A CNN-Time poll of Democrats find that Lieberman leads with 16%, followed by Gephardt with 13%. All the others (too many to count) are in the single digits. It is clear that no one has yet enchanted the Party. Yet it is being reported that Howard Dean did very well with the Demos at the DNC winter meeting. He was the star! According to the report:
"Dean challenged his party to ’stand for something’ and, unlike his rivals who played it very safe, was the only one who managed to elicit sustained cheers while generating that all-important buzz in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill.
"’What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president’s unilateral attack on Iraq,’ he said right off."
Do you want to know what they were cheering? stridnet anti-war rhetoric and universal health care. Sounds like a left wing dream candidate? Unfortunately for the Dems as Peter Beinart in the WSJ pointed out today, the party is being ceded to the "race-baiters" and "ultra doves". That is a recipe for a 50 state disaster ( I am not sure anything could swing the DC vote). If you run George MCGovern but just call him something else, dont be suprprised if the elctorate reacts the same way again.
Isn’t the fact that 37% of those polled don’t prefer any of the announced candidates the most significant information in the poll? Hardly a ringing endorsement of the current Democratic field by the base.
To Van Nostrand and Maxwell: You are both right. The 37% is a huge number, even at this early stage. It’s as if Bill Clinton sucked the air out of the Democratic field, and we now find that the field of political battle might be littered with the corpses of people who can’t in any way measure up to Clinton’s glitter, or to his ability to obfuscate important distinctions, (that may explain why they are all having trouble raising money). That the Demo Party might be ceded to ultra-doves would be a disaster for them; it would be especially the case if everything goes right in Iraq, and more or less right in the fight against terror. This last point will begin to shake out in another two to three months. If after a successful Iraq war, the ultra-doves still hold the upper hand, then the Demos will go down to a 50 state defeat. But I can’t imagine that that will happen; the yearning for self-preservation (and power) will tend to focus their minds, eventually.