Bloodless Coup

Well Bush cant run anymore so I'm all out of candidates.

I dont think any of these dems has a chance honestly. Hillary will be the candidate, win the primary easy and get beat easily by any Republican that runs. America just wont elect a woman President, aside from the fact that she is too liberal.

I'm not at all sure that 1) Hillary will run (she knows how high her negatives are and all that would be dredged up if she did) and 2) that even if she did she'd win the primary (because even many leftists don't think she can win nationally). I thought that it was interesting that this week MyDD (one of the left-leaning blogs) ran a poll on who people would vote for in an Edwards vs. Hillary primary, and Edwards got 80% of the vote.

I'd like to know more about Clark on the Dem side, and be interested in McCain on the Rep side. I suspect McCain is too moderate to garner the necessary support among insane, er, I mean red-state base supporters, but he's enough of a fiscal conservative/social-liberal that I could be interested. Lieberman drives me insane, Edwards just doesn't have enough experience, but you could persuade me to look at Bill Richardson.

There seems to be a dearth of moderate Republicans that I could even think about supporting. I don't think I could bring myself to vote for anybody who had anything to do with this administration (except, maybe, Powell), so that leaves out Ridge, Danforth, etc. But I'm so far out of the "mainstream" republican mold these days, that I'm irrelevant to my own party.

Well, keep your eye on Chuck Hagel then Baltar. He might be more conservative than you'd like on social issues, but it's not something he gives brimestone speeches about. He's had the guts to criticize the administration on many of their failures. He's actually concerned about the deficit. He's got a very appealing resume (businessman, but he was deputy administrator of the VA and an army sgt). To me he has a lot of the appealing characteristics of a McCain without some of McCain's idiosyncratic faults. Of course he's more conservative than I'd like, but he's the kind of guy that seem serious about policy and doing what's right for the country, without seeming too partisan, divisive or beholden to special interests.

hillary as the dem nom is republican wishful thinking. i'm with armand on this, especially the part about dems not nominating her even if she runs.

i think after watching two senators get pilloried for their votes for six months, i've got to like the idea of bill richardson as well. any other promising dem governors?

Governors? If we amend the constitution Jennifer Granholm would be an obvious possibility. And Tom Vilsack clearly wants to run. Beyond those two or three though I'm not sure that anyone's viable.

The Democrats could always dig up an ex-governor. I liked a lot of things about former Gov. Kitzhaber of Oregon. But I don't think he'd be enthusiastic about a national race.