Talk Elections

I VOTED NO

Dean has an anger problem and his base is not that large.

deans grassroots look like nothing when compared to bush

Bush also has a higher support of his party then Dean.

also dems are split with hard left for dean. and moderate dems split between edwards gephardt clark and maybe kerry. oh and do not forget lieberman

Some of the moderate Dems may not vote for Dean if he is the Nom.

Also DEan is running ads AGINST the Dem leadership.  He keeps saying we need to chang eour partya nd our nation.  You know this ticks off the Clintons as their man , McAuliffe is the head of the DNC.

Tick off the Clintons and the source of major money suddenly dries up.

this is probally an attack ad on gephardt.  he was the house dem leader 1995-2002

the ad doesn't mention anyone specifically , it mentions the party generally.  It sure doesn't come across as just anti-gephardt, and I knew Gephardt was a leader while does all in the electorate make that connection i don't think so.

If Dean were in a two or three-way race for the nomination I think he'd get clobbered.  He'd go down in history as the insurgent who made things interesting but died coming out of the gate.  Because the field is so crowded he's probably going to surge to the nomination with enough delegates to at least ensure a second ballot victory.

He's getting all of his support from about a third of the democratic party which is about a third of the entire voting population of the country.  Dean only has the support of about one-ninth of the registered voters of the country.  That may be enogh to get the nomination, not enough to win in November.

"They" always say that elections are won in the middle.  Moderate independents decide elections.  The way 2004 is shaping up Bush is going to be the moderate candidate while Dean is going to be the candidate of liberal aggression.  I don't see Dean having wide enough support among moderate independents (or moderate democrats for that matter).

Prediction:  WHEN Dean gets the nomination, many democrats feel disappointed with their party.  Republican turnout will be huge, democratic turnout will be weak.  Dean will lose all but a few states in the Northeast.

Some Democrats will feel disappointed with the party either way. For the purposes of this campaign itself it doesn't matter if the party nominates someone who opposed or supported the war because that is in the past; the election will be decided on issues of the present and future. I propose five main dichotomies between the Democratic and Republican parties, both in the upcoming election and in the future beyond.

(1) Will the United States work with many nations to pursue humanitarian goals or will it go it alone?

(2) Will the government continue to regulate large corporations in a changing economy?

(3) Will the government seek to provide an equal opportunity for all, or go by strict procedural justice?

(4) Will American culture and the American people be by frozen by the radical Christian right?

(5) Will progress in providing civil rights for all continue or will gains be rolled back?

Underlying these questions are core ideological differences, some of which are expressed more explicitly than others: between means and ends in justice; between progress or reaction in philosophy and culture; between engagement or reaction in foreign affairs; and between engagement or apathy in economic affairs. Even if Bush wins by the significant margins he will probably win in 2004, and carry with him larger Congressional majorities, I hope and believe that the discussion and debate over these ideological differences will continue vibrantly.

Sure, if the Economy heads into recession again and Iraq starts worsening. But in a competitive election, No.

I'm expecting some major hits against Dean right around Jan. 1 from the "Clinton wing" of the Democrat party.  Remember how they ousted Andrew Cuomo from the NY Governor's race in 2002? There's no way they'll let him win.

Eventually Dean will be in a 2 or 3 man race, though, and thus as you say he will have a much harder time winning. Right now he actually only has about 20% of Dem voters in polls. So in order to win he will have to pick up significant support from the backers of other candidates once those candidates drop out. If all of the Kerry, Lieberman, Clark, Edwards, and Gephardt people don't like Dean, then there is no way Dean can get nominated.

Dean is not going to win the Democratic Nomination. Senator Edwards is beginning to pull out from behind and could pull an upset. Clarke has an even better chance of winning the nomination than Edwards, so a Clark/Edwards ticket will be optimal.

I'm of the opinion that if Dean wins in Iowa the race is his.  Because of the extremely front loaded primary calendar, once Dean starts winning I don't think he's going to stop--even after the field gets whittled down to two or three.  If Dean does what I think he might, which is knock out Gephardt in Iowa, Kerry in New Hampshire, and Edwards in South Carolina, there's just no one left to stop him.  Clark is a lightweight and I don't even think he'll be a significant factor by the time South Carolina rolls around and Joe Lieberman is just too weak of a candidate to put up much of a fight.  And even if Lieberman manages to win Arizona, Oklahoma, and some of the other Southern/Southwestern primaries and caucuses it's not going to amount to a first ballot victory at the convention.

I think Lieberman (and the dems) only hope is that they can rally behind Lieberman after Dean has won New Hampshire and Iowa and try to win enough primaries to keep Dean from winning on the first ballot.  Then they at least have a chance to make some deals on the convention floor and select a compromise candidate.  Unless some big event happens to change the face of the campaign (for example, Kerry or Edwards or Lieberman dropping out) I see Dean winning the nomination fairly easily.

