He may not be far enough to the left to attract the DUmmie and KOSsack voting bloc. Give him time and a microphone though I suspect.
He may not be far enough to the left to attract the DUmmie and KOSsack voting bloc.
You mean the voting bloc that propelled Howard Dean to a third place finish in Iowa? The DUmmies and KOmmies, the in-crowd du jour, are leading the Dems right off a cliff.
I'm curious on your thoughts. In 2004, the "Deaniacs" collapsed in the primaries. Dean was credited with using the internet in new, creative, successful ways, yet the momentum failed when old guard Democrats focused on bringing him down. A lot of attention has been given to Kos and DU and Moveon, how they are forcing the party farther to the left. Conventional wisdom since Nixon has it that you court the extreme base in the primary, and then move to the middle for the general election to court the moderates. There are probably a lot of reasons why Dean lost, and one of them has to be that his lead in the polls came from young voters, who are notorious for not showing up on election day. I wonder if Kos & Co. aren't being given a little too much credibility too soon. After all, he has yet to back a winning candidate. Just thinking outside the box for a moment, I wonder if the old strategy of focusing on the extreme of the base will lead to failure for the Dems in 2008, just like it did for Dean in 2004. (One could also argue that Kerry was hurt by trying to appeal to both moderate Dems and the leftest zealots, causing a lot of flip flopping.)