop of activists, the way Dean or Clark did in 2004."  Yes, that is true.  The Edwards campaign is doing it differently, and is already ahead in terms of numbers of activists than either Dean or Clark in January of 2003.  Which means?

Matt gamely concludes that "there's no sense of empowerment - it's all about Edwards."  But the OneCorps effort is only two weeks old, and has yet to really even have it's first national meetup.  How can Matt assess something so sharply, and definitively, when they have yet to meet for the first time?  He can't.  

But let me close by praising Matt for offering constructive criticism. The Edwards campaign is going to need an "A" game to beat the well-oiled Hillary Clinton campaign. Everyone involved in the Edwards campaign should be encouraged to elevate their game.  And if Matt's diary accomplishes this, it is well worth sifting through the distortions in it.  

As I see it, Hillary Clinton will have access to more money than God in the upcoming campaign (Ruport Murdoch of Fox News hosted a fund raiser for her! Yipes!  We have to defeat an alliance of conservative Democrats and Republicans!)  Her campaign will probably have more paid staffers than anyone else.  Her campaign will be gold plated (just like Kerry's was) and will impress all the pundits who are fond of praising gold.  We can only hope that Edwards and the people, bringing their "A" game, can prevail over the gold.  :)

Concidering that like Edwards, Hillary has done zero major legislation in 6 years, I am thinking she'll have much to answer for.

This has been a very productive thread and a pleasure to read. I'm honored to be in the same "room" with Joe Trippi, and I agree with Matt that the Dean campaign did something that had to be recognized, although they didn't sink the old model with the first shot, and that this recognition allowed Dean to be where he is, the happy consequences of which we know. Dean is no longer commanding the netroots, but it's as if they were in pre-established harmony, or something.

That said, I'm going to go meta by noting that Matt's analysis is mixed and properly so. We're not talking about policy, but about campaigns - and then Matt says he smells fake somewhere in Edwards' progressive policy front. And then Matt goes further and says that if Edwards was really convincing people with that, he would be creating more activists, or more deeply committed supporters.

And that is in effect a meta remark about policy proposals. The well-informed people you reach out to directly should respond, if you are convincing.

There are bad signs that didn't even exist in 2004. The country is waiting for someone to describe life after the defeat in Iraq. What will the world be like after the troops are home? Will there be a leader in Iraq that will say and do horrible things? And so on.

If, Matt, you say you lean Edwards, is this a way of saying that if you could just have Edwards' nomination fall out of a hat, you'd take it?

Suppose you were very, very smart. Smart enough to run the Harvard Law Review, or something. And suppose you had seen analyses that indicated that policies made today were as likely as not to blow up in the face of events affecting all Americans, including withdrawal from Iraq, and so broad indications were all you really dared offer at this time.

Suppose you thought the real trick was not getting elected President in 2008 - not a very long shot after all - but winning by enough to get enough of a mandate to meet crises and turmoil that will in the not too distant future make the problems we have now look small.

Suppose you figured that if successful you would have to piss off at least one really privileged bunch of guys, and accordingly kept things vague in speeches.

Suppose you knew where your activists were going to come from, and your problem wasn't how to motivate them, but how to do it in stages so they don't go berserk and you don't peak too soon.

Suppose you were playing to win, not in the trenches, by four points, but in a walk, by twenty. Suppose your goal was to smash the Republican Party, even in the reddest states.

To carry forty states. And over 58% in the general.

I mean, that would be good, right?

Certain ways of looking at the future make it seem necessary. And only one Democratic candidate can ever dream of a landslide.

You guys experience candidates as images. I experience them as a voice. That's what Reagan was. His radio show did him a lot of good.

People who listen to the President now realize that he always was a miserable little faker, but they were taken in before.

Suppose you could "craft" speeches so that you sound, not indeed like the black Hillary, but like the Democratic Reagan? A message of unity. Nothing simpler.

Apparently, according to a certain Overlord, this candidate's speeches are like Chinese food. An hour after you hear him speak, you're hungry again.

Maybe that's because it's been a long time since we heard anything like this. Just to pick on a non-candidate I'd love to have as President, Al Gore: I keep hearing people say "Gore nailed this" or "Gore tore it up", and I listen, and it's just Al Gore, speaking in an ineffective style for the most part.

Seen Bush on TV lately? OK, can we all agree that an important aspect of any Presidency is the tendency of people to get tired of ANYTHING they see on television too much?

Does anybody doubt that the MSM is as much to be hoodwinked and misdirected as anything else, all in the interest of freedom and democracy? The MSM are not (to use a Habermasian term) "freedom-makers" anymore. It is their frame that everybody ends up having to fit, their Procrustean bed. Reagan made THEM lie in it in the beginning. He was the first conqueror of the news cycle.

When certain forms of shit hit certain fans, a word from the 60's (but what was "activist"?) will come back to haunt us. It will be "crisis". When I was a kid, there was a crisis. It changed from time to time, but there was always a crisis to talk about, and one crisis was related to another. There wasn't a lot of talk about security because it was in short supply. There wasn't a lot of talk about moral issues because there was a real crisis. There wasn't a lot of wedge issue stuff; everybody was afraid of criminals. Some wanted to help them and some wanted to get really tough with them.

Crime rates were a crisis. There wasn't much talk about international terrorism because we had crime, and that was bad enough.

Suppose you had it figured this close: the real economic pain won't hit until too late to really influence the 2008 election. But it won't wait much longer after that. Housing bubble, lost jobs, decreasing home prices, glutted market, upside down mortgage, foreclosure, trade deficit, austerity, "pay as you go", towns and cities dying, crumbling infrastructure, progressive collapse of the consumer insurance industry (as opposed to corporate insurance). Crime rates going up.

Under certain circumstances you could even see Republicans wanting Dems to take the White House - though not a massive majority. On the other hand, if we catch them on the back foot, we could have a government that was up to amending the Constitution in certain ways - and thanking the Bushites for pointing those loopholes out. A government that could assert state sovereignty over the right to conduct business, such that environmental damage is prevented and the fabric of society repaired. A government that could jawbone the Chinese into gasifying their coal, and rebuild the American industrial plant with the power of Hispanic workers.

And so on.

Narcissist?

That describes Matt Stoller.

He who lives in glass houses...

Also, Dean and Clark were roughly tied for 3rd in 2004.  Edwards outperformed both.

And that does matter.