Maybe Webb's speech will serve as a kick in the ass to some weak in the spine Dems.

...but losing this election wouldn't be so bad if it meant Jim Webb could run and win in 2012.  How in gods name was this guy ever a Republican?

What I want to hear on Iraq--

Give Iraq, neigboring countries,UN a year's notice to leave and they should come up with transition plans such as:

1.  Bring all warring parties at the table

2.  Conference on regional countries how they can help and stop escalation of civil war
   
3.  Replace american troops with multinational or international forces
   
4.  Disband militias,
   

Webb isn't even calling for a timeline. He's simply arguing forcefully  and simply why the war needs to be brought to an end. This is something that '08 candidates could do without really changing any of their policy proposals.

If Webb needs a second job, he could be a speechwriter for Obama.

Jim Webb = Democratic Party Linebacker?

Best part--"international war on terrorism" not "war on terror."

Webb would be a perfect VP for either Edwards (preferably) or Obama. Or Clinton, if we are unlucky.

It was an interesting contrast on how Bush Jr, Webb and Edwards have addressed the New Orleans issue.

1. Bush Jr by ignoring it.

2. Edwards by saying we can fix it by volunteer work.

3. Webb articulating that New Orleans was an example of government gone wrong and a reason for electing Democrats to use government effectively to solve national problems.

Because our success is measured by the things that haven't happened?

Let's not bemoan that Webb isn't running for 2008.  We have a strong field with several respectable, and very electable people.

It's great to see the Democrats will have a stable for the next open nomination cycle.  Webb will be around in 2012 and 2016.

If Webb had been running, there's no way he would have been picked to deliver this speech, so it's kind of a moot point.

Perhaps his example will instruct Hillary, Obama, Edwards and Richardson to be more forceful.  Every Democrat will see the unusually positive national response to Webb's response address and take note after all.

I think a better question would be "How do we make our 2008 contenders talk like Webb"

I disagree.  The parts of the speech you pulled out sound a lot like what Edwards is saying on the stump these days.  Populism and ending the war.

I'll join the chorus regarding Webb.  He was awesome.  Most importantly, combined with the fresh face of Nancy Pelosi, I think the Americans who saw the whole speech last night would leave being very impressed with the Democratic Party.

Now as for the Presidential contenders, they were all over the main channels afterwards.  I, too, hope they go home and watch the Webb video.  Please, please, please, someone tell Obama to stop praising Bush at the start of all his responses.  Yes, Obama gets tougher during an interview, but he always starts off by saying nice things to the Lame Duck in Chief.

What I'm trying to point out is how desperately weak our field is right now without a real commitment to end the war in Iraq.

Not if we include Al Gore.

Let's start a list of who we would want to see run for President!

Al Gore
Jim Webb
Eliot Spitzer

...???

I noted that Webb repeated his statement that what has transpired in Iraq was predicted. He is on very solid ground in making that statement and others need to join him. I think that Bush is guilty of malfeasance on this issue alone.

I have no dog in this fight, not yet.  I very much like the way Webb talks and I like the way his brains seems to work.  I don't know who will get the nomination.

But remember:  Bill Clinton didn't join the race until what would be October of 2007.  Now, I know things are different now and it would be too late to raise money and put together a staff and all that.  And all those things are true, unless of course they're not.  Weird shit happens in poilitcs all the time, and I'm glad to know we have people who could do the job well who are not yet announced but might be able to step forward if weird shit happens.

JIM WEBB FOR PRESIDENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think Webb has something McCain once had, an non-party driven personal ideology.  He isn't really a progressive, he's a populist.  He doesn't pander. He's what McCain still views himself as.

One does: Wes Clark.

Wes Clark for President in 2008!

Jim Webb and Barack Obama's times will come later.

I agree with snolan.

Clark isn't official yet, but that's because he's afraid that declaring for president will make him less effective at influencing people toward approaching Iraq as a situation that needs a diplomatic surge, not a military surge.  

If he believed that by staying out of the race he could put us on track to a safer conclusion in Iraq and talking to Iran instead of bombing them, I think he wouldn't run.

But with the SOTU over, and a fairly unified Democratic position on the Middle East now crafted, I think he knows that he can help the country best now by entering the race.

He's promised we'll hear something in the next several weeks.  

Clark is an American we can be proud of.

Funny it seems like not too long ago a certain DC insider was bashing Webb in the primary:

"James Webb should be ashamed today.  He acted without honor, without decency, and without courage.  For shame." Matt Stoller, MyDD.com

It's big of the DC guys to come back and admit when they're wrong and the local bloggers were right....oh wait, I still haven't seen Matt give that long over due shout out to Raising Kaine and Not Larry Sabato, and the rest of the VA blogosphere who had Webb's back in the primary when our Matt was naively repeating the VA insider spin.

i found this on Common Dreams...sums it up beautifully...

Webb offered a populist, anti-corporate stand on economics and a blunt attack on Bush for "recklessly" dragging our country into the Iraq war - a sharply-worded address that must have startled millions of TV viewers accustomed to Democrat vacillation.

