Last year, I cast a meaningless vote that I nonetheless regret. In the 2004 California presidential primary, I voted for John Edwards as part of a futile effort to stop John Kerry from clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. I passed up the opportunity to vote for Howard Dean, whose chances - at that point - were even more hopeless than Edwards' chances.
In the run-up to the 2004 primaries, voters in Democratic primaries acted as amateur political consultants. They settled on Kerry as a way to finesse the Iraq war issue. He had a combat record in Vietnam, blah blah blah. Dean's campaign was obviously flawed, but he was the only "serious" candidate who blasted Bush's decision to take the country to war. I wish I had voted for him.
I say all of this not to criticize Edwards too harshly (he was a foreign policy novice who was lied to by the administration and probably believed the wisdom that an anti-war candidate couldn't win). And I'm not penning an ode to Howard Dean.
But I do think my own feelings are probably shared by more than a few future Democratic primary voters. And I think the implications are fairly obvious.
The only candidates with a chance to win the 2008 Democratic party presidential nomination are:
- people who opposed the war from the beginning.
- people who recant, with the excuse that they were lied to by the administration and the explanation that they were wrong.
While I still think an openly anti-war candidate wouldn't have won last year, because it was too early for many voters to admit they were wrong, I sure wish there had been an anti-war candidate in the race. There's no way to finesse an issue like that. There wasn't in 2004. There really won't be in 2008. The difference is that all candidates will be asked to account for what they said and did before the Iraq War started. I want a candidate with the right answers. I want a candidate who is at least as smart as me, a foreign policy novice who knew the war would be disaster long before it started. I'll grudgingly accept someone who recants, but won't really respect them much. I will not vote for a pro-war candidate who doesn't recant. And it's not enough to criticize the management of the war. The whole idea was a disaster, fueled by imperial hubris and a total lack of common sense. That's the only acceptable answer.
What that means is that I could live with a candidate like Edwards, based on his recent admission of error. I cannot accept candidates like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton, unless they really change their tune about the war. I won't vote for them, not in the primary, not in the general election.
I know we're supposed to avoid litmus tests these days, and embrace pro-war Democrats who are good on other issues. And I'm happy to do that for senators and representatives from more conservative states.
But not for president, and not after all we know now. I want a candidate who opposed this stupid war. I want to be proud of my vote.
The irony, of course, is that if Edwards (or Kerry) had opposed the war in last year's campaign, he would be the runaway frontrunner for president in 2008. That's what they get for listening to their political consultants.
