Here is my first attempt in some time to inject new blood into Tilted Politics.
The 2008 political season is still so far away that all predictions must be taken with an unusually large grain of salt. Nonetheless, I find it interesting to predict the political future to the greatest extent possible. Here are what I believe are the big unknowns that will shape the race, as well as my predicted answers:
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY:
1. The major question here is, of course, who will be the "Anti-Hillary?" Everybody knows who the perceived frontrunner is (Hillary) and everyone knows that the primary will ultimately develop into a two-horse race between the pro-Hillary faction and the anti-Hillary faction. Michael Moore recently had some choice words for Hillary about how she should expect to be thrown under the bus like Lieberman was, so it appears that the progressives will be searching for another candidate. Because so few Senators voted against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq, most of them are not viable alternatives for the progressive movement. I predict they will reach out to a popular Democratic governor who is not dogged by early support for the invasion of Iraq. My money is on Mark Warner, governor of the red state of Virginia. The folks at
http://www.draftmarkwarner.com/ seem to think he has the stuff.
2. If the anti-Hillary wins, will he (yes, I said "he") be able to walk the narrow line between red-state winner and peace advocate? In order to get through the primary, anti-Hillary is going to need to vocally criticize Hillary's pro-war stances. That's the only way that the Democratic base is going to be pursuaded to throw away this opportunity to elect a woman President. Problems will emerge, however, when the general election rolls around and Republicans start filling red-state television sets with anti-war comments from the primary season. Shades of 1972? Maybe.
3. Will the Democratic base worry about a woman's electability when considering Hillary? We must face the unfortunate reality that there are some voters who would oppose Hillary's candidacy simply on the grounds that she is female. While I hope this group is small, the possibility that Hillary's sex could guarantee a Republican victory in 2008 will be on the minds of some Democratic primary voters. At the end of the day, I predict Hillary's gender will be viewed by most Democrats as a net plus and she will actually garner more votes because she is female.
Anything I missed?