Well, you may be right, but my main point was that if the race is shaping up as Dean people vs. Anti-Dean people, then the Anti-Dean people will probably eventually coalesce around one candidate to oppose Dean at some point, and then Dean will lose. They may not coalesce until after New Hampshire, but the momentum generated by primary victories is to a large extent overrated. Iowa and New Hampshire are certainly influential but there are still many other larger states with more delegates with the ability to strongly influence the process.

I don't think that Dean can pull it off... He has really pissed off a lot of moderate Dems(BTW Dean is actually way to the right of most other the candidates on the economy), and alienating both Clark and Edwards with the stupid Battle Flag remark may have sunk him.

And he wants to break up corporations.  He may have been on the right of some issues a long time ago but he is no longer.

Wow we realy aren’t rating Dean’s chances but this is what the Republican pollsters Hans Kaiser and Bob Moore.
 
“A recent article by David Brooks left readers with the distinct impression that Republican pollsters are all of the opinion that Howard Dean cannot possibly beat George Bush.  We regret that he didn’t check with us first, as it is our belief that Dean has the potential to be a formidable candidate who could give the President a very difficult race.

The conventional wisdom that has some Republicans giddy about a potential Dean candidacy is not only misguided, it is counterproductive.  Writing off a candidate like Dean by selectively sorting statistical gobble-de-gook and mixing it into a broth of “empirical” sociological evidence ignores the political realities of our time.

Howard Dean can win because he believes in what he is saying, because he can semi-legitimately spin his record as Governor into one of fiscal conservatism, and because he comes across as if he actually cares about people.  We don’t know what the issues will be 14 months from now.  Perhaps the economy will be rolling and the President will be soaring.  If that’s the case, no one can beat him.

But there is the potential for the economy to remain sluggish and stagnant and conditions in the Middle East are impossible to predict.  Should these situations remain status quo or worsen, America will be looking for someone new, someone fresh, someone who can shake America out of the doldrums and reinvigorate the body politic.  Dean would provide solutions and excitement where the other Democrats, while perhaps polished and attractive, are not as convincing because they don’t have the perceived conviction of a Howard Dean.    

Furthermore, if one makes the case that Bush could be vulnerable to the poofy John Kerry or the scintillating (yawn) Bob Graham, how can anyone write off Howard Dean?  Because Graham can win Florida, he can win the White House?  Well, Dr. Dean knows a little something about health care and there are a few folks in that state who have some stake in the issue.  And let’s not forget the President’s noble efforts to reform Social Security, a demagogue’s dream in the Sunshine State.

With no significant opposition to Harry Reid in the Senate race and the nuclear repository issue alive and kicking, Nevada is going to be tough for the President.  And West Virginia is a very Democrat state, where Dean’s willingness to work with the NRA on gun owners’ rights will go a long way toward deflecting the “liberal” charge.  
 
Today there are four states that we would put in the lean Republican column but these states -- Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio -- could go either way.  

The remaining states give Bush a base of 206 electoral votes to start.  Basically, it will be tough for any of the current candidates to wrest these states away from the President barring any catastrophic developments.  Oh sure, if Wesley Clark is a Veep choice he might make Arkansas competitive, but overall, Bush will have a solid South through the Great Plains and Mountain States.  So Bush starts with 206 and Dean starts with 183.   Because as Al Gore learned in 2000, the popular vote doesn’t elect the President.  The Electoral College does, and when you do the math, a Dean candidacy is a lot more realistic than people think.

The difference between Howard Dean and the rest of the Democrat candidates is that Dean comes across as a true believer to the base but he will not appear threatening to folks in the middle.  More than any other candidate in the field, he will be able to present himself as one who cares about people (doctor), who balances budgets (governor), and who appears well grounded while looking presidential.  To be sure, he doesn’t look that way to the GOP base, but that has no bearing on the election, because they will never vote for him anyway.  He can appeal to the middle and Republicans can ignore his candidacy at our peril.  We are whistling past the graveyard if we think Howard Dean will be a pushover.  

Howard Dean’s appeal is closer to Ronald Reagan’s than any other Democrat running today.  Granted, that’s not saying much with this field, but there are similarities here.  The Democrat party used to chuckle about Reagan and his gaffes which they believed would marginalize him to the far right dustbin of history.  But when his opponents tried to attack him for some of his more outlandish statements, the folks in the middle simply ignored them.  Voters in the middle looked to the bigger picture where they saw a man of conviction who cared about them and had solutions for their problems.  Howard Dean has the potential to offer a similar type candidacy.

Furthermore, the “far-left liberal” charge which Republicans have used effectively in the past to define Democrats has much less impact today than it used to.  The problem here is that the GOP spent years warning America about the ills of a left-wing liberal Clinton presidency and how it would destroy the economy, ruin our children, and leave America a twisted wreck.  Well, we survived and the economy actually did well during much of the Clinton years.  America didn’t have a problem with Bill Clinton being a far-left liberal, they had a problem with his inability to tell the truth and his total lack of morals.  

