Presidential candidates I Would and Would Not Vote For

Evan Bayh and Hillary Clinton have good senatorial and executive experiences. Bayh was a two-term governor nad Hillary had a law firm of her own. Edwards look good too. kerry looks unelectable at this point - maybe four to eight years from now. Have as many candidates as possible; the more the merrier.

Even Durban of Illinois should consider as he was both governor and senator as well.

A team that would serve the country well would be Al and Hillary. Moreover, they could be electable.

You must be joking...

Which must be why they voted Democrats over Republicans this year?

I'm not allowed to vote in the first place, of course, but I'll play the parlor game. The categories below are more like gradations, basically the candidates are ranked in order from top to bottom.

Would happily vote for:

Obama
Richardson (tho I know too little to be sure)
Clark

Would dutifully vote for:

Edwards
Dodd (know little about him tho)
Bayh (know little about him tho)
Gore
Biden (know little about him tho)

Unless someone worse than McCain threatens to pick off the presidency for the Republicans, I'd rather vote Green than:

Hillary
Vilsack (know little about him tho)
Kerry

(I'd vote Hillary against Giuliani or any hardliner in a close race, and Vilsack and Kerry only against a hardliner in a close race - in all other cases, Green.)

Would not vote for, but also not be anguished over the victory of:

McCain
Hagel (know little about him tho)
Pataki (know little about him tho)

Would be really unhappy, but not in despair, over a victory of:

Giuliani
Thompson (know little about him tho)
Rice
Kucinich
Romney (know little about him tho)

Would give up on America in case of a victory of:

Brownback
Gingrich
Hunter (tho I know too little to be sure)
Jeb Bush


I think thats about everyone ever mentioned in any list..

If anyone call tell me anything about Miuke Huckabee, I'll add him to the list...

nimh wrote: Would give up on America in case of a victory of:

Brownback
Gingrich
Hunter (tho I know too little to be sure)
Jeb Bush

That's a frightening thought!

Gore is dropping broad hints that he is going to run. Moreover, he is scoring a lot of points for his environmental efforts, which transcend mere politics. His appearances on the Oprah and other shows buttressed his standing.

Excuse me, but I don't understand why so many people denigrate (without valid reasons) Hillary. She had a fine education, is considered an excellent senator, has been active in children's rights for about 25 years, etc. She is hardly a fringe Dem. Criticisms of her are weak, at best.

And yet all of that says nothing about her electability. Both Hillary and Gore face a public that already knows about them, and has largely already decided it doesnt like them. They both face very high negative ratings, Gore even more than Hillary.

I know that perception is important. However, when it is not valid, it can be overcome. Nixon was elected even though there was solid evidence of his dishonesty, etc.

A Battle Hillary Clinton Should Relish

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006; Page A27

Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a maddening challenge. Many of the people who like and admire her, who believe she has good values and would make an excellent president, are not sure they are for her because they don't think she can win.

Many of these same people, as one prominent Democrat told me, actually feel guilty that they harbor these doubts, partly because the specter that haunts Clinton has little to do with anything she has said or done herself.


In public, the doubts are dressed up as substantive concerns -- she's too cautious, she didn't stand up against the war in Iraq, she mishandled that health care reform in the 1990s, she's perceived as too liberal or she's not progressive enough.

The doubters are ashamed to say what really worries them: that Americans don't want to relive the supposed psychodramas of the Bill Clinton years; that her association with her husband will mobilize his enemies more than it will energize his friends; that their relationship is just too complex for those critical swing voters to understand or accept.

Who can blame Sen. Clinton's supporters for being enraged by such a list? Would those who trumpet "family values" admire her more if she had just divorced the guy? Why should the sins of the husband be borne by the wife? Do her six effective and admired years in the Senate and her landslide reelection mean absolutely nothing? Has anyone even looked at her many serious policy speeches?

And if Bill is the real issue, doesn't his stewardship look awfully good now when compared with that of the current White House occupant?

Yet, no matter how unfair, misguided or even dimwitted Sen. Clinton's supporters may find the catalogue of doubts, she will have to deal with them if she is to win over all the guilt-ridden skeptics.

And that is why the prospect of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy is not only good for the Democratic Party but also good for Clinton herself. Without Obama in the race, the Democratic primaries would boil down to Hillary and those vying to be the anti-Hillary. She might well win a battle of attrition, but without quelling the doubts.

A Clinton-Obama contest would require Clinton to shed some of her caution. It would create enormous popular interest in the Democratic Party. And if she were to beat Obama -- this assumes, as I expect, that Obama will look just as formidable a year from now as he does today -- Clinton would prove her mettle, which might finally put the doubts to rest.

