Hillary should never have gotten in this early. I always believed that she was stupid to get in so soon and wear out the welcome of the Clinton Brand. Obama has the potential to stay fresh, but even he will look stale come the turn of the new year. Familiarity breeds contempt. Even McCain is beating her in the national polls, although it would be interesting to see Dales' state by state map when those start coming out. Rudy kills her. Obama appears to run better, a fact which is not lost on some Democratic activists.
Except Kos, who has dumped all over Obambi over his refusal to buy into Kos' Feingoldism on the war.
This will surprise people, but by January all the excitement will be in the Republican race. I disagree with Dog. If Fred thought that JMC was a man for whom it was worth being a stalking horse, he is probably thinking differently now. McCain's is a dying candidacy. I'm not a Freddie guy-Thompson's putitave candidacy strikes me as "flavor of the month" stuff, but politics is a weird business. Thompson could be the Reagan with feet of Clay. I believe that the big Pioneer Money may be committed to Romney or Rudy, with some beknighted souls giving money to JMC or Brownback and Duncan Hunter (Dog is right about Hunter-he's going to Clydesville with Sam Brownback...).
The comparisons with Reagan do injustice to RR. Reagan had a multi-decade record of writings, speeches, and deep intellectual commitment to the cause of anti-communism. Thompson was a skilled and talented attorney and a Senator of some note, but Reagan he is not. So let's put that to rest right now.
The consultant I work for is betting on Rudy, of course, as am I. Things have changed enough in the Republican Party: the rank and file want someone who will, without hesitation, exterminate the enemy. They want no truck with a Hillary Presidency. Strangely enough, Republicans aren't as fearful of Obambi as they are of Hillary, primarily because Obama doesn't carry the entire Clinton apparatus with him and has reached out to conservatives in the past. This despite his record as being to the Left of Hillary on most issues. Nonetheless, the lack of seriousness among Dems over this conflict is what gets our goat, and is what makes Rudy relevant to the game.
John Edwards should suspend by the fall, btw. Everything that Pukin' Dog has written about him is true, only on steroids. He did better than expected in Q1, but the Dem ticket is sort of set in stone now (Hillary/Obambi, Obambi/Hillary) and there's no room at the inn for an unprincipled Ambulance Chaser. He couldn't even pull in NC for John Kerry. Dems haven't forgotten that.
The Republican field isn't quite done, imho. That's what makes our race the one to watch. The Dems will bore everyone as Congress starts to disgust Middle America over the war. Lots of flux out there; the good news is that the Dems have worn out their welcome.
The Blue Team has made a huge, bad bet: the War Doesn't Matter. That's their central thesis. It underpins everything they do. Hillary is about a "Return to Normalcy" (the Nineties). Barack wants to "Turn the Page". Unfortunately, they bought into the Reality Based Community's ignorance of the capabilities of Ahmadhi-Nejad and his lads. The entire Democratic game plan was built on a lie that the Iranians are about to blow up.
Which is why it pays to be patient in this game. The Dems made a bad bet about the nature of our enemies. By this time next year, they'll have wished they hadn't.
Be Seeing You,
Chris