When you posted.

Actually, Comey dominated the election from start to finish.

the last time a r won the popular vote for 1st term was 1988. And 2004 was questionable.

Only Bush I was an insider.

Kamala Harris, and maybe Joe Kennedy III are in the former.

As late as Christmas 2003, it was still a "foregone conclusion" that Howard Dean would be the nominee. It wasn't until a couple of months later when John Kerry shocked everyone and won Iowa that he became the presumptive nominee.

And by the way, I think the whole "people want an outsider who's not part of the Washington Insiders" wisdom is going to be turned on its head in 2020. We HAVE an outsider without ANY experience in office right now, and the people HATE it. This time around, they're going to be looking for someone who knows what the job entails and who can hit the ground running. They're going to be looking for stability; a steady hand. Someone who has a record of success.

Even though later on, he would tell (even today) anyone that asked "we didn't know what the hell we were doing."

But back then, it was amazing. This guy I had met at a dinner table just 2 years before, and talked guitar as much as politics (Howard and I are both Leo Kottke fans) suddenly has a team of Secret Service surrounding him and has to run to catch his own plane. He was on the cover of both Time and Newsweek at the same time. It didn't last long, and it took him a while to adjust, but when he won the post of DNC chair, he really hit his stride and never looked back. He wasn't really interested in trying again, although he did say that if neither Hillary nor Biden had tried in 2016, he might have been tempted. It wouldn't have lasted, though, as Judy would have had him chained to the breakfast table rather than go through it all again.

because he was against the war on Iraq.. and I liked him.

I went to meet-ups in upper state NY and met a lot of really nice people.

When Kerry got the nom.. it took me about a week to get on board and then I was gung ho!

My sis and I drove to Manchester, NH to see him on Nov 2nd I think, where about 15, 000 other supporters showed up.. I didn't even get to see him in person.

I don't think they were expecting that many and the stage was too short.

Our paths just never crossed.

Howard remains a personal friend to this day, of course, just spoke to him last week.

Howard was on a speaking tour of northern Germany, and we had dinner with the mayor of Düsseldorf

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all look so good!

In a lot of ways, he is still one of my political heroes. He is one of the first politicians to really inspire me, and he caused me to become an active participant rather than just an enthusiast who watched from the sidelines. I jumped on his bandwagon early, and when he lost Iowa, I couldn't believe it. When he eventually dropped out of the race, I was devastated, but I eventually threw my support 100% behind John Kerry. I literally went to a John Kerry rally days after Howard dropped out and told all his supporters to get behind Kerry (I actually got John to sign a copy of his book for me and got to talk to him briefly at that rally, which was really cool).

About a week before the election, I finally got a chance to meet Howard. He was at a book signing here in town, so I stood in line for him to sign my copy of his book. I only got to speak to him briefly, but he was super nice to me. I have pictures from that event on my computer, but I don't know how to post them here.

The DNC was at its strongest under his leadership. I wish we had someone like him running things now.

And those administrations were tainted by scandals and war and bad economies. Our last Dem nominee had no such advantage, no matter who they might have been.

Which is why I agree with others it shouldn’t and won’t be Biden, Bernie or Warren.

It means we overanalyze and critique candidates until they're completely unelectable. Which means, this thread isn't a great idea. 2 years or less time means we don't have the opportunity to rip a great candidate apart.

I do think we’ll need a person in their 40’s or 50’s who’s either a relatively unknown governor or very new Senator.

But I know Jay....

California's new Senator and former Calif. Attorney General and sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

We were robbed 3 times.

And it's sad when supposed liberals try and make excuses for the GOP

............that the Republicans haven't LEGITIMATELY won a Presidential election in 30 years, right? This is the thought that keeps coming back to me every time I hear hand-wringing Democrats declare that we need to make wholesale changes to our political philosophy or do this or do that in order to "keep up" with the Republicans. If you have to cheat to win, your philosophy is no good to begin with. We need to stop blaming ourselves and get to work changing the rules that allow them to cheat these elections.

Case in point: Wisconsin. Immediately after the election was over, we went into self-blaming mode, talking about how we could have "better reached Wisconsin voters," or how Hillary should have spent more time campaigning there, or how we could have changed our message, or whatever. Now it comes out that even Republicans have admitted that it was the voter suppression that swung Wisconsin.

I realize that introspection and self-blaming is kind of what we do as a Party, but we need to stop all that and start figuring out how to prevent these treasonous A-holes from STEALING elections. And it needs to start the MINUTE we take back the Congress in November. When we were in control in 2008, we were content to sit on our hands and in-fight about the perfect way to do things while getting nothing done. That can't happen this time around. Screw the appearance of bipartisanship and ram through an agenda that will ACTUALLY improve things. They certainly have no problem doing it to us for laws that make things WORSE.

I stated clearly the situation around those candidates. The fact is—they weren’t in the WH and the others were. The reason it was close enough that Republicans could cheat is they were seen as more of the same Washington insider yards yada.

You can easily search and find news articles about it.

Conversations about Clinton were being held in the mid eighties.

They both were known for their oratorical skills but not widely known by Americans.

Yes, they were being discussed as serious candidates during the time-frames I referenced.

"They both were known for their oratorical skills"

They were both well accomplished at that point.

Here's NYT on 1990 midterm elections:

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/07/us/1990-elections-nation-democrats-retain-grip-congress-take-top-posts-texas.html

Quite a trip down memory lane with guys like Bill Bradley, Mario Cuomo and Jesse Helms.

Cuomo was the only one who was a strong contender in 1992 who made it into this article. It focused on midterms themselves whereas most articles today would already be casting forward to the next presidential campaign.

I can guarantee you the majority of news outlets weren't discussing Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as candidates for president two years prior to their presidential election bids.

a really good healthcare plan with a Democratic Congress. This was before most healthcare companies were made for profit and our best chance to get a really good plan passed. He completely missed the boat on Iran and helped keep an unpopular dictator in power...which we paid a heavy price for. He did make the only lasting peace agreement in the middle east...between Israel and Egypt. So kudos for that. But, he paved the way for Reagan. While he was a decent man, I don't consider him a successful president.

Not discussing the highs and lows of their presidency.

He was on everybody's radar after that.

Not as someone who would run in the next Presidential in 2008. At that point he was not even been elected as US Senator.

Only when he announced his run in Feb 2007 did people start to see him as going for it. Even then, most money was on Hillary or Biden. Others were encouraging Kerry, Gore, and Dean to try again. Even Edwards had more airplay as a potential nominee over 2 years prior to Nov 2008. Not Obama.

As I said, he had not separated himself from the pack even by October/November and he hadn’t even announced. That would come the following Feb.