Last week I talked about Evan Bayh's potential candidacy and his appearance on C-Span's Road to the Whitehouse. Although I think Bayh may offer Democrats a solid candidate in 2008, he isn't the progressive I'd prefer.
Perhaps Russ Feingold is. Over at Swing State Project, there have been a couple of good posts about Feingold along with a link to his PAC, all of which indicate of the potential 2008 field, Feingold would most likely be the strongest, if not the only real, progressive (besides Edwards) in the race. Just coming of his second divorce, Republicans will undoubtedly strive to make a big deal about his supposed character defects. And that could be a real barrier to his candidacy, although many Republicans themselves, including some who might try out in 2008 (Newt, I'm thinking of you) would also have some uncomfortable questions to answer about their marriage lives as well.
In any event, Feingold has some well-known progressive credentials; providing the only Senate vote against the Patriot Act, co-sponsoring campaign finance reform legislation, and most recently, it would appear, helping to lead what movement may exist for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
It may be modest, but it's about as good as it gets for progressives. As is the case with most of the other candidates, we will be in a better position to know who's running and how strong a contender they will be after the 2006 elections. For now, we'll stay tuned.
Note: HRC is on C-Span's Road to the White House this week.
2 comments:
I caught HRC on RTTWH on CSPAN and she did pretty well. She tied politics to policy issues to the kind of values that Bill espoused, making a sound argument for coherent, sensible, reality-based governing. She's the real deal, although I think the Clintonian brand of centrism is a little too cave-iny given that the other side has been out for blood.
Yeah, it wasn't a bad speech. For about the first 15 minutes of it.
She about put me to sleep by the end of it.
She's well spoken but read from the script too much. Bill just spoke this stuff off the top of his head.
She did a good job of weaving all the techy and economic issues into a broader SECURITY theme that's intended to put the Dems on the offensive on this issue.
And of course the nature of her talk, very wonkish and geekish, should be understood in the context of her audience--some renascance group in Aspen.
But it all had the flavor of that bridge to the 21st century stuff from 1996.
BTW, the Washington Monthly has run two articles on a prospective HRC candidacy, one saying she can win, and one saying she can't. I'm not in her camp, but still an interesting read nonetheless.
Post a Comment