Is Dodd the Only Candidate Without a Downside?
I'm getting calls from campaigns and anonymous surveys here in Iowa with the caucuses only six weeks away. In the last two days, I've had three calls requesting me to note my top choice and second choice among the Democratic Presidential candidates. I'm still nominally hanging onto John Edwards as a top choice, but am at this point confessing my backup choice is a guy who unfortunately has zero chance of winning.....Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd.
Chris Dodd is as sharp as a tack and, in all honesty, should be the Senate Majority Leader right now. I was impressed with him going back to 1996 when he was the head of the Democratic National Committee and kicking Haley Barbour's ass every Sunday morning on the debate shows before the 1996 election. I even had the opportunity to play Dodd in my college political science class 10 years ago when we had a mock Senate session. It's too bad Dodd wasn't in the race four years ago where he would've had a better chance to elevate into the top tier. 2008 is simply not his year.
My question is this....does Dodd have a downside I don't know about? I've yet to see it if he does....aside from the possibility of being demagogued as a "northeastern liberal". Every other candidate has one or more vulnerabilities:
* Hillary Clinton will be a cinch to label a "flip-flopper", has to fight the headwinds of those who want to avoid a political "dynasty", is already feverishly despised by tens of millions of Americans (and not all of whom are Republicans), and who faces an electorate of which 50% refuses to vote for her.
* Barack Obama will have to pitch the political equivalent of a perfect game to avoid being clubbed over the head for his inexperience, and I've yet see evidence that he's capable of a running a flawless general election campaign for nine months.
* John Edwards has flip-flopping issues of his own to contend with, an impaired image after the revelation that his personal lifestyle conflicts with his campaign rhetoric, and may have moved too far to the left to win a national election.
* Bill Richardson is not exactly an electrifying speaker and would probably be slaughtered in a general election for his support of an immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq.
* Joe Biden looks great on paper and is not too conservative for me the way he is to so many Kossack lefties, but it's a guarantee that his mouth would get him in trouble in a general election campaign. On the gaffe-prone self-aggrandizement front, Biden is Al Gore times ten.
* And Dennis Kucinich is, well, Dennis Kucinich.
Then there's Dodd, a guy who I really wish would catch on but almost assuredly won't. I don't see anything that would prevent the Democrats from capturing the White House if Dodd was the nominee, although I'm sure more than two decades in the Senate means he has a long resume that most likely includes some bullet points with the potential of hanging him. Still, he doesn't appear to have the evident blemishes that the others have. As far as I'm concerned, Chris Dodd is the "electability" candidate of 2008, even though nobody else appears to see it.
Chris Dodd is as sharp as a tack and, in all honesty, should be the Senate Majority Leader right now. I was impressed with him going back to 1996 when he was the head of the Democratic National Committee and kicking Haley Barbour's ass every Sunday morning on the debate shows before the 1996 election. I even had the opportunity to play Dodd in my college political science class 10 years ago when we had a mock Senate session. It's too bad Dodd wasn't in the race four years ago where he would've had a better chance to elevate into the top tier. 2008 is simply not his year.
My question is this....does Dodd have a downside I don't know about? I've yet to see it if he does....aside from the possibility of being demagogued as a "northeastern liberal". Every other candidate has one or more vulnerabilities:
* Hillary Clinton will be a cinch to label a "flip-flopper", has to fight the headwinds of those who want to avoid a political "dynasty", is already feverishly despised by tens of millions of Americans (and not all of whom are Republicans), and who faces an electorate of which 50% refuses to vote for her.
* Barack Obama will have to pitch the political equivalent of a perfect game to avoid being clubbed over the head for his inexperience, and I've yet see evidence that he's capable of a running a flawless general election campaign for nine months.
* John Edwards has flip-flopping issues of his own to contend with, an impaired image after the revelation that his personal lifestyle conflicts with his campaign rhetoric, and may have moved too far to the left to win a national election.
* Bill Richardson is not exactly an electrifying speaker and would probably be slaughtered in a general election for his support of an immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq.
* Joe Biden looks great on paper and is not too conservative for me the way he is to so many Kossack lefties, but it's a guarantee that his mouth would get him in trouble in a general election campaign. On the gaffe-prone self-aggrandizement front, Biden is Al Gore times ten.
* And Dennis Kucinich is, well, Dennis Kucinich.
Then there's Dodd, a guy who I really wish would catch on but almost assuredly won't. I don't see anything that would prevent the Democrats from capturing the White House if Dodd was the nominee, although I'm sure more than two decades in the Senate means he has a long resume that most likely includes some bullet points with the potential of hanging him. Still, he doesn't appear to have the evident blemishes that the others have. As far as I'm concerned, Chris Dodd is the "electability" candidate of 2008, even though nobody else appears to see it.
posted by Mark at 1:06 PM
2 Comments:
You're damn right that Dodd should be Senate Majority leader. He would run circles around Mitch McConnell, unlike Harry Reid.
I wish Dodd was chosen as Majority Leader also.
And I found an editorial by Paul Krugman, one of my favorite journalists, who wrote about Republicans and race. Something interesting to note here is that non-Southern white men's voting patterns in 2004 were virtually unchanged from 1952. In both years, 40% of non-Southern white men voted Democratic. So the real devastation the Dems had with white men voters was in the South, a backlash from the civil rights movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/opinion/19krugman.html?ref=opinion
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