DAY 978 - A.B.B.

The Democrats are up again, and instead of doing the usual cut-and-paste from Wikipedia, I thought I'd go through the three retreads that might run in 2008, and assess their chances. They are of course John Kerry, John Edwards, and Al Gore. We all pretty much know their life stories, so we'll dispense with that. First is Kerry.

In my opinion, John Kerry was critically wounded by the Rove image-making doomsday machine as a flip-flopper. It's a catchy, easily understood characterization, and damned if Kerry doesn't keep reinforcing it almost every time he opens his mouth. The man cannot make a simple declarative statement about anything without leaving himself an elaborate rhetorical trail of crumbs he can later use to extricate himself. Kerry's judgment in the running the 2004 campaign can, I believe, be as legitimately questioned as W's judgment in running of, well, everything he's managed to screw up in the last 5 years. Even so, he lost by a Diebold-touchscreen-thin margin, and should expect to do better against a less well-established non-incumbent. It's very hard, though, to convince your own party to run you again when you didn't get it done the first time. Democrats still remember Adlai Stevenson's back-to-back shellackings in the 50's, and how much better getting a new, nicely shaven and made-up face worked out. And nobody likes a loser.

Edwards, naturally, faces the same problem, only double. He also lost the nomination in 2004 as well the general election. His relentless "Two Americas" speeches became tiresome during the primaries, and his relative inexperience in foreign policy did not serve him well in the midst of a foreign war. Nothing on either of those scores has changed much in the last year and a half. He's still talking about Two Americas, and even though he writes op-eds and serves on the Council of Foreign Relations, as a Democrat and no longer a Senator he obviously cannot be directly or even indirectly involved in the Bush Administration's decision making. His history as a trial lawyer will also continue to hurt his electability.

Al Gore is the most interesting of the three, I think. Gore out-polled George W. Bush nationwide in the 2000 election, and if not for the once-in-a-millennium electoral cluster-fuck that was Florida, he would have been president. I think the voters now associate him with the peace and prosperity (and governing competence) of the Clinton years, whereas in 2000, they associated him with the lying fellatio of the Clinton years. It was Gore's inability or unwillingness to play the Clinton peace-prosperity-and-competence angle that caused him to disassociate himself from his boss and ultimately fall short in the election. I doubt he would make the same mistake again. Gore has recently made some strident speeches against the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, and has managed not to come off as a bitter curmudgeon, which he has to find encouraging. As for the "loser" tag, Gore has a compelling case given subsequent events that he did not in fact lose in 2000, although he'd be wise to downplay that argument. The only thing worse than a loser is a sore loser.