GregsOpinion.com

I like Feingold as VP. Since Johnson, who was the last Senator, without being Gov, to win the Presidency?

This will probably come as no surprise to Greg, but I like Feingold. He is the darling of the left. He voted against the Patriot Act and now he can do no wrong in our eyes.

Which means I disagree with him on a few of his votes, but if he did run I would so jump on the bandwagon it's not even funny. I would literally get down on my knees and beg for votes in the street to make him president. I doubt that would help him get elected, but I would do it.

I am unimpressed by Feingold. I don't think he has a snowballs chance in hell. Why? Because he has no appeal in the red states- which a Dem has to have, at least to a small degee, to be President. Period.

Step aside Russ, and let Mark Warner or Evan Bayh run the show

I am unimpressed by Feingold. I don't think he has a snowballs chance in hell. Why? Because he has no appeal in the red states- which a Dem has to have, at least to a small degee, to be President. Period.

Step aside Russ, and let Mark Warner or Evan Bayh run the show

Although he has done a lot lately to make me think twice, there still isn't anything particularly likable about Bayh. To me, anyway. Everytime I see him, I feel like he is that used-car-salesman-type politician trying to get me to vote for him.

Warner, I have nothing against him. But I have nothing really for him. I don't feel moved to go to another state and knock on doors to get people to vote for him.

We've talked about red-state appeal before. I think anyone that has appeal in the upper midwest, and among the Hispanics and moderates of the southwest has the best shot at winning. I say concentrate in red states that are winnable with enough effort and money: New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada. If we bag those and the states Kerry won in November, and suddenly I don't care if we win Ohio or not.

Russ Feingold is a fine man. However, Feingold's assertion that poor downtrodden Alabamans, and presumably other Southerners, are voting against their own interests is reminiscent of Dean in the primaries. I will never forget how Howard Dean vowed to win over Confederate flag-waving, Bible-thumping and gun-toting Southern Rednecks and convince them that they were irrationally voting against their own interests. Obviously, this is not a direct quote. I am paraphrasing Dean. Feingold, Dean and company symbolize the Democratic Party's lack of understanding of not only Red States, but also of the working class Reagan Democrats who bolted from the Democratic Party.

Post-Vietnam Liberals often oblige such voters to choose between what they regard as mainstream social values and a strong defense on the one hand and their pocket book interests on the other hand. We see this happening in places like West Virginia and the Rust Belt industrial and mining towns of Ohio and Pennsylvania, not just in the South. I may sometimes disagree with these voters on what constitutes mainstream social values, but they are perhaps to be lauded for embracing what they regard as "deeper values," despite their economic interests. Liberals from FDR and Harry Truman through JFK, LBJ and Hubert Humphrey did not pose these voters with this quandary. Post-Vietnam Liberals like Dean and Feingold do, and there is the rub. If pro-Defense Democrats and cultural moderates (abortion, gay rights, faith, death penalty, 2nd Amendment, and all the rest) are not welcome in the Democratic Party, then the Party is going to continue to have difficulty in the South, the Border States, much of the Midwest and West, many working class areas and in Rural America.

This is the problem with the Party's selection of Howard Dean as DNC Chairman. Dean is not likely going to reach out in any meaningful way to old Reagan Democrats who now vote Republican, to Red America, or even to Americans who would prefer a hard-line National Security posture but are troubled by the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq and his frequent renunciation America's traditional adherence to human rights, despite Bush's pro-democratic rhetoric. Dean has shown little interest in National Security issues, aside from criticizing Bush. Democrats desperately need to formulate a hard-line national security strategy to compete with the flawed and wrong-headed policies of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice. Cold War Liberals like Harry Truman would not likely feel terribly comfortable in the Democratic Party of Howard Dean, John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and company.

Russ Feingold is a fine man. However, Feingold's assertion that poor downtrodden Alabamans, and presumably other Southerners, are voting against their own interests is reminiscent of Dean in the primaries. I will never forget how Howard Dean vowed to win over Confederate flag-waving, Bible-thumping and gun-toting Southern Rednecks and convince them that they were irrationally voting against their own interests. Obviously, this is not a direct quote. I am paraphrasing Dean. Feingold, Dean and company symbolize the Democratic Party's lack of understanding of not only Red States, but also of the working class Reagan Democrats who bolted from the Democratic Party.

Post-Vietnam Liberals often oblige such voters to choose between what they regard as mainstream social values and a strong defense on the one hand and their pocket book interests on the other hand. We see this happening in places like West Virginia and the Rust Belt industrial and mining towns of Ohio and Pennsylvania, not just in the South. I may sometimes disagree with these voters on what constitutes mainstream social values, but they are perhaps to be lauded for embracing what they regard as "deeper values," despite their economic interests. Liberals from FDR and Harry Truman through JFK, LBJ and Hubert Humphrey did not pose these voters with this quandary. Post-Vietnam Liberals like Dean and Feingold do, and there is the rub. If pro-Defense Democrats and cultural moderates (abortion, gay rights, faith, death penalty, 2nd Amendment, and all the rest) are not welcome in the Democratic Party, then the Party is going to continue to have difficulty in the South, the Border States, much of the Midwest and West, many working class areas and in Rural America.

This is the problem with the Party's selection of Howard Dean as DNC Chairman. Dean is not likely going to reach out in any meaningful way to old Reagan Democrats who now vote Republican, to Red America, or even to Americans who would prefer a hard-line National Security posture but are troubled by the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq and his frequent renunciation America's traditional adherence to human rights, despite Bush's pro-democratic rhetoric. Dean has shown little interest in National Security issues, aside from criticizing Bush. Democrats desperately need to formulate a hard-line national security strategy to compete with the flawed and wrong-headed policies of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice. Cold War Liberals like Harry Truman would not likely feel terribly comfortable in the Democratic Party of Howard Dean, John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and company.

