All of this polite squabbling over the '08 nominee is fun but it misses the point. Gore, Hillary, Clark, Spongebob-- in the end it makes no difference who we nominate. Unless things change at the highest levels, our glorious nominee will be killed again by bad advice from cautious handlers and beltway inside dopesters.
Consider the recent past. It seemed like Kerry stood a chance in 2004, but only early on. Here's how he sounded in early 'O4, for example, coming out of a tough primary battle against the populist-firebrand duo of Dean and Edwards:
"I have a message for the influence peddlers, for the polluters, the HMOs, the drug companies, big oil and all the special interests who now call the White House home: We're coming. You're going."
Ahhhh, those were the days...when Kerry seemed infused with confidence and poll numbers that looked like he might win.
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
That is until the whisperers of caution, the Machiavellis of sucking up to the powerful screwed Kerry's chances and in the process screwed America...
Unfortunately, as early as May, 2004, Kerry was sliding back into a more cautious, country club approach--and his numbers slid too. Around this time, David Corn spoke to a top democrat who apparently had some sense:
"Kerry is playing it very cautiously," says a Democrat close to Kerry's foreign policy team. "It's a prevent-defense kind of game. He's counting on Bush to keep making mistakes. I'm skeptical of it. But it could work. My fear is that he's not setting a strong enough foundation for people not only to reject Bush but to embrace Kerry."
http://www.thenation.com/...
By the summer convention, it was all over:
"Over the next four days, Democratic party officials are reportedly looking to tone down their rhetoric towards President Bush believing that enough voters are disillusioned with the president that Kerry does not need to directly confront him.
http://www.democracynow.org/...
And as we know, tone it down they did, while Kerry went on to lose the election.
Of course there were other reasons, but consider the facts in Gore's campaign in 2000 too. Gore was floundering in 2000 until he turned to populist rhetoric in the last 10 weeks of the campaign--his "people versus the powerful" focus. Gore turned his numbers around --though not enough to win--only after he stood up to the Republicans and fought for real democratic party values, attacking "big tobacco, big oil, the big polluters, the pharmaceutical companies, the hmos." It was a lot, but unfortunately it came too late.
Here's Gore on the topic, after the fact:
I believe Bill Clinton and I were right to maintain, during our 1992 campaign, that we should fight for "the forgotten middle class" against the "forces of greed." Standing up for "the people, not the powerful" was the right choice in 2000."
http://www.uni-muenster.de/...
Anyway, that's just recent headlines: populist language runs deep in American political culture, and as democrats we can't do without it. For more on what populism means--and what it doesn't mean--here's a great older article in the American Prospect:
http://www.prospect.org/...
If you're still not persuaded, you should also read at least three books: "The Populist Persuasion," "What's the Matter with Kansas" and ""The Radical Middle Class."