Count the votes, dude
Mr. Liebovich's wandering mini-essay about whether Democratic Presidential nominees can run twice misses three huge points. First, Gore won the popular vote and also would have won the vote in Florida had all ballots been counted. This is not tendentious; it is the concluson of rigorous and thorough unbiased studies. You can look it up. If everyone who voted for Gore in Democratic primaries in 2000 (he won them all) did so in Democratic primaries in 2008 he would easily win the nomination, and if everyone who voted for him in the general in 2000 did so in the general in 2008 he'd be certain to win because the new voters will break Democratic according to every predictable trend. So that's not too bad as a starting point. Second, Kerry lost in 2004 only because he lost the popular vote in Ohio and that he may not have lost but for voting irregularities. In any case he lost by a tiny margin which if the election were held again today would be reversed. So that's,also, not too bad as a starting point. Third, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, and Richard Nixon are historical examples, if any are needed, of the viability of running again. To put it another way, the estimable Mondale and praiseworthy Dukakis illustrate the opposite: some nominees' campaigns failed so badly that no case could be made to repeat the effort. Gore and Kerry are contrasting, not similar, examples.
Any story that has the word "smartypants" in it ought really never to appear in print, let alone the New York Times.
That said, leaving aside what was clearly a reporter with a deadline but without a story, we need not to ask if Democrats would hold a grudge were the Vice President to run again but how would he play among independents and moderate to conservative voters who might have voted for Bush in 00 but who now appear to have deeply soured on the Republicans.
Gore was, way back when, a candidate who ran for President in 88 and VP in 92 on the idea that the Democrats needed to appeal to those who had abandoned the party in 84 and 88, not least southern Baptists and midwestern Catholics. Those are still crucial constituencies for any Democrat. Those voters will be the hardest for Senator Clinton or Kerry to win over, and a lot of Democrats who want a) to win, badly, and know we need crossover voters to do it and b) are angry at our party leadership for not fighting Bush harder prior to this year when he imploded may very well find Gore much more attractive than the other leading alternatives.
May 21, 2006 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm afraid the News of the Week Section has often seemed to become the bash Democrat section. Also today, say, how about the article that our health care system is actually a marvel compared to England's, so that any apparent inefficiency or immorality in delivery life expectancy and other measures is just an artefact of how aggressively we diagnose and treat everyone here.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
May 21, 2006 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
You assume people would vote for Gore again, and you do this knowing that McCain is the likely nominee for the Republicans. I say that the Democratic party needs a new face, not one that is boring and has been run through the grinder like Gore has.
If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you'd better be prepared to produce the pig." -- HST
May 21, 2006 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
We Democrats need only one thing in our Presidential candidate for 2008 - he must win. So, our criteria has to be headed by whether we think the person we support can win in 2008, against whomever the Republicans select. I really like the idea of selecting a candidate who shares my liberal instincts, who opposes the whole Iraq invasion from start to stalemate, and who sees nothing wrong with the richer people paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the poorer. And, I think that is the description of a winning candidate. But, if the consensus is that I am wrong I would support any Democrat for President, including Hillary, Gore, Kerry, or others. I wish we all felt this way.
Hoppy in Sacramento
May 21, 2006 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you!
May 21, 2006 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
With respect, that's a position of defeat, not of straight. A strong Democratic Party, in my opinion, will put up not the candidate just for winning, but the candidate that stands for something beyond just winning.
Too much politics is about The Big Win. Too much of what people hate about politicians is about who's moving to the Left or Right or Center in order to win. Consensus must be built, alliances forged; that's the core of any good politician. Yet I reject that the end game is simply to get a Democrat in the White House in 2008.
I drifted from being an active Democrat because I felt we lack leadership. And, for my money, the way to get back into power is to stand up, and say "I will listen to the people. I am beholden to the American psyche, ideals, and opinions. And this is what I stand for, and what I wish to lead us to do."
I fear I'm not making a lot of sense. But I fear, even more, that simply going for the win will result in Disaster for the Party, yet again.
Does that make sense?
