Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Next week a group called ?DraftObama? is going to start running TV ads in New Hampshire. All of this talk about Obama running for president is not a good sign for the Democrats, and here is why.
The fact that so much time and energy is being spent on a relatively unknown, but attractive and likeable guy, shows that a large part of the Democrat base is not happy with their current choices for President. Clearly a lot of people within the party do not like the idea of Hillary or Kerry heading up the ticket in 2008.
Contrast that to the Republicans in 1999-2000. When Bush entered the race everyone started talking about how he is ?electable? and everyone else got out of the way, except McCain. After 8 years out of power the Republicans wanted the Presidency back and they therefore looked at Bush and saw that he had the appeal and name recognition to get elected.
This leads us back to the Democrats and their current candidate pool. It does not look good for them right now. We have Kerry, who already lost, and who keeps pissing a large part of American off. We have Gore, who has been out of sight and mind for 8 years. And then Hillary, the most likely nominee. The problem with Hillary is that a lot of people think she is not electable, the opposite of what everyone thought about Bush.
When you look at those three and start thinking terms of winning a national election it does not look good. Therefore, a large part of the party who are seeing the same thing I see or who just don?t like these choices are out there looking for someone else to nominate. In the end I doubt Obama runs, he is most likely working towards the VP post, a good fit for him in many ways.
The big loser in all this? Hillary. She is the Reggie Bush of the Democratic Party (The best person available, but passed over do to dubious reasoning.) She raised all this money and helped all these candidates and in return the party looks elsewhere, not a good way to start a run for Presidency.
Luckily for the Democrats they have a whole year to sort through this mess and decide which way they want to take their party. However, it is very possible that we could see a very nasty primary battle between the far left (dailykos types) who want to take the party to the left and those who think that the only way to win the White House is by running down the middle (Hillary and Co.) A battle like that could really hurt the party. Luckily for us Republicans we are much more unified, although we lack a clear front runner at this point.
Note: A lot of my opinion on this comes from recent readings in the National Review and other sources.
