Chris Dodd officially is no longer my favorite candidate running...

[Mass]

Obama according to MSNBC is running and will file his papers later next week.

John, of course, will be my favorite candidate running as soon as he declares.

[ginnyinWI]

1. here's the list published in my local paper Sunday:

Dems officially in the race:
Edwards
Dodd
Vilsack
Kucinich

Potential Dem candidates:
Biden
Clark
Hillary Clinton
Gore
Kerry
Obama
Richardson

Repubs with exploratory ctme's:
Brownback
Gov. Jim Gilmore
Giuliani
McCain
Romney
Tommy Thompson

Potential Repub candidates:
Bloomberg
Gingrich
Hagel
Huckabee
Duncan Hunter
Frank Keating
Pataki



anyone else to add to the list?

[babylonsister]

19. Where have I been? I didn't even know Bloomberg was considering it. nt

[Mass]

2. Seems that Chris Dodd is going to stay a little bit longer.

I cannot find confirmation of that announcement.

[TayTay]

3. I don't care for Obama.

It's funny, I don't care for any of the current top three. I think Hillary Clinton is in it for herself and the money, I think John Edwards is a snake-oil salesman who will do or say anything to get elected and I think Obama is not ready to be President of the United States and I think he would be a disaster for the country right now. (He is too inexperienced.)

Of the ones who have announced, I would take Dodd. He has the experience to actually run the country and he is not totally in the tank to Big Money, just somewhat in for Big Insurance.

What a sucky field so far.

[wisteria]

4. Tay, I agree with you, your assessment of the candidates are almost identical to mine.

Not that I am wise or anything, just observations a little research and intuition. The field is sucky so far. That is why I think it would be easier this time out for Sen. Kerry. He took on a war time incumbent President last time out, with the full force of the Rove machine and much of the media working against him.
What would he face this time, Hillary's hench men. I have to wonder if they are as unscrupulous and good as Rove is at manipulating the message and dirty smears. Most of them have been out to pasture for over eight years now.

[whometense]

5. Yeah ditto here too.

I feel exactly the same way.

[karynnj]

8. Me too - Amazing that we all agree

:) :) :)

[ginnyinWI]

20. Well, let's just face it...

Us Kerrycrats are spoiled rotten. After Kerry, everyone else pales in comparison.

Run, John, Run!

[Inuca]

33. Me three, or four, or..

... five, I lost count :-). It's Dodd among the announced or almost announced ones. Obama.... I cannot stop having an instinctive "I like him" reaction, that undefinable quality I already referred to in some other post, but that is maybe just in my perception... but rationally, I do not think he is right nor ripe for now.

[beachmom]

6. Well, there ARE a lot of insurance companies in Conn.

I worked for one there once -- God, was that hell!! So, although we can judge Dodd on this, on the other hand, he needs to take care of his state. If the insurance companies were hurt and laid off a lot of people or left the state, it would be a big disaster for the Hartford area. Not sure how you balance it out, however. Biden caught hell for the Bankruptcy bill, but how many jobs in Delaware are in the credit card business? I don't know enough to definitively answer these questions. I'm just wondering what a senator does in these cases.

[whometense]

7. Gore is officially OUT

http://today.reuters.com/tv/videoChannel.aspx?storyid=42e6e16439492e529e13ef0f9e5165277761a7e1&src=011507_1304_ARTICLE_PROMO_also_on_reuters

Jan. 15 -Al Gore says that he will not run in the 2008 election, saying he was involved in "a different kind of campaign."

Al Gore, who is currently in Japan promoting his award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", spoke with journalists in Tokyo, saying, "The U.S. should be leading the world toward a solution for this climate crisis instead of leading in the other direction."

The United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, which mandates cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the 2008-2012 period, saying the agreement would be harmful to the U.S. economy.

As host of the 1997 talks that forged the protocol, the Japanese government has urged major polluters, including the United States, China and India, to work harder to combat climate change, most recently during a visit by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Europe last week.

The documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" was inspired by a series of multi-media presentations about climate change that Mr. Gore regularly delivers to audiences around the world.

[beachmom]

9. The video accompanying it doesn't show him saying it though

That's strange. I guess I want to make sure this is definitely an exact quote: "I will not run in 2008", as opposed to "I have no plans to run in 2008". What's the chatter?

Edit: this is not on du -- are you going to put it in LBN?