Certainly Dean has made some gaffes and needs a little more seasoning before the general election.  But the only people paying attention right now are the diehards on the left and the right.  The voters who will actually determine the outcome of the Presidential race are currently checked out.  They couldn’t pick Howard Dean out of a police lineup.  And you can be sure that when they do begin to pay attention they won’t be searching back issues of the Hotline or the National Journal to research the guy.  That’s insider stuff that is totally lost on the great majority of voters in America.  
 
When the nominee of the Democrat party is selected, voters will start to focus.  By then, should he have the nomination in hand, Howard Dean will be billed as the “moderate fiscal watchdog this country needs…oh, and by the way, he won’t take away your guns.”  And if the economy is still stagnant, and there is little progress in the Middle East, that could be plenty enough for him to win 270 electoral votes.  Let us not be fooled by misguided conventional wisdom.  Dean is a threat and Republicans better not ignore him.

Ironically, if he does get the nomination, Howard Dean’s biggest problem will be Bill and Hillary’s attempts to subvert his candidacy.  They simply cannot afford to have another Democrat in the White House, in short, if Howard Dean is elected President, Hillary never will be.  So, the Clinton’s will do whatever they must to make sure that doesn’t happen.  So maybe Dean can’t win after all.  But that’s another memo.”

The People will Chose if they Trust Bush or Dean

Edwards wont win my state.  He is polling at the bottom of the pack in the latest michigan poll. She is even behind kuchinich,sharpton, and braun.

Edwards-1%

latest michigan poll

Chances of dean winning presidential election in 04.


chances-32%

DEan will get the nomination or if not it won't happen till the convention which would be a mess for Dems, not picking a nominee until July , with no one watching politics in Aug with the 200th aniv of the Olympics in Athens, followed by the GOP Convention.

It would be very interesting politically to have a convention candidate picked though.  Plus then they might pick the VP through the convention too.

Reasons why Dean would not make a strong candidate in 2004:

- Dean wants to repeal all of Bush's tax cuts, including those on the middle class. This, as Kerry pointed out, amounts to a tax raise on the middle class. This position would not be popular among moderate voters. Also likely to be unpopular with moderates would be his calls for a new large-scale re-regulation of business.

- Dean is a very vocal opponent of the war and opposed it from the beginning. The problem is, a large majority of Americans still say they support the war. Even Democrats in polls say they want a candidate who at first supported the war but was critical about how it was handled- nominating such a candidate would likely be a stronger choice then Dean.

- On social issues, Dean would be put at a disadvantage by his social liberalism as well, due to his signing of the Civil Unions bill in Vermont. While the other candidates share this position, the fact that he actually signed the bill may make him more vulnerable. In addition, he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act which Bill Clinton signed that would prevent all 50 states from recognizing gay marriage should one state decide to approve it. Him calling himself a Metrosexual won't help either.

- Geography: Perhaps the biggest one. If the States were to fall the way they did in 2000, the Democrat would lose by 18 electoral votes. So, the Democrats must hold on to Al Gore's states and capture a few Bush states as well. Dean is from New England, a region where the Democrats already dominate and from where the Democrats would not gain much of an advantage having their candidate be from. He might be helpful for New Hampshire, but Vermont is such a different state it would not even be clear there. In fact, Deanis probably one of the candidates least suited to appeal to any states that went for Bush in 2000.
 

2004 won't be the 200th anniversary of the Olympics, that won't be until 2096...
It will be the first Olympics held in Athens, the original Olympic site, since 1906, however.

I'd say Dean's chances are slim but I wouldn't totally count him out.  If the economy does not continue to improve or Iraq gets dramatically worse, I think things could get competitive.

As some of the Dems around here have pointed out, there is some precedent to Dean being a moderate leader.  Prob is he has set himself up and created a base around being a whacko.  I don't see him being able to change that impression now that he's stuck with it.

I still voted "no" but I just don't want to be cocky :)

Ben, that was a very interesting article, thanks.

Now that I think about it, the way conservatives portray Dean is very similar to how liberals described Reagan in the 1970s: as a "nutcase", a "dangerous" politician, and so forth. The rest, as they say, is history.

I suppose many liberals are praying that Dean can do for them what Reagan did for the conservative movement - ie. make it the dominant part of mainstream political discourse. Whether that hope is realistic or nothing more than wishful thinking remains to be seen.

Oh I think they are less then that.

Is That A Smile, Andy? President Bush's Baghdad sojourn seems to have worked perfectly in one regard: his poll numbers jumped across the board in the days following the secret trip, the National Annenberg Election Survey has found.

The poll, conducted before and after the president’s trip, found "substantial immediate" improvement in Mr. Bush’s job approval (up from 56 percent to 61 percent), disapproval (down from 41 percent to 36 percent) and likability (up from 65 percent to 72 percent).

61%!  

I'll belive te poll whwn I see it

I think the question is a little misphrased. CAN Dean win? My answer would certainly be yes. WILL he win? Probably not. But there is an outside chance. I agree with most of Ben's points, I think Dean is underrated, but that so much is going for Bush that he will probably get re-elected anyway.

I don't think he can. Dean is leading the party into the wrong direction. I'm a Democrat supporting John Kerry, but if Deans the nominee I would vote for Bush.