May 21, 2006 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it makes a lot of sense. We need someone who can sketch a plan for a better government and a better society, and who can put it in a way that will appeal outside of the liberal base. But it has to start with enthusiasm from liberals.
Can Bill Clinton be cloned in time for 2008?
May 21, 2006 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you are saying you disagree with my position, then I assume you disagree that our candidate for President must win in 2008. I'm not at all interested in being a close second for the third election in a row. You also seem to assume that only a centrist Democrat can win in 2008. I don't assume that, nor do I believe that. I believe, as I said, that a liberal Democrat would be someone who can win against any Republican. However, I am not willing to concede the election to the Republicans if our candidate is not someone I would have selected. Whomever is selected as our candidate, even if it is Hillary Clinton, should get the enthusiastic support of all of us.
Hoppy in Sacramento
May 21, 2006 9:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Australia's Prime Minister for the past 10 years lost a federal election in the 1980s as opposition leader, then lost the opposition leadership, then regained it, then won in 1996 over Paul Keating who had opined that the souffle doesn't rise twice.
RE-ELECT GORE
May 22, 2006 1:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hoppy, I agree with asim, but I don't entirely disagree with you. I don't think the nation will survive another corrupt and incompetent administration. The problem is, it doesn't matter whether the corrupt and incompetent administration is Democratic or Republican, we just won't survive much more of this internal destruction.
I think I'd rather fight--hard--to win with a candidate that does have a vision for the future, preferably one that includes healing the wounds inflicted on our people, our institutions, and our economy. I wouldn't mind if that vision included restoring our tarnished national honor.
I wouldn't fight so hard for a candidate that is just more of the same--triangulation, pandering, glib but empty words.
And I think maybe I'd rather lose if the result of winning was to have the Democratic Party turn into what the Republican Party has become today. It's not a matter of "we can do better." We have to do better.
May 22, 2006 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
That goes for me, too, Cwr. I have great respect for Hoppy and no questions about his/her integrity, but I know I'm not alone in being no longer able to vote for our incompetence and corruption as preferable to their incompetence and corruption.
At a purely political level, I sense many on both sides of the political divide are thinking the same way: give us someone clear and reasonable and open, give us a president who feels accountable, give us a Congress which is evenly enough split to be able to backstop corruption.
It's hard to set aside the actions of the Democratic Party in two of its manifestations -- the DLC and the Congressional Dems -- during the past five years. It's no easier to set aside the Dem machinery in some states (mine, for example) which resists change and resurrection. I can't help but remember, at every turn in this ongoing conversation, the surprising impression Dean made on "Nascar dads" in the red state I live in. They respected him. They liked his plain talk. They seemed to be willing to overlook the fact that he was a librul. And his candidacy was undone by his own party, wasn't it?
May 22, 2006 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's really not much point in having this conversation if you don't name names. The differences between Dem administrations under, say, Russ Feingold and Hillary Clinton, are clearly differences in degree rather than kind (at least compared to how different they are from Bush or McCain or whoever the GOP nominates).
That said, I agree that I don't think we want someone overly poll/focus group/consultant driven, although it can be hard to tell that in advance. Gore and Kerry both looked different in the primaries than they did in the general elections. We want someone who has good ideas and can show some leadership, rather than just responding to the GOP and always being on the defensive. We want someone who is not afraid to fight back and fight hard (actually a plus when it comes to Hillary in my mind, plus she can respond to lots of scurrilous charges with some version of "that's old news," which for some reason is often successful.)
I like Mark Warner. Good policy positions, good speaker, good as a Southern state governor, good executive branch and leadership experience, good website (www.forwardtogetherpac.com).
$3.5M in the bank and the funds of his own to challenge Hillary in the primaries without getting desperate for money and the need to stand out from the pack.
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00412791/219107/
May 22, 2006 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Florida in 2000 stands by itself as the biggest electoral fiasco of our modern era.
Ohio in 2004 is different but one thing about it stands out. Never before had there been an instance of the exit polls being 100% flat wrong about an election outcome in a given state. Statistically, that circumstance is more than peculiar.
thepeoplechoose
May 22, 2006 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
hoppycalif2 said:
asim said:
Both of you are entirely correct.