[whometense]

11. Weird - just did

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2689865

My blog partner found the article. http://toughenough.org/2007/01/no-gore-in-08.html

[beachmom]

14. I just did a diary. The Kossaks are skeptical. I hope they don't

start flaming me. This is Reuters after all. It seemed very definitive, but I guess not 100%.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/15/153615/615#c33

[beachmom]

15. Yep -- I'm getting flamed. The diary is a big time "low"

Should I delete it?

[whometense]

18. I don't know -

the story is from Reuters, after all, badly sourced or not. It's not like you picked it up off a blog somewhere.

[beachmom]

25. I changed the title to "Reuters says . . . "

People are getting downright nasty there. I'm sorry, that was a very definitive headline -- how do THEY know it's wrong. I thought Reuters has done some really good reporting from Baghdad that nobody seems to mind excerpting and writing diaries about.

Still, my nerves won't take this for much longer. People should just unrecommend. I certainly didn't mean to get on the Rec List. I just thought this was significant news.

I may delete -- I actually wish Markos would weigh in. He says something negative, it's gone.

[TayTay]

21. Don't delete it.

You are saying what Reuters reported. You did nothing wrong here.

[beachmom]

31. I'm not going to delete it, but I'm not going back there.

These people are insufferable, and frankly, I believe Reuters. I think they got it right, and Al isn't running. I guess when the primaries are over and someone else is the nominee, they'll finally, finally believe it.

I think Kerry should run, and lobby hard for Al's endorsement.

[beachmom]

41. McJoan on dKos frontpaged this and then got shouted down, too

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/15/204332/123

Also, Raw Story put it up, too. Then took it down at 11:15 PM.

Then everyone backed off. So I guess I wasn't the only one who ran with the story only to get insulted and the story questioned (Whometense, too here). Reuters does need to answer to this, because it was a definitive headline.

[Mass]

24. No - Gore has said again and again he will not run.

Sorry if they do not believe it, but it is not your fault.

[whometense]

16. My one mention

of JK on the DU thread was laughed at.

I hate those assholes.

[Island Blue]

28. I saw that whome.

I hope that if JK does decide to run, Gore will endorse him early and often as being the only candidate with the environmental credentials to begin to fix that part of the mess we're currently in. (Goodness knows there are other parts to the mess, and I think JK has the credentials to begin to fix many of those as well.)

[karynnj]

38. You can already make the case

that when he said Kerry had the best environmantal record in the Senate that he beats Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards. I think he beats Kuchinich and I never heard of this being an Obama issue.

[whometense]

39. I was thinking that

same thing.

That would teach them.

[karynnj]

35. That's always been the case

They have taken every Gore statement that a non-involved bystander would take as "no" to mean "maybe" which they then elevate amost to "yes".

This does increase the possibility of an opening for Kerry, unless Dodd or Biden take fire. Now, Biden has tried to do this for over a year - and his numbers haven't gone up. He had/has support in the WP and there was a why not Biden article in Time of Newsweek last year - which is more than Kerry got in 2003 or this time - and no one is biting. I like what little I know of Dodd, but seriously never thought he was interesting as we watched the SFRC.

I agree with Tay's analysis up thread - the frontrunners are a weak field. When I realize that all of us pick the largely unknown, untried Obama - it says something. He is interesting, but 2 years ago until Ryan's life caught up to him he was not a shooin for Senator. He really has even had a tough state race.

I am amazed that Edwards obviously has come to the conclusion that appearing "too nice" is a loser. He didn't lose 2004 to Kerry because he was too nice - that was his biggest asset. He is not sufficiently well known for people not to change their opinions.

[Mass]

23. Gore has said again and again he will not run.

Two categories of people have pushed the idea Gore would run and used what he was saying to keep hope alive:

- Gore's supporters, and we can understand them because they believe in him,

- Pundits and reporters who are refusing to drop a story line, and these people should be ashamed of themselves. Both Al and Tipper Gore have said he will not run. How many times will they have to say that again and again before it syncs in.

[politicasista]

10. Looks like Obama was a hit at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition breakfast

Despite that article that Jesse and others wouldn't endorse him.

In Chicago, Sen. Barack Obama, also prominently mentioned in speculation about the White House sweepstakes in 2008, was a hit at a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition breakfast honoring King, even if he didn't deliver what much of the crowd clearly wanted: a declaration that he will run for president.

