With Howard Dean as DNC chair, Dick Durbin as Senate Minority Leader, and Barbara Lee (or Tammy Baldwin) as House Minority Leader, it would present at long last a united opposition to the ruling Republicans.
And every moderate to conservative democrat runs for the hills! The far left talk a lot about tolerance, but they show precious little of it towards even the most modestly conservative democrats and woe betide a democrat who tries and take a stand against the party's vested interests.
Reid is about right as Majority leader, that said while I don’t agree with him on much Schumer could also be effective but he is probably too liberal but on purely aesthetic grounds he is a good “face for the Party”. That said Reid is by far the strongest candidate we have right now.
Someone with Gephardt’s politics (Populist, left economically, right socially), the style of John Breaux and preferable from the south would hold the congressional dems together while at the same time providing an effective challenge to the GOP in the House (Well as effective as is possible right now).
Fowler, Roemer or Rosenberg would have been far better DNC Chairs than Dean, but oh well we’re stuck with him now and hopefully he’ll be the “consensus building Governor- Dean” rather than the “I’ll go as far to the left as I have to, to get nominated- Dean” we saw a few months back.
And Bayh in 2008 depending on the situation will offer us our best chance and not only that he will be the most effective president if he is elected.
You’re right on social security though.
We can take Bush apart on that, but we will have to work with moderate republicans and in some cases republican representing vested interests in order to do so and I’m worried weather Pelosi has the ability or support to pull off something like that, Harold Ford or another moderate in the House could easy but I expect Pelosi will have a much tougher task.
The Democrats can also win the air war on this and win the public round to opposing Bush’s plans for social security, but it doesn’t mean articulating the argument in partisan langue but instead common sense, consensus building tones… if we don’t do that we will lose the moderate republican support we need in congress and people will just switch off, this is a great opportunity and I have a terrible fear that the liberal left will flunk it.