We need a winner in 2008, and I personally will cast my vote only for a candidate who I believe can win, and almost certainly for the candidate who I believe has the best chance to win. The problem, as hoppycalif2 later says, is that in party-hackspeak, "we need a candidate who can win" translates to "let's get the most tepid and bland candidates around and make sure they stake out positions as close to the other party as possible." Wake up and smell the strychnine in the coffee, you elitist jackasses. And yes, I am looking at you, Mr. Reed and Mr. From. You don't know jack about elections and campaigns. "Strong and wrong beats weak and right," as Bill Clinton (whom you ludicrously think your strategy was responsible for getting into office) often says. Your prescription for candidates isn't even "weak and right"; it's "weak and equivocating."
I supported Howard Dean because he would have won. He was a moderate who took strong stances, fought hard, and left no doubt where he stood on things. The insider DLC hacks favored candidates that were incapable, on the only real issue of the election -- the war in Iraq -- of drawing contrasts with Bush that the general public could easily grasp. Who won in 2004? Commander-in-Chief Strong and Wrong. Who lost? Senator Weak and Equivocating.
hoppycalif2 also said:
Only one thing is certain about 2008: if the GOP nominates a candidate who speaks with apparent deep conviction, even if it's about his belief that we need more, not less, carbon dioxide to feed the magic ponies in the clouds that the wicked pony-hating environmentalists want to kill, and the Dems nominate some annoying I-am-destined-to-be-President asshole who thinks the purpose of polls is to find the exact midpoint of opinion in order to claim it as a heartfelt belief, we're gonna get saddled with President Magic Pony. Again.
May 22, 2006 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
The primary process is always a tightrope. That is the time to fight hard for the candidate we believe is the best one for the office. That is when we look for a strong, unequivocating, visionary, honorable person who we feel very strongly should be our candidate. We work our butts off, contribute all we can, and talk up our choice of candidates with all the fervor we can summon.
We have to always make sure our support for our candidate doesn't translate to hatred for the other Democratic candidates. Only one candidate will win. At that time we all need to be able to be good losers, and shift our efforts to the one who did win. If we can't do that, we can't win the presidency.
I can't imagine any Democrat, Lieberman included, who could even approach the dismal record of Bush, or who could possibly be as corrupt as Bush. And, I haven't seen a Republican who will distance himself from Bush or express any desire to be different from Bush. So, supporting any Democrat, and supporting him or her enthusiastically will not be a problem for me.
Hoppy in Sacramento
May 22, 2006 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder how this lively debate might change after the mid-terms. Given the painfully apparent bullshit perpetrated by the current Regime of One Party Rule, wouldn't any Democrat face a tougher electorate if, in 2008, Congress is in the hands of his or her own party? Could the Big One in 2008 not be spun by the "opposition" to be a critical matter of retaining checks and balances?
Who's the candidate who might be able to convince the fence-sitters that the Democrats should be trusted with a One Party Rule of their own?
May 22, 2006 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Al Gore? Hillary Clinton?
It would appear from the surface as if the left is once again mired in a political vacuum in which "Clinton era" surrounds all sides. For her part, Mrs. Clinton is un-electable because of her gender. Not in any way meant to be sexist this is merely a common sensical assumption.
Al Gore, on the other hand, has become, by default, the liberal poster-boy for the 2008 election. While his numbers may look good now they will certainly fall dramatically if he were to actually run.
Is there no viable Democrat who was not a firm pillar in the Clinton White House?
May 22, 2006 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I disagree with Reed Hundt. The article he refers to is an excellent article.
The detailed facts of the 2000 election that Hundt mentions are irrelevent. Gore lost (or tied or narrowly won) the election in spite of every indication that he should have won by a landslide. Bill Clinton would have won, why not Gore?
Gore lost because he was trashed by the "liberal" media. He lost because he became a joke. He was stiff and boring. He was a little insane. He was the model for "Love Story." He invented the Internet. He was taught how to be a man by Naomi Wulf. Etc., etc. It goes on and and on. Eventually we all saw Al Gore as a complete fool.
