Will Clark declare on Labor Day? Is the DLC supporting him?

[madfloridian]

I really don't care, but I just found a few articles that make me think so. We are supporting Dean right now, and I so much resent the attacks on him here. We also like Graham, who was a founder of the New Dems. Dean was a member when he was a governor. I don't like Al From, but I realize not all New Dems are like him. I just wondered if the DLC is behind Clark's candidacy?

I don't need to go anywhere else to find all the eensiest bitsiest speck of dirt on Dean. It is all right here at DU, even some from other countries are taking part in it!

So, I have an honest question. I am curious, and I don't want to be bashed for my question.

Articles I found:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2076528/
SNIP..."During the fall election cycle, he met with New Hampshire Democrats
and spoke to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. In November, Time
reported that Clark met with prominent Democrats in New York City to discuss
his potential candidacy. Since then, he's been issuing carefully crafted
non-denial denials about his White House ambitions, saying he has "no
intention" to run, that he "hasn't raised any money," and that he doesn't
"really have any plans." But according the Des Moines Register, he's
enlisted a member of the Gore 2000 team as his top aide, he's sought advice
from Donna Brazile (who's publicly urging him to run), and he's contacted
top Iowa Democrats about a caucus campaign. He's now on the Associated
Press's shortlist of possible candidates, and just this week he talked with
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe about his
prospects....."

http://www.politicsnh.com/archives/bartlett_report/2002/12-11-02-text.htm
SNIP......"One of the possible Presidential candidates, Connecticut Senator
Joe Lieberman, picked up a key endorsement this week. Former State
Democratic Chairman Jeff Woodburn jumped aboard as an early supporter.
Woodburn is a well respected establishment Democrat who is often a "go-to
guy" when the media needs competent analysis. Lieberman is considered a
moderate among the mentioned Democratic candidates, and some in state
question if he is trying to hard to pursue establishment Democrats in the
state, and is ignoring Democratic Leadership Council style moderates who are
increasingly talking about the possibility of a General Wesley Clark
candidacy....."

Will Clark announce Labor Day after telling his volunteers to step it up?
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/6513639.htm

SNIP..."UPDATE
Clark may be in, but Biden says he's out: In the strongest signal yet that
retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, is
planning to join the Democratic presidential race, he told volunteers last
week to step up their efforts and prepare for an announcement on Labor
Day..."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/8/10/184201.shtml
Don't usually quote Newsmax, but this is interesting.

SNIP...."Several hundred self-important (aren't they always?) and
not-so-young elected officials of the Democrat persuasion were in
Philadelphia last month to take part in a "National Conversation,"
orchestrated by the Democratic Leadership Council.

Notorious for its discovery of Bill Clinton as a presidential candidate, the
DLC is still trying to be a political force. It paraded a handful of
governors, an assortment of senators and representatives and retired Gen.
Wesley Clark as possible additions to the nine dwarves already
running.....".

Ok, I actually like Wesley Clark. I would have no objection to voting for him if he were the nominee. However, I would like to say that the militaristic nature of the ad bothered me. Yes, I saw the other posts about how we sure had better be militaristic to please most of the people. I rather doubt that.

An example. Several of our Republican friends very much like Dean. They are moderates, just as we are moderate Democrats. They are tired of the warmongering as are we, and they think Dean would be tough when he needed to be.

I was told by a moderator to not let it bother me. Hey, it bothers me to see supporters of Dean do it, too. It is just wrong to be so negative about each others' candidates. I think it is wrong for supporters of Clark to bash Dean. And vice versa. It is tiring, and it makes a board with a lot of intelligent members look stupid.

[w13rd0]

1. Ok, I've got to point out one monumental stupidity there....

...in your citations. "(Referring to the DLC) Notorious for its discovery of Bill Clinton as a presidential candidate"...

I guess NewsMax forgot to hire fact (or reality) checkers. The DLC is a creation of Clintons and several other high-profile Democrats. And I take issue with the "of the Democrat persuasion"...what lengths these idiots will go to in avoiding the use of the word Democratic...

On Clark, it's possible he's DLC backed, but it's not relevant to me. If he'd like to jump into the race, he's welcome to. Any ties will be discovered and illuminated, I'm sure, and people will form opinions accordingly. I would find it astonishing that the DLC, after all its whining about how Democrats need to support the war, would endorse or advance the candidacy of someone who did not...

