Could Clark be going to enter the race only to help Dean?

[KaraokeKarlton]

This possibility just dawned on me. Dean's comments about Clark when asked if he would consider Clark as a running mate sounded almost like it was a done deal. I'm wondering if there's any chance that Clark is going to enter late just to split up the support for the other candidates. Dean's supporters are fiercely loyal and will not switch candidates under any circumstances. Dean's support is solid. However, I think Clark would take a lot of Kerry's supporters away from him. Most of Kerry's supporters seem to place a very high value on his military experience as a reason for supporting him. Clark trumps him on that issue. Does anyone else think it's possible that Dean and Clark have made a deal already? Why else would Clark wait to say if he's running or not? Could it be because he's waiting to see if Dean needs him to neutralize Kerry? Or maybe announce around the time of Kerry's announcement to steal the spotlight? I think that if Clark enters the race that Kerry is going to lose a lot of his supporters and will have to drop out. The same is true of most others. I think it's possible that Clark will run and stay in until him and Dean have forced just about everyone else out and then Clark will drop out, endorse Dean and Dean will, in turn, make Clark his running mate. This would be an absolutely brilliant (and admittedly devious) strategy to prevent the DLC from hand picking the candidate.

[MoonGod]

1. I'll play...

... Maybe they've just struck a best-man-wins deal where the "loser" gets to be running mate. In other words, maybe they're aiming at either Dean-Clark or Clark-Dean... whoever wins.

[dean4america]

2. anything is possible

now, is it probable? hell, it's politics, who knows.

but, i had the same thought you did after I saw the results of the DraftClark Zogby poll. Some of that was bad polling modeling, but when the candidates were named, Dean was at like 16 (leading) and Kerry was at 9 and Clark at 5. Gephardt was mostly unchanged at 10%. So, it could be that Clark knows that, if he can't unseat Dean, he is definitely setting himself up to be the VP since he may be able to knock out Kerry.

Will be interesting to see whatever he announces next week.

[Tinoire]

3. an absolutely brilliant strategy to prevent the DLC from hand picking ?

Are you kidding me?

Danny Wallace, the AEI/PNAC media guy, is one of the top 4 in the Draft Clark campaign.

On top of that

------------------

Does Wesley Clark have an imaginary friend? The retired NATO commander and possible Democratic presidential candidate has been muttering darkly for several months that opportunists in the White House seized September 11 as a pretext to take out Saddam Hussein. Clark maintains that he received a call at home the afternoon of September 11, 2001, urging him to say on CNN that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were connected to Iraq. But Clark has now provided three versions of this story, and they don't add up.

Version One: On "Meet the Press" on June 15 of this year, Clark asserted that intelligence about the Iraqi threat had been hyped. "Hyped by whom?" asked moderator Tim Russert.

CLARK: "I think it was an effort to convince the American people to do something, and I think there was an immediate determination right after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein was one of the keys to winning the war on terror. Whether it was the need just to strike out or whether he was a linchpin in this, there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You've got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had--Middle East think tanks and people like this, and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and didn't talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection."

That was an astonishing accusation of corruption in the White House, and unsurprisingly it caught the eye of several astute observers. Sean Hannity followed up two weeks later on Fox's "Hannity and Colmes": Referring to the Russert transcript above, Hannity said of the call, "I think you owe it to the American people to tell us who."

Version Two: Clark replied, "It came from many different sources, Sean."

HANNITY: "Who? Who?"

CLARK : "And I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information. He called me on 9/11."

HANNITY: "That's not the answer. Who in the White House?"

CLARK: "I'm not going to go into those sources."

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman also understood that Clark was playing with live political ammunition, and he wrote a July 15 column attacking the White House and headlined, "Pattern of Corruption."

"Gen. Wesley Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from 'people around the White House' urging him to link that assault to Saddam Hussein," wrote Krugman.

Last week, rather belatedly, the New York Times published a July 18 letter from Clark purporting to "correct" the record.

<snip>

read the rest and start googling. You might want to start with the DU archives themselves where there's plenty about the PNAC/AEI/DLC relationship - wit the DLC being the angel of the entire rotten group.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/002zlaay.asp