The Fallback - New York Times

The Fallback - New York Times:

A fascinating analysis by Matt Bai (obviously a Democrat) of John Warner's chances of taking on Hillary and the Democrats in the 2008 Presidential election


Further comments on excerpts below:

Here's another serious flaw in the campaign finance laws, in addition that I believe it's wrong and unconstitutional to restrict free speech as expressed in $.

"It starts with money. At the end of last year, according to the Hotline,
the venerable Washington online digest, Clinton had more than $17 million in the
bank for her re-election campaign in New York Â? and no serious opponent to spend it against. By contrast, Warner, capping what was widely considered a
surprisingly sound fund-raising season, had amassed a little under $2.5 million
for his political action committee, Forward Together. But that's not the whole
story. Thanks to the inscrutable wonder of campaign finance laws, Clinton can roll every penny that she doesn't spend on her Senate campaign into a presidential account, which is why she could well start a bid for the White House with as much as $75 million, on course to obliterate the party's previous fund-raising records. No matter how much a governor like Warner raises in his political action committee, on the other hand, the rules say that he can't spend any of it on a presidential run; it can go only for general political activity,
mostly backing other candidates. This means that should Warner decide to run, he'll have to start again from zero, while Clinton is backing up 18-wheelers to
the bank."

Warner is portrayed here as a sensible Democrat. Hillary should be worried.

"...the four domestic issues he ticked off, before he got to terrorism and national
security, were fairly standard for a Democratic candidate in the era after Bill
Clinton: slashing the federal deficit, improving schools, working with business
to reform the health-care system and devising a new energy strategy. What makes Warner, the former entrepreneur, sound more credible than your average Democrat is that he comes at these issues primarily from an economic, rather than a social, standpoint. On health care, for instance, most Washington Democrats
will, as a matter of both habit and perspective, talk about the moral imperative
of covering workers and the uninsured Â? and only then might they add, as an
afterthought, that the current morass is an impediment to business too. Warner,
on the other hand, begins with the idea that if American businesses can't keep
up with spiraling health-care costs, the nation will lose the competition with
India and China for jobs. The same principle applies with education and the
deficit. His fixation on the global economy brings a coherent framework to
issues that otherwise seem disparate and abstract."

John Edwards tried this approach in the 2004 elections and it didn't work, even as a balance to the windsurfing protester, Kerry, on the ticket as Vice President. The theme resonates, but only if it's seen as real by voters and not contrived political rhetoric.

"Now it is Hillary Clinton of New York who represents that coastal elite, and while she employs much of the same rhetoric her husband used, Warner argues that, nationally, the cultural perception of the party and its most visible leaders Â? Clinton, Kerry, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi Â? isn't much different from what it was back then. Results do matter to voters, Warner says, but only if you make it impossible for Republicans to paint your nominee as another protester-turned-windsurfer who looks down on people who go to a megachurch and like to watch the stock cars race. "You can't keep sending people out there who check every box of the Democratic orthodoxy, or that at least check every box of the East Coast-West Coast Democratic orthodoxy," Warner told me during a conversation in his Capitol office in his final days as governor. Only a Democrat who had a proven ability to transcend cultural issues, he said, could broaden the party's base."

So...the Democrats who don't favor Hillary believe that the MSM will create a frenzy over an insurgent candidate like Warner. The Democrat leaning MSM may do that because they want a Democrat elected. The coastal Democrat dailies would probably stay with Hillary.

"So the insurgent has to hope for an explosion of popular support in that first caucus Â? or possibly, a week later, in New Hampshire Â? that will send the front-runner reeling backward and puncture the notion that her nomination is preordained. If an insurgent can do that, then the resulting media frenzy might create enough momentum to propel him to victories in subsequent primaries, overwhelming the party apparatus."

Some of these Democrats are a laugh a minute.

"Little wonder, then, that when I asked Joe Trippi, the highly-caffeinated Internet genius who orchestrated Dean's insurgency, how Warner or one of the other candidates would go about taking the nomination from Clinton, he actually laughed at me. "It's not possible," he said. "The way for Mark Warner? Leave the freakin' party."

This is true.

"In gaining enough momentum to become, at one point, the presumed nominee, Dean highlighted two critical changes in American politics in recent years. The first is the proliferation of a cable-TV news media that can, virtually overnight, transform an unknown candidate into a coast-to-coast sensation, neutralizing the value of expensive ads and direct-mail campaigns. The second, and probably more transformative, is the advent of the Web as a fund-raising and organizing tool, which, under the right circumstances, can go a long way toward erasing a front-runner's advantage, especially if the insurgent manages to win one of the early primaries. "The fire wall is more vulnerable now," Susan Estrich says. If Clinton should falter in Iowa or New Hampshire, "whoever beats her won't have to put out buckets to collect cash. He'll have the Internet."

Amen!!

"...recent history suggests that if you want to emerge as the alternative candidate in 2008, you probably have to be willing to harness and exploit the anger of Democrats who feel disconnected from the Washington establishment and who resent the idea that powerful insiders seem to be choosing a nominee for them. You have to be ready, as an earlier generation of Democrats would have put it, to take on the Man Â? even if the Man this time happens to be a woman."