It was the kind of stirring appeal, both progressive and patriotic, that could win over voters at election time -- including swing voters, NASCAR dads, soccer moms, even Republican leaners. The new Senator - a novelist and former Secretary of the Navy -- reportedly discarded the speech handed him by Democratic leaders, and wrote his own.

But Webb's speech was not just a rebuttal to Bush. It was also a pointed response to the tepid pablum that comes out of the mouths of mainstream media-anointed Democratic presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

TV viewers could easily see the contrast between Webb's words and those of Clinton and Obama, since the two candidates were featured one after another on TV network after network soon after Bush and Webb. Yet they said so little.

Clinton and Obama were the only two Democrats so heavily spotlighted last night - which is how corporate media shape and bias the Democratic race while pretending to just be covering it. John Edwards appeared on a couple shows last night, and was more forceful. (Jeff Cohen)

Anybody who actively runs down a viable Democratic candidate without a very pressing reason is a Republican troll. The very idea of having this be an expression you're going to use all the time, the name of some Dem candidate plus the word troll? I don't think that is language you want to be repeating.

The generic Democrat is not winning by ten points. He is winning by twenty. Of course the margin is much smaller for known quantities.

Only Obama has a ceiling in the seventies. no matter how unlikely this seems to you now, you have really no right to let your artificially stimulated combativeness run crazy and overlook what I guess must be the least likely outcome to you trench warriors. The Republican candidates for 2008 are mere gamblers. The Dem nominee is likely to make history, not in the trivial "first in category" sense but in terms of permanent global power realignment.  

Only Obama can shine a magic wand over the fundies, causing the scales to fall from their eyes. Only Obama can really conciliate the world on new terms.

Obama is the world. In Obama, the enmity between black and white Americans must come to an end. All this talk about how black is he. Black as he wanna be, black as he need to be, and if any harm is directed toward him the nganga will not only fly through the air to destroy it, but to destroy he who sends it. So beware.

The Indonesian episode locked in something that wasn't clear about Obama: like Tiger Woods, he appears part Asian. His father was African, and he has family there. If he can learn to read a speech in Spanish, he can get elected President of the Hemisphere - or call it MERCOSUR.

Obama's religion is very important, because religion is part of the political future, like it or not. The sort of economic and scientific mastery that allowed Americans to imagine a rational state in which religion would no longer shake things up - that is slipping away now. In a sense, religion is what you have when you can no longer afford lottery tickets. Religion plus soup.

Obama is something different from the standpoint of identification and feeling. How odd it is to hear the anti-single-issue crew denouncing Obama for not having his policy file in order. In the Indonesian footage, the picture of little Barry was quite obscure. But the picture of Obama was positively Christlike.

You're going to have to endure the whole nightmare of hearing people say that they believe God and Jesus have chosen Obama to lead us out of darkness, out of the wilderness. And yet, it is just that sort of attachment that constitutes (an aspect anyway) "activism". I realize that some "activists" say "I support X because of his position on Y." But others' attachment is to the candidate and a Gestalt he represents, and this is perfectly clear in talking to many Dean supporters, for example.

Obama is kind of like Koizumi was: different-looking. Bush had to strut to make cowboy. Obama is young, Kennedy-young. But looking at the way the Presidency has worn out the last two (and the first Bush was considered in Alzheimer's in 1990), people realize that we're going to have to try a younger guy.

I would really not compare, but just connect Obama to the spring of 1980. This is really when the connection was broken, between Old Left and New. Carter had failed in terms of leadership. He couldn't get the government to obey him. Kennedy was gradually coming around to challenging him. Then he drove off a bridge.

Ever since, the electorate has applied a very simple equation. If it's a Democrat, they have to be without sin. If it's a Republican, anything goes as long as we haven't been invaded yet.

All the Republicans ever had was national security. First against the Soviets, then against Latin America, then against Eastern Europe, then against half of Asia.

The world evidently terrifies them.

I'm not actually comfortable with there being a Republican Party anymore. I hate the personality cult. I would prefer to vote for a Policy for President and collective leadership. But in the present case, the foreign policy challenge is going to be so daunting - the Republicans have screwed things up so much - that no sail-trimmer can be allowed. The candidate who would be most cautious, not to say conservative - no can do. The candidate who has no international experience - no go. (Obama has international experience of a different and even more valuable kind.)

We have to make an effort to charm the world. It's an image thing, but here the national brand was worth trillions and it's been trashed. I hope we end up nationalizing the oil industry and making most of Texas Federal land. I hope that George Bush doesn't even get to go to Paraguay.

And I hope that Obama ends up touring the world like The Pope. Heck, with the Pope. With Bono. Traveling to rural China to talk to the people that make our stuff. Playing baseball with Hugo Chavez.

The real question we should be asking ourselves: can Obama dunk? Talk about Mission Accomplished.

Look at Chavez' TV show. Obama will be on a TV show to the whole world.

Phi Slamma Obama. That's good, it's got the hard "a" like Alabama.

Ali Obama and the Forty States. And 58% in the general. 400 House seats.

Complete unity in the Senate as all sitting Republicans renounce their party.

Come on, shit, MARKET this guy. If we can make the Chinese laugh we're golden.

Don't fight the last war. Isn't that what you always tell the hippies?

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