Scoop, nice sentiment, byt you are missing hte point. You see, they are voting against their own economic self-interest, which means they are voting against my economic self-interest.

I'd also like to think we're not the ones giving voters half-assed choices, the Republicans are. Republicans will keep talking about the need to spend more on defense, so they'll spend billions on programs like star wars and f-22s, and eople will vote for them against their own national security interests as well.

Where we're going to win a coup is in educating people about these bad choices. The problem is, education takes a long time to really take effect. And yes, we're going to continue to do poorly in the south as long as people keep making these misguided and irrational voting choices. That's one reason why I would not waste presidential campaign funds to campaign in the south. You're just not going to win there anytime soon.

I'd spend more time getting some of the 40% of eligible voters who didn't show up to the polls on Nov. 2 to become Democrats and get out the vote that way. If people are so ready to vote against their own interests, the path of least resistance is finding new people to vote for their interests instead of trying to convince Republicans and Reagan Democrats that they've been wrong for a quarter century.

Yeah, we need to target red states and win at least a few to get the White House, but I don't see why that means we need to convince Republicams to vote Democrat in Alabama. We're not going to get anywhere that way.

It's really not up to all Democrats to keep Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy in power, that's for voters in their states to decide. But Democrats all over the country and a majority of DNC voters have picked Dean and I think he brings change to the table. He's not going to cede any territory, he's going to try to empower grassroots campaigns in 50 states, but I think by now he realizes like I do that Republicans are going to vote Republican. So his reforms are going to make it easier to find new voters to come to our cause.

Nate -- It is good to hear from you. I think you are missing the point, but there is nothing wrong with differences of opinion. FDR, Harry Truman, JFK and LBJ showed that the Democrats could be Liberals and simultaneously be the dominant political party. The problem is that a Liberal in the 1932-1968 time period was acceptable to the majority of Americans, but a Liberal in the 1968 to 2005 sense is not acceptable to a majority of Americans. I prefer the earlier Liberalism and you prefer the later Liberalism. Also, Democratic Presidents from FDR through LBJ believed in coalition politics, but modern Liberals are more exclusionary. Modern Liberals would appear to embrace the politics of subtraction whereas New Deal Democrats and Cold War Liberals embraced additive politics. Again, I prefer the earlier variant of Liberalism, which actually extended back as far as Woodrow Wilson. To me, the traditions embodied by Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson are superior to those embodied by McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry. Clinton and Gore did not not fit very nicely in either group, although Gore seems to have decided that he is a Deaniac.

Nate -- Another point. You invoke the Lockheed-Martin F-22. A nice debating point, but not entirely relevant, I think. A sound defense strategy is not synonymous with wasteful spending on weapons systems that do not match current threats. Strategy, of course, partly entails squaring national objectives with available resources. The Democratic Party needs to stop ignoring national security or, alternatively, giving it a low priority, if it wants to be taken seriously by voters. The Democrats need a new cadre of defense and foreign policy professionals. In a period when the country faces serious threats, voters logically are not impressed by a Party that merely criticizes the other party without putting forward serious, coherent alternatives. The Democratic Party must become comfortable once again with the notion of employing power in the service of America's vital security interests and cherished ideals. Power is not merely military power. It also has political, economic and diplomatic components. Howard Dean says we should start thinking and acting like Harry Truman. Well, its time for both him and the Democratic Party to start doing just that.

I disagree with you Nate- I think we should focus on the South. I agree with Zell Miller- we will no longer be a national party if we no longer speak to these folks. Can we win in the deep south states Mississippi or Alabama? No, and I understand that. But like Al From pointed out in the latest BLUEPRINT, we can pick off some the border southern states. We are knocking on the door in places like Louisiana, Arkansas, and Virginia.

We haven't won an Old Confederacy state in the past two elections. Not one! It is crucial that we start developing a message that resonates with these people, as well as support candidates who have proven to be successful here.

Easley, Bredesen, or Warner....not Fiengold, Kerry or Gore.

Even Edwards said we should have campaigned in the south

Todd -- I agree. Even if the Democrats foolishly were to walk away from the South and the border states in Presidential elections, they would still need to make some inroads to ever have any chance of recapturing the Senate or the House. In any case, the Democrats do hold two House seats in Alabama, that of Bud Cramer and that of Arthur Davis. In Mississippi, which you also mentioned, the Democrats hold the House seats belonging to Bennie Thompson and Gene Taylor. One reason we lost the Senate is that we lost the seats up in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina. We also failed to pick up the seat that everybody hoped we would in Oklahoma. Getting back to Presidential elections, I notice that the Deaniacs and Kossacks are now pinning their hopes on the West, usually citing Colorado and Montana. Yet, DAILYKOS now describes freshman Senator Salazar as a sort of modern-day Benedict Arnold. I disagree, as I frequently do, but wonder if they will now feel forced to reassess their optimistic appraisal of the significance of the Salazar brothers' winning in Colorado. (Note: I disagreed with Salazar's vote on Gonzalez, but am not going to base my entire opinion on him on that one vote.) Regarding Schweitzer in Montana, he had to pick a Republican running mate to assuage fears that he felt any kinship with liberals of the National Democratic Party. Indeed, even if a populist of sorts, he probably wouldn't want Howard Dean ever coming to Montana. Thus, one wonders why the Deaniacs and Kossacks are still so enamored of the notion that the West will be their salvation. Given the narrowness of Kerry's margins in many states that he did carry, the Democratic Party clearly needs to change the image that people have of it as a captive of northeastern, west coast and big city Liberals, at least if Democrats want to ever have any power again in Washington.