This trashing was done by the "liberal" media. For documentation see the "Daily Howler."
www.dailyhowler.com
May 22, 2006 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's always a shadow for me over these hopeful, challenging posts. And that's the voting system. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm very persuaded by some who have been keeping an eye on how elections are run and which voting systems are chosen -- Avi Rubin and others -- and am not confident that we will see fair elections in 2006 and 2008.
May 22, 2006 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
PW, you have a good point. I live in Ohio. I observed part of the manipulation directly, have followed the "machine vs. paper" discussion closely, and was surprised to find out that my state is the first in recent election history where exit polls failed to match election results.
The fact that our Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was simultaneously managing the election and was co-chair of the Bush/Cheney 2004 re-election campaign in Ohio is also interesting...
I was a volunteer at a polling place in a known middle-class "progressive" area of Columbus, and the wait time to vote never fell below 90 minutes, and was much longer during prime times (morning, lunch, evening). This story was magnified in known liberal areas, with wait times exceeding several hours in many cases.
The wait time in more conservative suburban polling places rarely exceeded 40 minutes.
Avi Rubin has plenty of credibility, so he doesn't need my help... However, I echo his concerns. I have been an embedded systems software developer for most of my 28-year career and have been following the voting system caper since 2004. I read the most recent report on the security characteristics of the Diebold AccuVote TSx. If what Harri Hursti wrote in his most recent study is accurate, we are in trouble. Based on what I read in his study, the question about the Diebold AccuVote TSx is not whether it can be hacked, but how few ways Diebold could have made it *easier* to hack. Essentially, the Diebold AccuVote systems are "secure" if and only if boards of elections hold the machines in extremely highly secured locations, and maintain extremely careful control of who has access to the machines during maintenance procedures.
As a developer, I believe I would enjoy working with the AccuVote hardware, as it seems to be a friendly embedded system that has a broad array of media options for supporting software updates.
Security? Not so much. No use of any of the widely available and inexpensive hack-resistant crypto technologies.
From a legal perspective, Ohio's election law has just been "updated" to eliminate automatic audit of electronic results vs. the paper audit trail. The same law has increased the cost and operational difficulty of performing recounts. The same law has eliminated use of state courts when challenging federal election results.
May 23, 2006 4:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I take concerns about voting machines very seriously, these concerns would have more currency if Kerry had got a majority of the popular vote in 04.
That he did not is a testament to the cautious spineless campaign he ran for much of the time. The Democratic convention seemed to be more tailored to selling a consumer product than firing people up about a candidate. You can blame losers like Shrum and Elmendorf for the losing campaign strategy, but in the end Kerry must take responsibility for hiring them.
What might be different, and dare I say exciting, about a Gore campaign is that he really appears to have cast off the chains of caution that shackled Gore in 00 and Kerry in 04. How would voters react to a Democratic presidential candidate with some fire in his belly, instead of the robots that the consultants would foist upon us? Sure sticking your head up a little is risky, but the consultants' no-risk strategies are by any measure relegating the Democrats to a party of second-finishers.
How many people voted for Bush in 04, not because they agreed with him, but because they respected the fact that at least he had some beliefs. It sounds crazy, but a swathe of swing voters appears to value (perceived) strength of character over actual policies. This would sound alien to Dem consultants, who wouldn't know strength of character if it came up and hit them on the nose.
I would add, by the way, that this caution is exactly what is killing HRC with the base and will destroy her in any presidential election, if by some calamity she gets the nomination.
May 23, 2006 4:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Doesn't history prove the Dems can be trusted? We were the ruling party for over 40 years. The primary complaint was taxes, and Bush has made that a non-issue. Remember, Dems were suppose to be the 'tax and spend' party. Well, Dubya has blown that meme clear out the water.
So, I think the candidate who relies on our 40 year history will do well.
May 23, 2006 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think there is more than enough evidence that Ohio was stolen just as surely was was Florida, even if the theft is not as well documented for Ohio as it is for Florida.
I really do fear for our democratic republic, if we don't get it together and elect some progressive Democrats of the Feingold/Wellstone variety.
Bushco delenda est.
May 23, 2006 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink