State Of Dean-ial
October 12, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Interesting positioning by DNC chairman Howard Dean on the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries. On C-SPAN he calls it “incredibly unlikely” that Feb. 5th will lock up the Dem nomination.
Here’s Dean, appearing before a Denver University political science class taught by C-SPAN’s Steve Scully
Steve Scully: “Governor, you talked about 1976 and we’ve talked about it in this class when Jimmy Carter ran in January, Feb, and didn’t lock up the nomination until June of 1976. And now ostensibly by February 5th, this process will be completed. Is that good or bad?”
Howard Dean: “It is incredibly unlikely that it’ll be completed on February 5th. I think one of two things will happen; we have a pretty strong field this year, so either someone will sweep three or four of the first four, and they’ll have locked it up by January 29th or whenever it is. Or they’ll split the first four fairly evenly,in which case they’ll split the February 5th states and we won’t know who the nominee is –most likely– until sometime in March.
“If I could push a button and do anything I wanted, I’d move this whole thing back, but there’s been this tug of war over who’s going to go first for a long time. And in 2012, I think we’re going to have to do something fairly drastic to fix this. Because we can’t go on with this sort of disorder. We need real order in the primary process and we also need fairness and inclusiveness to every region in the country and every group of voters in the process.”
Lots to chew over on that one. Is Dean keeping the later states lip-serviced with presumed — but perhaps false — optimism? Is he doubting Hillary Clinton’s ability to quickly run the board?
Maybe the Democrats do need Al Gore in the race.
Hogarth said,
October 12, 2007 @ 2:16 pm
“Maybe the Democrats do need Al Gore in the race.”
Of course they do! All they’d have to do is swing 537 voters in Florida and he’s in. Everyone that voted for him in 2000 is an automatic to do it again, after spending the last eight years convincing themselves that Gore’s America would have been a Utopia by now. I happen to think they’re dead wrong, but…
Gordon Freeman said,
October 12, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
Uh Hello … Rudy takes NY State from Gore … Game Over
Patrick Stephens said,
October 12, 2007 @ 3:01 pm
Gore will be in the race, just not in the primaries. He’ll be in the general election. If is Gore is silly, he’ll run on the Green ticket and split the vote. If he’s smart and savvy, he’ll accept a reluctant Hillary’s offer to run as veep again. Clinton/Gore 2008 — with Gore planning on sweeping up the Dem. nomination in 2016.
Will Cate said,
October 12, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
Well here’s the other interesting thing he said - “… in 2012, I think we’re going to have to do something fairly drastic to fix this.”
Is Dr. Dean somewhat less-than-confident the Dems will win on ‘08?
Fat Man said,
October 12, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
Hillary isn’t worried. Al needs to worry. Ron Brown, anyone?
MarkJ said,
October 12, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
Hillary’s latest proposal: free Gore-basms for everybody!
Paul said,
October 13, 2007 @ 12:14 am
If Dean really wants to do something drastic, how about bringing back real nominating conventions? Have a few primaries that total about 1/3 the votes and let the pols sort out the rest at the convention. It has the knockon effect of taking a lot of money out of political campaigns. Of course, people will scream that it’s undemocratic…