DU Gov 08 Preference Poll

What Gov. would be a good 08 choice?

Probably why they left her off...

according to survey usa

I LIKE this guy.

even though he's not listed.

But he is certainly the voice of the future. I've heard him on Al Franken's show and he is marvelous. He just needs a little more executive experience.

Sebelius is one to follow. She's had experience for a few years. I think she would be a good VP choice, with Wes Clark for President. South and midwest. Foreign policy and domestic policy mix. And NO Northeast liberals, thank god! I'm a Northeastern liberal but enough already! We just can't win.

I like Richardson but his past tenure with the Clinton administration is probably more of a minus than a plus. Not that he was bad; it's just baggage. Let's not go there.

I also like Janet Napolitano, but since she is unmarried, I get the feeling that she'll be gay-baited to political death. Which is a horrible thing to say but unfortunately I can hear it now.

The others on the list I don't know much about. Hope to learn more as time goes on.

though I don't think he was a great president. Personally, I don't find that "experience" has a lot to do with how good of a president you are. GHW and GW Bush had more experience than Abe Lincoln and George Washington.

to know how to pick your fights, how to deal with political infighters, how to manage a bureaucracy, etc. Of course, GWB was terrible but that is because he is GWB.

Having said that, I would absolutely love to support Schwietzer after he's served a term, been around the block a couple of times. His ideas are good; his energy and creativity are just what we need. A little tempering and he'll be ready. All in good time...

That's why one term Governors don't run for President anymore. It's too time consuming and too expensive. It's politically viable to spend a month or two in Iowa and New Hampshire and go back home if you fail to get the nomination. If you abandon your constituency for a year and a half and fail to secure the nomination on top of that, they will likely toss you out of office after that.

It helps when you're unemployed, too. ;-)

Right now I chalk it up as him saying a nice thing about the guy because they were at the same event. If he actually endorses Mittens that will be a different story. So can we refrain for pre-mature bashing of Democrats?

Jim Webb supported Felix in 2000 and changed his mind. And all of us are certainly glad about that.

But I felt as if I had been punched in the gut when I read about his support for Mitt and McCain in the New York Times. Our populist hero supporting Republicans in the past and possibly in the future... it sucks

Then he can kiss my support in my future goodbye. But right now I don't believe it will happen. Mittens is heavily courting the religious right and Schweitzer, a group which Schweitzer is not particularly a fan of.

And has the ability to not only charm the pants off of the Urban centers but the suburban and rural folks too!

It probably helps that he's my Governor, but I saw him at a rally with Bob Casey and Patrick Murphy just before election day, and he absolutely tore the place up. A great public speaker, and plenty of experience.

Yet had Gary Hart slept around and Bobby Kennedy not been shot, there would likely have been 4 Senators in our nation's history that would've been elected.

Most of those Governors will make mediocre national candidates at best. Ed Rendell may have the charisma and the political know-how but he's said he's not interested in the job.

but it seems pretty obvious that it is harder for them. It is easy to understand why too.

In addition to the fact that predicting the eventual winner of the Democratic primary in 1968 is impossible, the party constituency itself was so fractured that no small question exists as to whether enough voters would have supported any Democratic candidate in the general election with enough vigor to defeat Nixon. It's the primary itself, though, that is the fundamental problem one has to get past before drawing this conclusion. Humphrey was in the lead *after* California by over a hundred votes. Meanwhile McCarthy and Kennedy supporters, arguing over voting records and individual issues, continued to beat each other to a bloody pulp, and the theory of Kennedy's eventual selection is predicated on the notion that he could could continue to defeat McCarthy in the remaining primaries, which in and of itself is not a given. The larger problem with regard to the eventual outcome is that the primary system itself at the time only marginally resembled what it is today, and party leaders still had an enormous influence in the final selection of a nominee. The party machinery was largely backing Humphrey, which is why he was in the lead even though Kennedy and McCarthy got all the headlines.

And then there's Hart. He very likely would have been the nominee, and I have no doubt he could have won the general election, but what brought him down, combined with the details of the vicious 1968 primary, define the point to which people refer when they suggest Senators don't make good Presidential candidates.

That problem is that they're almost too well known, have too clear a record, have too many ardent supporters and opponents both within and without their own party, and have left far too lengthy a trail during the political careers that opponents can sift through looking for elements to attack. Note I suggest that this is a tendency and not a hard and fast rule, but in the election cycles to which you refer, it clearly was a problem.

I say none of this to denigrate Kerry in any way or to suggest he could not be a good candidate. I firmly supported him against all nay-sayers in 2004 and do not feel the sense of betrayal some seem destined to need to feel after the election itself. However, he or any Senator with a long road behind them has a lot of hurdles to climb to make him or herself viable. I think some truth exists to the notion that Bush really wanted to run against Kerry, in part because every tactic used in the campaign against him had already been planned, at least in outline, to an extent. Such plans were harder to produce for other candidates.

In short I am simply suggesting it is a valid concern that should be one element among many taken into account when making a choice in the coming primary season.

Yes McCarthy supporters were not wild about him but I think they would've come around when it became clear that he was the viable anti-war alternative to Humphrey.

As far as the party insiders are concerned, if it came down to the convention I think that Bobby would've been able to compete with Humphrey for insider support. Yes the insiders were mostly in Humphrey's corner but given Bobby's family name that had to have some clout with the party insiders. McCarthy had no clout with the insiders because he was seen as representing the fringe elements of the party. Kennedy didn't have this image.

And I know that this is just further speculation but say that Kennedy hadn't been assassinated but lost the nomination to Humphrey at the convention because of insider influence and Humphrey later went on to lose the election. It seems to me that Bobby would've been the frontrunner for 1972 and would've likely been able to win the nomination through the primary process and probably been able to defeat Nixon given that Americans were even more tired of Vietnam by 1972 than they were in 1968.

But only possibly. RFK wasn't quite the legendary figure he is today prior to his assassination, and he had a lot of powerful enemies. And the family name was something else again. It helped him get the support he did have, but further speculation beyond where we know things were at the time of his death simply has too many variables to make a positive assertion as to what his influence would have been had he lived. "Different" is all I'm willing to say.

Whatever the case -- and I'm not saying flat out that you're wrong, just that it's too much speculation for me given the current context -- it's somewhat beside the point. As I said, that point is simply that Senators historically have had a long row to hoe in an attempt to become President, and the reasons behind that difficulty outline a tendency among many Senators who have run, and those reasons should be considered carefully when choosing our next candidate.


IMO, of course.

There are better potential candidates and no one in Illinois would support him. His unpopularity is why the Green Party got 10% and is now officially established in Illinois.

He sure seems to be popular there...

He's popular in West Virginia but he would have zero chance of appealing to primary voters.

I don't know anything about him, other than that they love him in West By God Virginia..

And yea it's understandable why they love him in West Virginia. Even if a Dem Governor is a DINO 9 times out of 10 they still do a hell of a lot better at effectively managing government than the GOP does because today's GOP is so far right in its ideology. Manchin isn't liberal by any means but I'm sure he's a hell of a lot better than any Republican that has or will run against him.