The most curious thing about the coming contest, if it happens, is that in certain respects the Obama candidacy of 2008 would bear an uncanny resemblance to Bill Clinton's candidacy in 1992. Youth is part of it. Clinton was 46 on Election Day in 1992. Obama will be 47 on Nov. 4, 2008. So are their parallel promises to break with the past and create a new kind of politics.

In 1991 Gov. Bill Clinton railed against politicians who "have divided us against each other, pitting rich against poor, playing for the emotions of the middle class, white against black, women against men, creating a country in which we no longer recognize that we are all in this together."

In his New Hampshire debut over the weekend, Obama said that we had "come to be consumed by" the "24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative-ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn't move us forward. . . . There's no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, non-ideological way to solve the problems that we face."

The most important passage in Obama's New Hampshire speech was this one: "America is ready to turn the page. America is ready for a new set of challenges. This is our time. A new generation is prepared to lead." In other words: Goodbye to both the Clinton era and the Bush years.

A discussion about who is best positioned to turn the page of history is precisely the one Hillary Clinton most needs to engage. Joining that dialogue will be essential for the other candidates, notably John Edwards and Evan Bayh, who cannot simply run as anti-Hillarys and will have to challenge the notion that this is a two-person battle.

However the contest turns out, the debate about the future that Obama is encouraging would be good for Clinton because, most of all, she needs to put the past behind her. Paradoxically, it might also help Democrats recover the best, most forward-looking aspects of Bill Clinton's legacy.

Oh, noone is too "ashamed" to say that here; these exact points have been explicitly raised here again and again by those who think Hilary isnt too hot an idea as presidential nominee. Ive seen them raised often enough in the media as well. They are perfectly legitimate issues, why should anyone be ashamed to express them?

I suspect that claiming that people are too "ashamed" to bring up these points is just a rhetorical trick to make the points look like something bad or shameful - never mind that the shame in question is mostly in the author's perception.


They mean that she has been an effective, quality Senator, and that she would be heartily applauded by most any Democrat when standing for Senator again. They do not prove anything about her being a good Presidential nominee. A good Senator does not necessarily make a good President; and a landslide victory in New York proves zilch about how someone would play across the USA.


Well, quite. One of the reasons many are worried about the way Bill would loom over a Hillary campaign is purely in that he was so good, that Hillary cant help but look weak, void of charisma and technocratic of mind in comparison. When looking at Hillary, because she is Bill's husband, people will think of Bill, and when they then look at Hillary again, she wont look much the better.

Add Dennis Kucinich to the list.

Roxy, the last time I looked Dennis was looking for a spouse. Are you interested? You seem to be thinking of him.

nimh, I gather you have no problems with Hillary except that she is not electable. I imagine time, and polls, will clarify this.

Oooh, I've got plenty of other problems with her. But electability was what we were discussing.

I will be fully supporting Dennis Kucinich

I am adding him to my list of "would vote for."

That makes three.

I cannot agree that Bill looked so good while he was THE MAN... but couldn't agree more with your point. She's like the quarterback's cousin. Sure, she's accomplished some things on her own... but would she if it weren't for him? And as Nimh point's out; she will always look like a dim bulb while standing in HIS shadow. Bill is only bad for her because even in his, IMO, slept at the wheel self, he still shines so much more brilliantly than she does in front of a microphone that people will forever wonder why they're even considering the lame cousin.

I am, no surprise, pretty much precisely in agreement with EJ Dionne. That's no surprise in either sense, I think Dionne is one of the most astute political columnists working now.

But aside from old arguments with nimh and soz...this is interesting.
Tom DeLay has just started up his own blog and his thoughts/alignments are significant...

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/121206/delay.html

There are a lot of folks in the new conservative movement who really don't like McCain, for assorted reasons. As McCain would be a formidable challenge to any Dem running, this seems a very positive thing for the dems in two years.

But what I find even more encouraging here is that the Republicans have no standard bearer and likely, I think, not even a realistic potential of gaining one. The extremist end of the party (DeLay, christian right, neoconservatives) look to have and look to maintain a set of acute ideological litmus demands precisely of the sort which the electorate has just moved away from with such vigor. More of the same, yelled yet more shrilly, will rouse and froth up tico and foxfyre and Hannity and such, but that Rove-ignored middle has shifted in ideas and in allegiances - we can only hope that these "conservative" folk keep pushing the idea that they were wrong only in being insufficiently extremist conservatives.