I think what made Dean attractive to a lot of us was that he was a fighter, someone who would run not just for himself but for the Democratic Party.  Sure Kerry was more liberal, and probably Clark, Edwards and Gephardt too.  But they weren't the same kind of partisan as Dean.

Jeffords stood up to the gun lobby.  

The truth is Dean wasn't all that different from Snelling.  The big things that happened in his term were the result of the Vermont Surpreme Court, and not his leadership.

He was certainly no partisan.  In fact, partisanship in Vermont never sold while I was there.  

I did say that I didn't support him because he was the most progressive, I supported him because he was a bare-knuckled partisan. I knew there were issues the other candidates, even back then, were more liberal on.

His gold-standardness, if that's how you want to term it, rested in challenging the boilerplate Democratic rhetoric of compromise and putting the Republicans on the defensive. If that dynamic couldn't be shifted, I believed then and still do, it wouldn't matter how progressive anyone claimed their policies were.

We'd spent all the time from 9/11 to Dean's breakout tiptoeing around, wishing the Democrats would quit offering to cede territory to the Republicans before they were even asked. Pretty soon, he'd made it all right for other Democrats to criticize Republicans. Just like in 2006, Ned Lamont finally made it all right for Democrats to criticize the war, because he spoke up without fear, and lo and behold, the damn world didn't just up and come to an end.

The Democrats need to fight. And they need to know that they need to fight. Or a marginally better policy proposal on one issue or another isn't going to matter because the dang thing would never even come to a vote in the first place.

People talked a lot about electability last time, and they're still talking about it now. It's mostly a stupid argument, and if the repeated polls have shown anything, it's that any of our frontrunners are electable. Which is to say that, looking at their picture-to-date and bio, voters won't reject any of them out of hand.

But I have a different opinion of what makes a Democrat electable: Someone who isn't afraid to brawl or be unpopular, who doesn't give an inch, who won't be pushed around, won't play into the 'nice Democrat, what good manners you have, you win a cookie and a head pat' storyline.

The candidate I wanted isn't running. No Gore for me. My second pick candidate isn't running, either. No Feingold for me.

I don't want to run down our candidates, but I also think it's probably going to be about a decade before the country is ready for someone who would be a first choice for me as a presidential candidate. And I think that a strong progressive change would be best helped at present by altering the balance of power in Congress towards progressives, because we do now have a conservative supermajority in both chambers, and looking at what we can do to affect the leadership races and committee chair positions.

Given a strong progressive caucus, and a liberal majority, any one of these candidates could likely do more good than even Gore himself were he matched with the Congressional class of 2004.

When exactly has any party ever had a "perfect" candidate since George Washington?

IMO, we're choosing among 3 candidates who are all better than anything that has come around in many, many years. Nothing to complain about.

Obama is not going to win the nomination. He will do very well in the first four states, they have a top-notch organizing team of strategists, but after that he will fail.

The way he's campaigning right now, bu moving to the "center," that sounds like positioning for November.

Well yes, but here we are arguing over which is worse rather than which is better- kill your plans before you start or follow gthe leader so that the plans you come up with you throw under the bus? The later only marginally is better in that there is some hope that more will slip through without falling under the bus while the later guarantees that what ever you want may not even be on the table because in teh name of 'bipartisanship" Obama won't even put it on the table at all. Obama is still my second choice of the top three because of the trust factor with the Clinton's, but I am under no illusion about the flaws of his leadership style. or for that matter of edwards or clinton. of the three, i choose edwards because at least he's offering a new leadership style rather than rehashing the same thing the parties has been doing since 1992.

And Obama has followed other leaders since he entered the Senate.  The manner whereby he does and does not cast votes in the Senate is illustrative of this tendency.  

let me be clear- i dont think you are going to get the GOP to act differently unless you do things that aren't predictable in terms of what moves they should make. It's absolutely ironic to me that Obama argues what he does given even after a win of the Congress we are still playing by the same rules so that the GOP regularly wins by simply knowing how the Democrats will play the game. Ironic, sad and a wee bit pathetic. In a perfect world I would have a kind of Frankestein monster of a candidate- Edwards leadership and smart, Obama's appeal and CLinton's political abilities. But this isn't tha world so I take the one that's unpredictable and least likely for the GOP to control.

Yeah, it's skillful alright.  Except I disagree.  I think liberals believe he's one of them because of the breif speech he gave opposing the Iraq war.  He has always been quite upfront about his kumbya approach to politics, and he attracts those voters as well.  The more liberal wing doesn't see it.

I guess it's a purity thing.  Some Dem's want to just feel like they are not voting for anyone who voted for AUMF.  Then they reach a candidate by process of elimination.  

Unless we ignore reality and the lessons of 2006, Iraq will be in the number one issue in 2008. Therefore, our nominee better have a solid (or at least defendable) record on the issue.

We're not trying to win over the conspiracy-theory Republicans who see every newspaper and encyclopedia and full of liberal propaganda. We're trying to win over the more apolitical independent/moderate. These people trust the news. These people doubted Kerry after the Swiftboaters and turned against the war after they had seen too many charred bodies. It is with those people that having one clear position on Iraq will be a big winner.

Frankly, I see Hillary's position on Iraq as being a repeat of 2004. It makes sense to me. I can understand why she voted the way she did. However, to most people out there, her stance(s) will be just as confusing as Kerry and Edwards' stances were in 2004. Her position requires way too much explanation to be understood by the people who have better things to do than read policy papers. Edwards would be slightly more marketable ("I was lied to and it was a mistake"), but Obama's would be the best.

I think Edwards, Clinton, and Obama will all be excellent Presidents. But I think Obama is the most marketable because of his early opposition to the war.

When I think about Edwards, Dodd, Clinton, and Biden's vote for the war, all I can think is, "What in the world did Byrd, Durbin, Chafee, Wellstone, and freakin' Ron Paul know that those guys didn't?"

Okay but Obama wants to capitulate to these people even before anything gets going. I think perhaps Clinton and Edwards have learned their lesson but Obama hasn't. He wants to use the same strategy that Pelosi and Reid use-negotiating from a point of weakness.

War before it started.

I am surprised how quickly this gets lost.

Beyond that I would argue their political backgrounds are very similiar.  But then I was a Vermont resident from 1980 to 2000 and never understood how Dean was elevated to Sainthood.

No, but the boatload of cash Obama has sure will come in handy. ;)