Obama received a standing ovation at the annual King scholarship breakfast when the Rev. Jesse Jackson introduced him with an approving reference to the Illinois Democrat's presidential aspirations.

"It's a long, nonstop line between the march in Selma in 1965 and the inauguration in Washington in 2009," said Jackson, the coalition's founder and a one-time presidential candidate himself.

Later, in an address at a King remembrance service at St. Mark's Church in suburban Harvey, Obama said: "I'm not making news today. I'm not here to make news. There will be a time for that."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16637019/

[wisteria]

12. Very nice that he was received so warmly and so enthusiastically. n/t

[politicasista]

13. Yes it is n/t

[TayTay]

17. It's difficult with Sen. Obama

He is obviously talented. He is obviously smart and thinks on his feet and has a very bright future. I certainly like him and think he is future Presidential material. But I just don't think he is ready right now. In retrospect, I don't think Bill Clinton was ready to be President when he was elected to the Presidency at the tender age of 46 back in 1992. His inexperience took a promising candidate who was obviously talented and put him down the path of political least resistance.

Clinton ran on a platform of Putting People First, which was a populist platform that promised to take the concerns of the poor and the middle class and make those the center piece of his agenda. He promised to make a health care bill a major component of his legislative agenda. He had a Democratic House and Democratic Senate in 1993. Yet, six months into his term, he abandoned all that. He listened to the centrists and the Wall St. Democrats and he spent all his political capital on a bill to begin to balance the budget. It was badly managed and it allowed the Republicans to completely paint the Democrats as the party of tax and spend. (Anyone else remember watching the House vote on this? That bill passed by, I think, 1 vote. The Republicans brought in charts that showed how many people in each Congressional district would have a tax increase. Each vulnerable Democrat who voted for that bill was surrounded by Repubs who yelled , 'bye bye' at them as they voted. It was awful.)

Clinton had no clue how to govern in those first few years. None. He was rolled on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He was rolled by fake investigations into White House Travel arrangements, appointments and so forth. He screwed Congressional Democrats because he thought he could come in as an outsider and just make law by will without respect to how Congress works. That Administration was a huge, huge disappointment. The repubs scored those huge victories in the midterms in '94 and Clinton could do little more than play defense for the rest of his time in the White House. He settled for being a Republican-lite with his welfare reform endorsement, his sponsorship of the Defense of Marriage Act and so forth. In 1996, he just flat-out went for the money in his re-election and just didn't care where it came from. (Remember Al Gore going to a Buddhist Temple to be Clinton's bag-man for funny money contributed to that campaign. Remember having to hold your nose and smile and say, yeah, he's an arsehole, but, dammit, sigh, he's our arsehole. What a friggin nightmare.) I don't even want to get into the extreme arrogance and lack of internal discipline that led to the awful nightmare of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. That was an outright betrayal of everyone who ever held a sign for Clinton and a slap in the face to the Democratic Party. That was one immature guy who put himself above all else.

I fear that Sen. Obama simply does not have the experience yet to know how to govern at that level. I think a run for the White House at this time is very, very ill-advised. There are people who say, well he has to run now, he's hot right now and that might fade. I cannot think of a worse reason for running for the White House than to say, well, the time is right for me, personally to run, and it might not be right later. Excuse me? It's supposed to be right for the country, not for one person. You can't run for President because, well, I'm hot right now. I have not heard anything from Sen. Obama yet that indicates that he has the maturity to govern and the knowledge and experience to govern well in these exceptionally troubled times. I wish he would wait. It is really not yet his time.

That is my problem with Sen. Obama. I don't dislike him. I just can't think of any reasons to vote for him right now and I can think of a lot of reasons not to vote for him right now.

[wisteria]

22. My feelings exactly. I don't think we need just a personality in the White House

we need someone really, really, ready to govern. Our country can't afford a learning curve candidate right now. Besides that, he really has never even faced a tough campaign.

[Mass]

26. Obviously I agree, but I do not really find somebody better except Kerry.

and he can take a VP who is ready to govern.

Obviously, we cannot afford a learning curve candidate, but we cannot either afford a candidate with a huge ego (with a given that everybody who runs for president has a big ego, but Obama strikes me as being one of those with the least ego and more will to listen to people).

