Max Sawicky has a good post over at TPM Cafe about his preferences for the Democratic primary, his first choice is; John Edwards, of course. Sawicky believes that Edwards is the most willing to push for a Democratic agenda of any of the major Democratic candidates:
My preference ordering of the top three candidates has been Edwards, Obama, Clinton (in descending order). I'd vote for any of them rather than most any Republican in the known universe, but I'm strongly thinking of switching #2 with #3. Today in the Post we find Obama claiming an advantage over Clinton by virtue of his capacity to unify the country.
The last thing we need, at a point where the Democrats can establish a decisive margin of political power, is somebody out to unify the country. I fear that Senator Obama is turning into the DLC candidate, in all but name.
Atrios points to the illuminating exchange between the dubious duo of Laura Ingraham and Harold Ford. Miss Laura explains why the political center is less the locomotive for policy innovation and more the caboose. Of course big changes tend to get done on a bipartisan basis, and broader support is always worth pursuing. But the changes we need are not all the rage of the political center.
Sawicky is right. The Republican brand has cratered, the Democratic Party has historic advantages over the Republicans in identification, generic ballot tests and most issues. Stan Greenberg's Democracy Corps recently released some tremendously positive results from a big study of the political landscape going into 2008. Here are just some of his findings:
Right now, the Democrats enjoy an average lead of 12 points in the generic presidential race (51 to 39 percent) and 9 points in the named congressional ballot (51 to 42 percent). But let us point to some of the trends underneath that make 2008 look like a very big election.
Education - one of the best predictors of vote over the past decade - is losing its power, with both well-educated and blue collar voters moving to the Democrats. In the Congressional ballot, for example, the high school educated give the Democrat an 11- point lead, dropping to 10 points among those with some high school and 8 points among the college educated. In short, the rush to be done with the Republicans is turning America a little classless.
While the Democratic Presidential candidate is winning the Kerry counties by a two-to one margin, the Republican candidate is only winning the Bush counties by 1 point (46 to 45 percent). The Republican nominee will struggle to come back in the battleground states. Just as important, a lot of Republican incumbents will be running in supposedly ‘red’ districts and states, but find them evenly divided. The Republican Presidential candidate is barely ahead among white rural voters (48 to 41 percent).
The big difference in the race is independents: Presidentially, Democrats are ahead by 19 points; Congressionally, by 14 points. It is the crash with independents more than Republican defections that is driving the Republican vote down.The Democrats are getting landslide margins with voters under 30; they are even winning whites under 30 by 14 points.
While we all know the named trial runs are closer, the message is clear: more than ever the American public is ready to hear a Democratic message and ready to vote for Democratic candidates. But, in order for that to happen we have to give them that choice. Alone among the leading candidates for President John Edwards is ready and willing to give them that choice. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, never mentions the Democratic Party in her new ads, while Barack Obama continues to flirt with a vague post-partisan Brodersim, demonstrated by his campaign manager David Axelrod triangulating between Karl Rove and Hillary Clinton in their latest dust up.
Listen, if you can't call Karl Rove the blight that he is out loud, you have no business asking Democrats to nominate you for anything. Obama's post-partisan 'Hope' may win a general election, but triangulating won't bring many Democrats to congress with him.
And if we are gong to accomplish the big things our country needs, we need to have more Democrats in congress and a solid no weasel word mandate behind us. Because the modern Republican Party is absolutely held in a strangle hold by the ideological right, any significant change is going to involve a real fight and Democrats working in unison before they will give an inch. Cutting a separate peace just isn't plausible. Ron Brownstein had a good article in the LA Times that showed how completely the right-wing punishes any heterodoxy by Republican lawmakers.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is an ardent, unwavering supporter of the Iraq war. In the House of Representatives during the 1990s, he served as a manager of the Republican majority's impeachment case against President Clinton. Yet for Marty Eells, an emergency medical services training officer here, Graham is an insufficiently reliable conservative. Eells is angered by Graham's criticism of President Bush on issues like the treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism. "He's made remarks and comments he doesn't have any business making," Eells said.
A Democratic candidate should take on every issue as if the Republican's in congress were in lockstep with Marty Eells, because they have been for seven years. There is no point in the long term pretending it isn't so.
Boston for Edwards
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