[madfloridian]

3. I take issue with all of the Newsmax article, I agree.

It is a few of the top guys in the DLC who act offensively toward those who don't suit their pattern.

I just feel that if the Dean bashing is to continue then we need to speak up and help to stop it.

If it takes pointing out that all are not perfect, so be it. This board is too special to many of us for it to turn into something that is a candidate's worst nightmare.

[tsipple]

2. Maybe and Maybe

To answer your two questions.

I agree that Clark is certainly more than welcome to enter the fray. If he does, I'll take a closer look. Unless and until then, well, I've got better things to do. :-)

[Avalux]

4. I'm a Clark supporter

and I've never once bashed Dean on this board. Everyone here is entitled to favor a candidate and a certain amount of infighting does occur, all sides are guilty. What I find particularly annoying are those who will bash a candidate without being well informed. Hard to take them seriously.
We must all remember that when the time comes, we're democrats and have to stick together.

Clark stated today he'll make a decision in the next couple of weeks. Whether or not the DNC will back him is anyone's guess. If he joins the race I think his impact will be positive for the party as a whole, whether or not he gets the nomination.

[MidwestTransplant]

5. A little off topic but:

this was posted by VolcanoJen in an earlier thread. I found it very interesting:

You'll have to click "next" to read the whole story. Esquire has it truncated into several pages.

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2003/030801_mfe_clark_7.html

Excerpt:

"In August 1995, the general—three stars, working as J-5 for the Joint Chiefs—went to Bosnia as part of the negotiating team Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had put together to end the civil war that had resulted in the massacre of as many as eight thousand Muslim men and boys at the town of Srebrenica the month before. In Belgrade, Clark had met for the first time Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who was sponsoring the Bosnian Serbs. Now the team had to travel to Sarajevo. Told that the airport in Sarajevo was too dangerous to fly into, the team decided to drive and asked Milosevic to guarantee its safety on a road held by Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic did not, and so the team wound up taking a fortified Humvee and an armored personnel carrier on a pitched, narrow, winding mountain road notoriously vulnerable to Serb machine-gun fire. Clark and Holbrooke went in the Humvee, the rest in the APC. In his book, the general describes what happened this way: "At the end of the first week we had a tragic accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo. (Three members of the team) were killed when the French armored personnel carrier in which they were riding broke through the shoulder of the road and tumbled several hundred meters down a steep hillside.

It is not until one reads Holbrooke's book, To End a War, that one finds out that after the APC went off the road, Clark grabbed a rope, anchored it to a tree stump, and rappelled down the mountainside after it, despite the gunfire that the explosion of the APC set off, despite the warnings that the mountainside was heavily mined, despite the rain and the mud, and despite Holbrooke yelling that he couldn't go. It is not until one brings the incident up to the general that one finds out that the burning APC had turned into a kiln, and that Clark stayed with it and aided in the extraction of the bodies; it is not until one meets Wesley Clark that one understands the degree to which he held Milosevic accountable."

[Gman]

6. Another Deanie Bopper sounds off

Their feelings get hurt so easily.

[madfloridian]

9. See what I mean? You just had to say Deanie Bopper.

Read my post. I did NOT insult your candidate, whoever that may be. You just insulted me.

I thought I made an intelligent unoffensive post. I think you just made my point for me about the bashing here.

[DrFunkenstein]

7. Clark Will Announce At The Same Time Kerry Declares

Supposedly Kerry is to declare his official candidacy around the 3rd. Labor day is the 1st. Hmmm...

[carpetbagger]

8. Probably and not officially.

Clark will probably announce his intentions sometime around Labor Day, but nothing's been said about Labor Day itself. He seems to have set that general time frame out in his statements over the last month or two. While the California recall might tempt anyone from rolling out their fall line of goods until October, I would hope he'd announce before then.

The DLC hasn't taken a stand. Whatever they're doing behind the scenes, I haven't seen any public face of it. As to what they're advocating, this is an article from the current Blueprint magazine:

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=251924&kaid=127&subid=900056

What I see them advocating here and in other recent articles is not so much leftist vs. centrist policies. Rather, they support running a campaign geared towards winning the votes of voters who are currently somewhere in the middle between the two parties. It's the old line about choosing what the fish wants for bait, not what the fisherman wants. They repeat Clinton's recent advice that it's "not rocket science", but rather a process of (1) reassuring voters you won't take away what they like about the current administration, (2) telling voters things about the administration that spoil their taste for it, and (3) telling them how they'll be happier with your administration than they will with Bush's.

