In the grand scheme of things, the Democratic Party offers no hope to Americans. Its members have no overriding "Vision," no new ideas, no grand policy proposals. The most striking example of this fact was in California last month where neither Gray Davis nor Cruz Bustamante could tell voters why or how they would save the state if the voters chose them to so do. What policy would they enact? What program would they change? How would they make things better for Californians?They couldn't say. They didn't say. They did lose, and they lost because Arnold Schwarzenegger enunciated a grand plan that included a comprehensive fiscal audit of the entire California government in order to find and eliminate waste, a repeal of the car tax to stimulate their economy, and a plan to reform their workman's comp system to lure back businesses. Arnold had a plan. Arnold won.
On a larger scale, this is what voters will be faced with in 2004. Democrats aren't saying how they would fight global terrorism. Democrats aren't saying how they would stimulate our domestic economy. They have no plans. The have no new ideas. They have no vision. Thus, they are going to lose, as such a lack of proposals will certainly fail against GWB's proven War on Terror, tax cuts, national missile defense, bans on abortions, faith based charities, and private school choice vouchers.
Knowing that they have no new ideas and that they can't compete with GWB's policies, the Dems have to go negative. This is why they are trying to schedule both ex-Ambassador Wilson as well as his "outed" CIA agent wife Valerie Plame to be keynote speakers at the Democratic convention in Boston next year. They are clearly planning to make a full court press on all negative issues.
To this end, Al Gore's two campaign speeches so far this year (one today, the other back on the day that Arnold announced that he was going to Terminate Gray Davis) have directly attacked GWB. Given half the chance, Gore is going to jump back into this race. To his credit, he is trying to form his own Green TV cable network channel. This would give him publicity that money couldn't buy, which is a good thing for him since he's having more trouble than most Democrats in coming up with scarce campaign Dollars.
Hillary, on the other hand, has several options. Obviously she could just sit this election out, playing along with various campaign theories merely to elevate her status among the Democratic Party elite. Or she could use any of several inevitable events to take over Terry McAuiliffe's spot as head honcho of the DNC (she's got to go somewhere before Rudy Guiliani knocks her out of the Senate in 06).
Then again, she could simply play coy behind the scenes with two or three of the more likely eventual Democratic Presidential nominees, angling to be selected as the VP candidate (hint: no campaigning or ugly questions for her). Or, if she really believes her own hype, she can gun for the Presidential nomination itself with a last minute leap into the Boston convention morass.
But a high-profile campaign in the top spot of a national election would prove to be her undoing. In that sort of position she wouldn't be able to keep all of the press away from her felony violation of the Open Meetings Act back in 1993 with Ira Magaziner on her Health Care Task Force. Nor would she be able to coast through without explaining how her subpoenoed Rose Law Firm billing records somehow magicially showed up in her White House living room one day. She'd have to answer for her firing of the White House travel office staff, Billy Dale, and who hired Craig Livingstone.
The interesting thing to note is that her *known* scandals are precisely what the *known* Democratic Party strategy for 2004 doesn't need. Going negative against Bush will hardly fair well if her own scandals take all of the oxygen out of the room each day. So though I encourage her to try, the top spot nomination in '04 just doesn't seem like the odds-on bet to me.
Dean, of course, has a decent shot at the nomination, though the Democrats themselves hate him for his pro-gun stance, much less his flip flop on Campaign Finance limits or his blurb about Confederate flags on Southern pickup trucks. As for winning the brass ring, Dean doesn't have the money. The Democrats spent it all in 2000, 2002, and again in an absurd fight against the 2003 recall in California. The big donors are tapped out. Unions are smaller. Hollywood has been slammed. CFR is now law. Getting past the money, America isn't going to elect an anti-war Democrat when there are terror attacks going on around the world. Nor is America going to elect someone that wants to raise their taxes. Dean is 0 for 3 on those points!
The dark horse at this point is Senator John Edwards. IF, big *if*, Edwards was the one who leaked the Senate Intelligence Committee memo, then he's got a path open to lurch to the Right and grab the Democratic Party nomination. Of course, since he's a trial lawyer (sorry, Congressman), one can hardly expect that he's ethical enough to have leaked such a document, much less that he would lurch back to the Zell Miller middle.
Lieberman, God bless him, supports Israel and the War on Terror, thus dooming him to never again get a national Democratic Party nomination for anything.
Gephardt, for his part, has only one last chance to stop the rest of the Union endorsements from going to Dean. He's lost at least two major unions so far to Dean, and that's Dick's strong suit.
Clark is the scary one simply due to his baggage. I'm unconvinced that Joe Average can be fooled into thinking that he's anything but a stalking horse, however.
The rest of the Democrats can be safely written off for '04.