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Banned
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Originally Posted by jorgelito
... Which candidate, if any, are not on the fringe or at least closer to the mainstream in your opinion? And why do you think that is? Do you see it as a problem of all the candidates being way out of touch with the voters or do you think a plurality is the best we can hope for.
It seems to me, no one candidate fits the mold of what I would like. Maybe if I could make a composite of all the candidates I liked.
Maybe, maybe not. host could be onto something that all the candidates are on the fringe. Huckabee was sitting at 3% I think for quite some time before spiking recently. It's quite possible that Ron Paul could as well.
I don't think you can paint all Ron Paul supporters with the same brush as obsessed money-raisers.
Howard Dean and his Deaniacs had this problem too.
Awesome chart DC, please keep them coming. Do you have a larger one or maybe a link? My eyes aren't that great; the detail is a bit fuzzy.
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jorgelito, since you asked.... I thought the following opinions of David Sirota explained what might be happening with Huckabee's increasing popularity, and I already knew his take on Edwards.
Edwards is flawed in that his reputation is maligned because of his background as an "ambulance chasing" "trial lawyer", a vain, out of touch consumer of $400 haircuts, and a hypocrite because of his newly constructed $6 million, 28,000 square feet home and out buildings. The people who are put off by those things weren't planning to vote for him, anyway. In addition to his populist concerns, Edwards is against the war, apologized for voting for the Oct., 2002 authorization that gave Bush the authority to do what he thought was best, militarily, in Iraq, and he described the "War on terror" as a "bumper sticker" slogan. Edwards is not against women's right to choose, he isn't influenced by christian evangelicals, and he grew up in a southern middle middle class home. He's lost a teenage son to sudden accidental death.
No other candidate in either party brings all of that and also even has the slightest chance of winning their party's nomination. Huckabee is too tied to evangelical beliefs and politics and has political views that come with those ties. He has the problem of the convict he helped free from jail who subsequently killed again, and he inaccurately dodged responsibility for his role in that controversy. He would, unlike Ron Paul, continue to waste US soldiers and assets on the Bush war on terror, as would Hillary Clinton.
If Huckabee's populism could be combined with Ron Paul's military and foreign policy ideas, republicans would have a stronger candidate. If one can only vote for a republican, I guess Huckabee would be the choice because he has a chance to win the nomination, and Ron Paul would be the principled choice, if one can accept his criminalization of abortion and dis mantling of government regulatory oversight and enforcement, and his tax and "free market" capitalism that gives advantage to those already most advantaged.
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http://davidsirota.com/index.php/200...ad-of-broders/
posted 12/6/2006 by David Sirota
Note to Dems: Put Voters Ahead of Broders
In most political circles today, it is assumed that there are three tiers of people that a candidate must satisfy in descending order: 1) Media and financial elites 2) grassroots organizations and 3) the public at large. The key point here is the descending order - very often Democrats have their eyes first and foremost on media and financial elites, to the exclusion of grassroots organizations and the public at large....
.....While no one can blame Democrats for meeting with Bush, you can bet this signals the White House’s effort to find "common ground" on Money Party issues (trade, deregulation, corporate accountability, etc.) that continue the war on the middle class - and you can bet when this happens, the David Broders will hail the new day of "bipartisanship" and "comity," praising heaven that the Guardians of the Flame of the Vital Center still dominate what they see as the Dirty Hippies (aka. the vast majority of the country).
This is all carrying into the presidential election, as well. <a href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2006/12/05/"> U.S. News and World Report is fretting</a> about the possibility of John Edwards running successfully as a - horror! - economic populist. Reporter James Pethokoukis recounts a conversation he had with my old boss, John Podesta, where Podesta "wondered aloud if there would be any ‘full-throated Sherrod Brown types’ running for the Democratic nomination" and then says on economic issues, "the big question is where Edwards comes out." Indeed - it is a big question for all of the candidates: will they run campaigns aimed at making columnists and Wall Street executives happy, or will they run campaigns designed to actually attract votes? Put another way - will they run as shills for the Money Party or representatives of the People Party?
The hope is the latter and more generally that Democrats are finally learning what Republican operatives like Karl Rove learned a long time ago: that the David Broders, Joe Kleins, Tom Friedmans and Bob Rubins who make up the national opinionmaking and financial elite actually represent nobody, command dwindling audiences/power, have positions wholly out of touch with ordinary Americans - and that it doesn’t matter if you make these Serious People happy and get lots of nice columns and editorials in newspapers most Americans don’t read - if you are not making actual voters happy, you are going to be thrown out of power faster than you can say "permanent minority."
The GOP has never cared what the op-ed pages say - and while they lost this last election, few would argue that their ascension to dominance and lock on power was impressive. The same can be said of more Democrats these days. You will notice that many of the people in listed <a href="http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/12/03/the-people-party-vs-the-money-party-here-are-the-players/">as People Party leaders in this article</a> are those who are interested less in speaking to the chattering classes with soothing talk of nebulous "bipartisanship" and "centrism" and more interested in speaking directly to real people in blunt terms (Most of the Money Party, however, still aims their comments right at the elite, and not at actual voters)....
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Quote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-...r_b_71934.html
David Sirota
Edwards, Huckabee & The Rise of Iowa's Huey Longs
Posted November 9, 2007 | 12:17 PM (EST)
There's something happening in Iowa - something that the media has not yet fully caught onto. Ever so quietly, economic populism may be trumping the importance of campaign bank accounts and celebrity in both parties. Ever so quietly, two candidates emulating the best of Huey Long's legacy are emerging as strong contenders in the quest for the presidential nomination, as my new nationally syndicated newspaper column out today details. And that is a good thing not just for those contenders - but for class-unifying progressive politics in general.
This story, which centers around former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D), is only now starting to seep out.
On the Democratic side, this dynamic is probably the most intense. Reuters just today publishes a story headlined <a href="http://www.sherwoodgazette.com/us_world_news/story.php?story_id=N07520256">"Iowa Voters Take Democrats to Task Over Jobs,"</a> noting that trade and globalization are becoming more and more prevalent on the campaign trail. This is likely to be fueled by the fact that Sens. <a href="http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/breaking_clinton_announces_support_nafta_expansion">Hillary Clinton (D)</a> and <a href="http://www.credoaction.com/sirota/2007/10/breaking_obama_says_he_will_vo.html">Barack Obama (D)</a> have both come out for the Peru Free Trade Agreement - the controversial bill that expands the NAFTA trade model. It is also likely to be fueled by Clinton surrounding herself with <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/rubin-to-back-clinton/">more and more Wall Street titans</a>.
This is truly a battle between what I have called the Money Party and People Party - and it is happening right within the Democratic Party. As the New York Times reports this morning, those inside the Democratic Party pushing this NAFTA-style trade policy are "getting sizable campaign contributions from the sectors that are benefiting the most from the global economy" including "financial services firms, computer chip makers and other high-tech manufacturers." Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), who is the architect of this deal, basically admitted as much, <a href="http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/rangel_nafta_expansion_if_youre_hurting_then_its_bad_deal">telling CNN after the vote</a> that if you are a worker who is struggling right now, "if you're hurting, then [the Peru agreement] is a bad deal."
Of course, Rangel should be thanked for his candor - at least he's being honest. The same can't be said for the <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/the-invisible-culture-of-corruption.html">invisible culture of corruption</a> that I wrote about a few weeks ago and that continues to plague Democrats - the one where former Clinton administration officials who are now corporate lobbyists preen around (with significant media assistance) as supposedly disinterested statesmen as they push trade deals that benefit their business clients.....
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Last edited by host; 12-17-2007 at 03:40 AM..
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