You know
sometimes when they say you're ahead of your time it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.
-George McGovern
In 1972 the Democratic Party suffered a defeat that many can relate to now -the anti-war left's candidate, Sen. McGovern, was beaten by a Republican -Richard Nixon -who incited nothing but hatred from Democrats.
Sound familiar?
Although, this time, the Dems' man didn't get sliced and diced -McGovern took a whopping 17 electoral votes to Nixon's 520, and only got 37.3 percent of the popular vote. John Kerry did a lot better, garnering around 48 percent of the vote and 252 electoral votes.
In a simpler time -say, 2000 -Kerry might have even been able to win. There would have been no flip-flops (at least on the military front), and, despite Al Gore becoming a song and dance man after his defeat in 2000, he made today's Kerry seem as energetic as that guy who shills for local sponsors at Bobcat home basketball games.
In 2004, however, the American people weren't buying what Kerry was selling, but that apparently isn't going to stop the Boston Brahmin from running again in 2008. He even has an unofficial booster club -www.supportkerry08.com -selling blue wristbands to support the junior senator from Massachusetts (and line their pockets, no doubt). But blue-staters should beware -for as terrible and waffling a candidate Kerry seemed in 2004, he would be worse in '08.
The key thing to remember is that while Kerry took a ton of votes, it is quite possible one of those orange barrels dotting the entryways to any major city in Ohio could have taken 50 million votes in 2004 because of the venom leftys had for the president. Come 2008, with Bush out of the picture, it will be difficult for the Republicans to run someone that divisive, which will force the Democrats to get someone with more universal appeal than Kerry -whose record has been so tattered to pieces by the Karl Rove machine that the public perception of him as a high-falutin' waffler is set in stone.
So maybe Kerry wasn't ahead of his time, but he certainly had a bad sense of timing. A Kerry-led ticket in 2008 would be a death knell.
Who then for the Dems?
John Edwards will have difficulty keeping himself in the spotlight without an elected office. Hillary Clinton led a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll as the most likely candidate for the Dems, and has recently made some moves toward the center with her pro-life, pro-choice sentiments. However, the galvanizing -and ultimately underestimated -hatred incited by Kerry among Republican ranks would increase ten-fold if Clinton were to be nominated.
It's time for the Dems, as Washington Monthly suggests in a recent article (Cosby in 2008), to think outside the box. Although, in doing so, they need only to look into the past.
The problem with running senators for president is that they actually have a record on national issues, which the other side can exploit ad infinitum. Governors, such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, can blithely walk into the spotlight and offer what political hacks might call a fresh perspective. They also get the benefit of the doubt because they are actually executives, giving the impression, rightly or wrongly, that they know what it's like to have the buck stop at their desk.
With this in mind, the Democrats should leave the Washington-lifers in the dust and recruit a classic Clintonian. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, or someone like him, is that kind of candidate. The Democrats are becoming the true deficit hawks in Washington, and a fiscal conservative like Bredesen would put a face to this new, albeit ideologically confusing, aspect of the party. Bredesen is pro-gun and pro-death penalty -conservative social issues that the Democrats, as a minority party, aren't going to win on anyway.
A move to the center with a now-obscure southern governor would put the Republican sound boxes to rest and, in return for a turn-back-the-clock moderate, the Democrats would get their shot to return to power.
And, as McGovern might say, sometimes it isn't so great to be ahead of the curve.
-Kyle Kondik,
17
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