Come on, you know why Mark Warner dropped out. Its because the democratic primary this coming cycle is going to have a de-facto incumbent (Hillary Clinton) who is going to be nearly impossible to beat. She's going to have ten times the money and all the top party insiders, and the best campaigner of them all (her husband) behind her. Its a no win proposition. Warner knows he could work his ass off for all of 2007 and still very likely be eating Hillary's dust on caucus night in Iowa. He no doubt realized that if he can't beat Hillary in Iowa and he can't beat her in New Hampshire, that he had no chance.

Neither does Edwards by the way, who's a good guy and excellent grass roots campaigner, but was a lousy vice presidential candidate who did nothing to help the ticket at all, not even carrying his home state.

The party isn't going to re-nominate Kerry again and while Russ Feingold is a great guy and may be 2007'8's Howard Dean, we've seen that campaign before and the Iowa caucus-goers, party regulars, didn't buy it. The only potential candidates who have the star power to compete with Hillary are Gore or Barack Obama, if either one of them actually decide to run.

I fully expect other candidates to drop out along the way once they realize its almost certainly Hillary's nomination to lose.

I think your right, Warner knew he could not win and so left before he wasted time and money.

However, Edwards is the real deal. Look at all the Democrats who are doing well in traditionally conservative states, they are all populists. The Democratic Party only has forward movement in populist circles. This is a good thing, because when the party was strongest, populism was a major theme. FDR, Truman, LBJ, all understood that you have to take care of the middle class and empower people. No one thinks of Hillary as empowering or understanding middle class needs. For Christ sake she used to be a Republican and now is a limousine liberal.

Hillary is going to be brought down because she is seen as an east coast liberal. Even worse then that, she is seen as disingenuous, remember when she wanted a Constitutional Amendment to ban burning the flag. Oh I forgot, she also voted for the war and hasn’t taken a clear stance on it to date. Hillary is going to implode. She will have nice numbers up until late December 2007, and then she will start to slip.

Once the Election cycle starts she will be weighed down by all her baggage.The only strength she will have left is her husband and no one is going to vote for someone because they like their husband.

Edwards is not going to have to worry about people calling him out on votes, because he hasn't made one in a long time. He will be able to stay above the fray, and let his positive populist message take him to victory.

Hillary will be tough to beat, but she will not be the Democratic nominee for President, John Edwards will have that distinction.

With a message focused on poor, working, and middle class Americans he will be very tough to beat. How can the United States send a man to the moon and not feed all of its citizens or house them or heal them or educate them? I like that line. I stole it from another populist Father Daniel Berrigan, maybe he should run for President?

PS Barack Obama has been nonexistent in the Senate and will never be President his name is BARACK OBAMA , I am sorry to say this country is still way to Anglo to vote for a guy named Barack.

Notwithstanding the listless candidate he was in 2000, those of us who've seen Al Gore over the last few years have seen a powerful, authentic advocate. He's been against the war, on the front lines on global warming. If he runs, he'll have my interest. Senator Clinton has favored the war all along. Now she suggests ways of fighting it better. I do not see how I will be able to support her.

I think the Iraq war issue on the opposing side is not black and white, but shades of gray.

Read the Hillary piece on the op-ed section of the Daily News from today, where she met with their editorial board and discussed Iraq. She makes some good points. Basically she says that the majority of Iraqis are unwilling to fight their own war, because there is no nationalism there, but just people who will fight for their tribe, or their family or their religion but not their country. She wants a phased redeployment of U.S. troops to the north or to Kuwait, somewhere out of the way but not far away, so that the Iraqis have to fight their own fights and not have us fight them in their place. Its not a unilateral pullout, but it might be the next best thing. Also she calls for cutting the Iraqis in on the oil revenue, which would give them more incentive to fight their own battles than they have right now. She points out that the Bush Admininistration flatly rejects profit sharing, and that the Sunnis have no intention of accepting peace without seeing some of that action. That sounds reasonable to me.

Anyway I hope the Democratic primary doesn't turn into a one-issue deal, where all the important things that need to be discussed get drowned out and people make decisions on who to support based on one issue and not on the collective weight of all the issues. Warner btw, I believe will be short listed as a possible vp for Hillary. He's the perfect balance for her.

Don't be surprised if the 2008 tickets are McCain/Guiliani vs. Hillary/Warner. McCain and Hillary are already attacking each other as if they are the presumptive nominees.

...that Hillary gets the nomination. And very many people do not wish to see that catastrophe happen.

I bet Dollars to Donuts that John Edwards gets the nomination. The great populist wave is coming, Huey Long would be proud. No more limousine liberals and no more pandering bull shit. I am so excited!!!

Gosh darnet, Hillary shouldn’t even be our Senator, she never even lived here. And President Come on, no one likes the ice queen, for Christ sake, Margaret Thatcher is more congenial.

Listen folks...

You're all missing the boat, again. I love Hillary
but the best person out for president is Gen. Wes Clark. As for Edwards... come on, he's a nice man but certainly no match for the General who is a 4 star, led Nato in war, Rhodes Scholar, West Point Grad, Economics professor, finished 1st in physics at West Point, his credentials go on and on. The PI lawyer and one term Senator pails in comparison. Edwards would make a fine Veep, though.

Listen folks...

You're all missing the boat, again. I love Hillary
but the best person out for president is Gen. Wes Clark. As for Edwards... come on, he's a nice man but certainly no match for the General who is a 4 star, led Nato in war, Rhodes Scholar, West Point Grad, Economics professor, finished 1st in physics at West Point, his credentials go on and on. The PI lawyer and one term Senator pails in comparison. Edwards would make a fine Veep, though.

Edwards is a one term senator who will have been out of office for two years, who might not have won re-election, and who couldn't carry his own state as the vp candidate. He wasn't a strong national candidate. Wes Clarke was not a strong national candidate either. The guy had no political experience and it showed.

This is all a rigged game anyway. Its about precinct captains in Iowa and DNC rank and file members and union delegates. Hillary knows exactly who she needs to get to win the nomination, she already has those persons' support locked up. If the Clintons want the nomination again, the rank and file isn't going to deny it to them, they've been playing the game too long and know too many of the right people.

It will take someone with tremendous star power to beat her, someone who really turns on the public, and thats not edwards, clarke or even feingold. Barack Obama could do it, a lot of people are hot for him. Gore could do it. Aside from that nobody else is a big enough star, well known enough, to beat Hillary.

I don't think Hillary getting nominated would necessarily be a catastrophe at all. We have seen what happens when the frontrunner is a candidate nobody knows (Dean, who the press ate up because they didn't know), or can't get excited about (Kerry), or lacks charisma (Dukakis) You can't seriously tell me that Vilsack, Feingold, Biden, Bayh, Edwards are stars. They aren't, they are typically bland politicians who will bore most people to death. The Democratic Party needs to nominate a star, someone whose force of personality will captivate voters and the press. Someone who won't get beat by the press like Dean did. Hillary is the biggest star in the Democratic Party, and the press has tried to beat her up for years and can't do it.

It would be a mistake for the Democrats to simply nominate the most WASPish looking acceptable white male candidate, which is what those insisting on a Warner, Edwards, Bayh are doing. Looking for the most republican-looking democrat out there. A candidate who looks and sounds like a republican but who has democratic words coming out of his mouth. The Democrats don't need to nominate a republican to win the general election. The Democrats need to nominate their biggest and best star, the one who can best get the party's agenda across the mainstream. If we learned anything from the last cycle, its that the party regulars don't want someone who is made a star in the primaries. They want to be sure ahead of time who they are voting for, they want someone who is already a star. The worst thing the dems could do is nominate another boring centerist candidate nobody cares about, like edwards, and sit back and watch mccain kick his ass. McCain is a star. Guiliani is a star. You're going to need a star to beat either of them.

Here's the ticket that would cause the most fuss, and bring out of the closet all of both the racists and sexists in this country:

Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama

For the first time, a national ticket with NO male WASP's on it. What better message of inclusiveness could the party send. A country always controlled by white anglo saxon protestant males, that never used to let women or blacks even vote or hold property, now having the chance to be RUN by a woman and a black man. This would really drive the Pat Buchanans of the world crazy!

Of course we may be fooling ourselves to think this country is less sexist than it used to be, after all the last time the Democrats put a woman on the ticket (Ferraro in '84), it led to their worst loss of all time. Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I like to think that people are more open minded now and that a woman or a minority candidate COULD get elected nationally. I think Clinton/Obama could be a fantastic ticket.