I think it's still too early to say which candidates will follow that the closest.

[madfloridian]

10. Well, wouldn't it be nice to just not go after Dean?

There is no need to do so. If Clark declares, he and Dean will stand or fall on their own merits, hopefully. IF certain party members allow the people to have a voice.

I do disagree with their policy of reassuring voters you won't take away what they like about their own. Those folks will vote for their own anyway.

[DrFunkenstein]

13. Honestly, I Wonder If Dean Won't Go After Clark

I can't see Clark running a low-down, nasty campaign. I see him taking the high road. Dean's record is spotty from the beginning when it comes to keeping his eyes on the prize.

[madfloridian]

15. I am mostly talking about the folks here.

The candidates need to do what they need to do. I don't think a Democratic board should seek to hurt anyone's candidate.

[carpetbagger]

17. My post didn't have a damn thing to do with Howard Dean.

Someone asked whether the DLC supported Clark. I responded by saying that they don't formally, but here's what they've outlined as the strategy most likely to beat George Bush, under the assumption that they'd like candidates to use what they consider to be the proven way to take the White House (the strategy was from a recent meeting with Bill Clinton).

As to folks voting for their own, they will. However, I think Bush's "own" amount to about 35-40% of the electorate. A little bigger than our "own", but it leaves about 35% of the electorate up for grabs. These are people who generally answer that they do not disapprove of Bush's job performance, but at the same rate, they can be convinced. But they are, in general, people who think the choice between Bush and the democrats is a murky one, in part because they buy into the idea that democrats can't deliver on certain things as well as Bush. Ideally, we would be able to walk them through everything, but frankly, elections are decided by the people who don't pay a whole lot of attention to what's going on in the world, people for whom the choice of candidates is summed up by a few pictures that catch their eye, a few soundbites, one or two critical incidents (e.g. Bush I in the checkout line, Dukakis' death penalty answer), and a few preferences about personality. Those fish don't partiularly care for pizza, no matter how much we want to order out for pizza. Give 'em the worms.

[burr]

11. Finding candidates is not a problem.

At what point will loyal Democrats see that increasing an already overcrowded field of candidates may reduce our chances of defeating Shrub? In 2000 and 1992 the criticism was there was too little primary opposition, in 1992 many wanted Cuomo to run against Clinton and in 2000 Gephardt was being pushed to challenge Gore in the primaries.

However, this time around the problem is reversed. We have a broad selection of candidates pushing every variety of agenda, from Bushlite to Kucinich and Sharpton. But 9 candidates is more than enough, if anything..some of the candidates who do not have that clear rationale or vision underlying their campaign should drop out. This would allow our party to rally quickly behind a single frontrunner, which will be necessary to defeat a party that has little division within its ranks.

[sham]

12. well said...

I have been thinking this for a while but kept it to myself. Clark may join the race if he wishes -- I have not desire to stop him -- but I'm feeling a little troubled by the large number of candidates. It's only going to confuse the sheeple and make our party look pitifully divided. And I hate that we have to cater to the lowest common denominator, but that looks exactly like what we will have to do to win.

[burr]

14. Who said anything about catering to the lowest comman demoninator?

Any candidate who does this has already lost my vote...

[maggrwaggr]

16. Who thinks we REALLY have nine candidates?

We have two. Dean and Kerry.

Seriously. Flame me, but the others don't stand a chance.

If Clark wants to jump into that mix, I say more power to him. Because then we'll have three good electable candidates.

I'm picturing a Dean/Clark or a Clark/Dean ticket.

[burr]

18. How many of the debates have you seen?

The point is that every additional candidate means less time for each candidate in the debates, less press coverage of each candidate in the Democratic Primaries, and a greater probability that the candidates will appeal to the lowest comman dominator to attract votes and media attention.

Things haven't fallen to this level yet, but as another poster indicated...the harder it becomes for the candidates to set themselves apart from the crowd the more likely it is that such reckless tactics will be used. Huey Long used them in the 30's, Wallace tried to break out of a crowded field using these tactics in the 72' primaries. We need to focus more time and thought on the records and agenda of the current candidates, rather than attempting to bring even more such candidates into this race.

No matter how many candidates are brought in, every one will have flaws and assets. But in an overcrowded primary, more candidates will bring in more problems than solutions.

[DrFunkenstein]

19. Kerry and Dean

An article in the Washington Post just said that Edwards is fading, and will try a last ditch attempt before returning to save his Congressional seat.

Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley Braun are dead in the water. Its a matter of time before they stop getting invitations.

That leaves Gephardt and Lieberman, whom I honestly can't see going all the way. I see maybe Gephardt clutching the labor votes before going into the dustbin of history. Lieberman has enormous negatives in the polls. People can't stand him and all he represents.

I almost forgot Graham, which tells you something. I think that Graham will go to Dean or Kerry, and Clark will go to the other. Both are excellent choices.

[burr]

20. Pundits are usually wrong...

What these pundits fail to predict is the unforeseeable. At the early stages of the 88 campaign Gary Hart was expected to be the Democratic frontrunner, with Joe Biden being the most sucessful at raising money. Mike Dukakis was seen early on as regional candidate with little name recognition, they did not consider who would be the frontrunners if Gary Hart was no longer a viable candidate, and Jesse Jackson was certainly not expected to be the top challenger to the Democratic frontrunner.

My feeling is that Kucinich and Sharpton, like Brown and Jackson, are in this primary race to the very end.

Dean and Kerry are both realists, and when the one of them edges the other out...the candidate who is losing will probably drop out shortly after the New Hampshire primary.

Gephardt, with the support of the unions and other blue collar Democrats, is likely to pose the greatest challenge to either Dean or Kerry. In summary, we will more likely see a Gephardt/Dean or a Gephardt/Kerry contest than a Dean/Kerry contest.

I hope you are right about Edwards, the last thing we need is to lose another Senate seat in the south. I think Lieberman will also drop out after he loses his first few primaries.

[tameszu]

21. So bascially you think there are 3, not 2, real candidates

Maybe 3.5 if you count Edwards?

Seriously, I can't see Gephardt being a real contender. He may be a decent guy, but his rather lackluster House leadership, his willingness to compromise on key issues (e.g. Iraq), and his relative lack of charisma inspire very little enthusiasm in the base, and yet he his close association with traditional labor and protectionism makes him a very easy target for the liberal label. He can hold out for awhile, but it will ultimately be futile.

Until Edwards shows proof of life, he is not a real candidate either. He has money, but he doesn't break 3% in either national polls or any of the key early primary states. He does well in SC. That's about it. He had promise, but obviously has problems with mobilizing.

If my arguments go through, then, as Funk and maggr pointed out, there are 2 significant candidates. The field is hardly cluttered. And there is more than enough time to have a significant primary contest and still reload for Bush. The election is still 15 months away (aka enough time for California to elect a governor, recall whomever's elected, elect another one, and start another recall process).

[burr]

23. They are all real candidates...

but some have given the primary voters more reason to support them than others.

The problem is, IMHO there are too many candidates, many of whom have not presented voters with clear reasons for why they would govern in a more competent manner than their opponents.

Finally the problem in this race is that there are nine candidates, not two, three, or five. This overcrowding, as I stated earlier, is not an asset when we have numerous candidates running on personality qualities alone or an agenda nearly identical to one or two of their primary opponents.

[DrFunkenstein]

24. Kucinich and Sharpton May Stop Getting Invitations

People are getting really annoyed with the crowded field. If you watch C-Span's "The Road To The White House" you hear alot of that from citizens being interviewed.

Personally, I agree. I would like to see substantial debates between 2 or 3 candidates, not 1 minute sound-bites with no follow up.

And Kucinich will not stay, because his seat is up for grabs.

[burr]

25. What invitations?

Kucinich is the Jerry Brown of this race, regardless of how many votes he gets or how little money he raises he feels he has the least to lose in this race.

Personally I am happy to have more candidates running than two or three, somewhere between five and seven candidates would be ideal. I was not satisfied with the choices in 2000 of Bradley and Gore, a northern moderate and a southern moderate. I just think that our primary candidates need to have a clearly thought out agenda before jumping into the race.

[quinnox]

22. I think it will come down

to either Kerry or Dean against one of these three; Gephardt, Lieberman, or Edwards. The Kerry/Dean contest will go farther than New Hampshire in my opinion, it will be resolved probably in February. Then it depends if Lieberman can stake out the moderate support, or if Edwards can catch fire in the southern primaries. Barring this, it will probably be Gephardt vs. Kerry (yes, I have a bias for Kerry, but I do think he will end up beating the Dean challenge) for the final. Of course this is purely speculation, in no way am I suggesting another outcome couldn't happen, like a Graham winning the whole thing, only what I am predicting at this early stage.