The Battle of 2008

[demnan]

We have to face some facts. We are in for a war in this next election. Whoever we pick to be the candidate will face an unbearable beating from the right-wing attack machine. Rove is not "spending more time with his family". I would bet he is formulating strategy for the nastiest campaign ever waged for President. Bush knows this, which is why he's confident of a Republican victory. After amassing all that power for the executive branch, I can't see the Republicans giving up the Presidency easily. We all know that they won't fight fair, so let's try and second guess what they might do with any of our top candidates.

A littler qualifier. I'm a Kucinich supporter, but I'm just going to talk about the top three who have a chance to win. Among the three of them, I don't have strong feelings against or for - I have little reasons for preferring one or another for campaign strategy.

First of all, Republican strategy will differ based on their choice of candidate. At present I see Mitt Romney as the old style pro-business Republican from the Northeast and Mike Hucklebee as the new style Evangelical candidate from the south. If Mitt Romney wins the nomination I believe it will be better for us. Yes, he's a Mormon, but he doesn't have that gleam in his eye. I'll bet he even believes in evolution. We don't have to worry as much that he will energize the evangelical vote of the south. They know he's not one of them. He was Governor of Massachusetts, for Christ's sake.

If Romney wins their nomination then we can frame our argument as rich vs. poor. If Romney wins, the campaign might not get as nasty. Any one of our three top tier would do well. Edwards could talk about poverty not being good business. He could talk about the difference between Massachusetts and the rest of the country and how Romney's business strategies won't work in other areas of the country (get the Western and Southern vote energized). Edwards may be rich, but he knows a lot about poverty. He ran a center down in North Carolina for the past few years and has made poverty the lynch-pin of his candidacy. As the economy becomes more depressed, Edwards sounds better.

Clinton also works well going against Romney. While he has state experience, she has national experience. Everybody remembers how good the Clintons were at the economy. Romney is just a white guy. Clinton will relate to blacks and women better.

Obama will work better because he sounds more visionary than Romney. He can tap into some of that black southern religious vote he seems to be working for in South Carolina as well in other southern states.

So while Romney will get nasty there is only so far he can go. He's limited by his supporters - those northern white rich guys - and he won't want to frighten them too much. Sure he would try to insinuate that Edwards is a "nancy boy" going to the hairdresser all the time. He'll elude to Obama's drug use, and he will cash in with remarks about Hillary being a ball buster, but when it's all said and done, he's still a rich guy with illegal workers doing his lawn. That may be the main thing to undo a guy like Romney.

My greatest fear is that Hucklebee will win the nomination because against the most likely candidate, Clinton, he will have the ability to unleash the gates of hell. If you've read Conason and Lyon's book, "the Hunting of the President", then you know what I'm talking about. A Clinton vs. Hucklebee race will be an Arkansas smear fest - and there are still guys hanging around down there who made a minor fortune smearing the Clintons. So you'll have the supposed murders, the supposed drug dealing, and every woman who ever got winked at by Bill (probably the whole state, the guy's just a natural flirt) up there talking the dirt. It will be the dirtiest, nastiest redneck fest that was ever created. Hucklebee isn't above that because that's how his kind is. Sure they portray themselves as Christian, but the low-down evangelical southerners are the biggest scrappers there are and I'm very afraid the Clintons won't be able to pull out the miracle this time. And I don't want this kind of race.

Hucklebee would be really nasty against Edwards too. Watch that race to focus on some homosexual inneundos as well as fidelity problems imagined more than real. Against Obama that "Obama is a Muslim" will be pushpolled to the max in every state that voted red the last time and some of the other ones too. They will be shoving that one so far down America's throat that by the time October rolls around Obama would think he was Muslim too. Then they will bring out the race card and that will be it.

So that's my take on it. Pray it isn't Hucklebee, because they are praying it will be.

[T Wolf]

1. Any puke is going to run a nasty campaign - that is what they do. My only

hope is that the Democratic nominee runs as tough a campaign as the enemy. If the Dem tries to go "high road", they will get their ass handed to them.

I don't think that the individuals involved will impact the nature of the campaign that much. The puke will have god and the pentagon on their side and the Dem will try to bring America together. We have heard that shit before and we know how it ends.

Progressive/liberal Dems will be thrown under the bus with a "you better vote for the lesser of two evils" warning and the party will rush even further to the right.

Just once, wouldn't it be nice to see an unabashed liberal run as a liberal? What is needed (IMO) is a strong progressive who runs an aggressive campaign, taking the methodology of the right wing and turning it on them. Trying to explain to the American public the details of why liberalism produces better results always gets lost in the verbiage that is just too complicated to counter the bumper sticker slogans of the GOP. Granted, it is tougher to get any progressive message across through the filter of the corporate media that is especially suited to deliver the simpler (repuke) line of bullshit.

But, it must be done and it will take a focused, aggressive, taking-no-prisoners approach and candidate to succeed.

That is what I asked Santa for. And I have been good this year. So, just maybe....

[demnan]

2. Yeah you just stated the reasons

why I'm for Kucinich. Thanks for your comments. :hi:

[T Wolf]

3. While I like DK's position on issues much more than any of the others, I also

fear he is too nice and would object to using the tactics that I think are necessary to win.

In a better (forget about perfect) world, his approach could be successful. But in the reality of the kill-or-be-killed politics of today, he would get chewed up by the media and the repugs.

He suffers from the weakness all Dems have - believing that if you articulate a winning argument for your position, the public will be swayed.

Unfortunately, we know that it does not happen that way.