[wisteria]

30. Agree. I would be very happy with a Kerry/Obama ticket. I think they

compliment each other and bring experience, hope and class to the White House. Obama would then have the time needed to learn from a wonderful teacher.

[politicasista]

27. There were members of the Congressional Black Caucus that defended Clinton

and stood by his side despite his misconduct and impeachment. How many of them defended Kerry from the Swifty liars or the "botched" joke? :shrug:


I agree with your post on Obama (and Clinton). Tavis Smiley was pushing him on November 4, 2004. He is probably thinking that it may be now or never and now is the time, though I (and fellow blog friends) wish he would get some experience, but there are fellow DC Democrats and press members that like him.

[TayTay]

29. I like him too! He is immensely talented.

But he just isn't ready. I hve listened carefully to him talk about Iraq and he is starting to sound like a parody of himself. He says we don't need to investigate how the war started because that is partisanship. Excuse me? The biggest foreign policy disaster in this nation's history and we should just let bygones be bygones? I want a core of bipartisanship on some issues, but it's crazy to ask for it in terms of life and death and war and peace. We were lied to. I don't happen to think that is something you just sweep under rug because it's unpleasant to deal with and might upset people.

This is not someone who is ready to be President. He well might be in a few years. He might make a very, very good Vice President. But, I would have to see some very, very strong sign that he is an independent thinker who has wised up considerably about the core issues of how America works and how it doesn't work before I would vote for him in '08.

[politicasista]

32. I don't disagree with you there

He shows his inexperience when he says that there shouldn't be an investigation into the Iraq war. I am with you that he would make a good VP. (Maybe Kerry/Obama :)). He has two small daughters and I would hate to see him and his family be visciously smeared by the corporate media. Hope he knows what he is getting himself into.

[TayTay]

34. I know you are not arguing with me.

I feel bad about Sen. Obama in some ways. I really wish he would not run. He is not ready. I think some of the good people you have cited as not being onboard with an Obama run know that too.

I have also worried that his kids are too young not to be damaged by an ill-advised run for the Presidency right now. The meat grinder is hard enough for adults to get through. His kids are awfully young and there is no way they would have the maturity to handle the ugliness that comes to every candidate who runs for this office. Sigh!

[politicasista]

40. It's all good

I agree with you 100%. I like Obama. I wish he would think about the smearing that comes with running for high office, but it's the powers that be in DC that are telling him his time is now, not 2012 or 2016.

:hi:

[sandnsea]

37. He's not Hillary

Putting Kerry aside for the moment, what are we left with?

Dodd? He MIGHT catch fire, but I think that's as wild a shot as Biden catching fire. I like Chris Dodd, but I just don't think he's going to sell in the midwest. JK always had a more compelling story that was never really told correctly. Maybe Dodd has something that people can grab on to, identify with, I just haven't heard it yet. Sorry to say, I don't know that America has ever elected somebody just because they were smart. Bush had his Jesus saved bad boy who was happy on a pile of dirt in Texas schtick. That's what people identified with. What's Dodd got?

Edwards has a story that people grab on to, but well, I think we all see the problems with an Edwards run. While Hillary may have some of the meat Edwards lacks, well it's dang near rotten meat.

So that takes us to Obama. He's got the compelling story, including a spiritual transformation aspect. He does have a little depth to his thought. I did like what he had to say about the war in 2002. He was one of the few who I ever saw mention the names Wolfowitz and Perle. I like that he was caring enough to get an HIV test in Africa, it's a little thing, but it could save tens of thousands of lives. I haven't seen anybody else understand the power of their presence that way. I think he has a long way to go and would most likely be better in a few years. But what if Hillary does win? Then what? How many times is he going to have to choose between principle and Dem Party politics? You're asking him to put possibly ten more years of votes on record, to be torn apart with. I can understand his hesitancy in doing that. I think he has a good moral compass so far, and if that can be proven with a consistency in his work and his Illinois record, then I think that's as good as anybody else in the field. He and Kerry are the only two with the complete package in that regard. I don't know that ten more years of time in the Senate is going to make Obama anything but ten years older, and maybe ten years more cynical which would be a tragedy. This may be his best chance, and if JK doesn't run, it may be our best hope too.

[Inuca]

36. I am glad he did not announce today

that would have been a rather cheap shot.

[demdiva]

42. THNX. One of my friends was trying to convince me yesterday

that Obama isn't garnering supporting from black community leaders. PUHLEASE