Iowa Dems voted overwhelmingly for two candidates: Kerry and Edwards, one a Vietnam vet and the other a Southerner.
Wesley Clark is a candidate who combines military experience with both roots and personal alliances in the South.
In a general election, Clark would probably be well positioned to grab Independents--and even former Reagan Democrats, many (most?) of whom under Clinton changed party affiliation.
Clark's lack of a voting record means there are no weird or controvertial votes for the GOP to hightlight. (Alas, it cuts both ways and also means that there's no list of votes for Dems to examine for consistencies and priorities relative to particular issues.)
Another asset of Clark is his experience as a leader and public servant.
To be the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO is to be more than a general. The military is full to over-flowing with 100's of generals. Clark, however, in his NATO role was the heir to Eisenhower:
*international diplomat,
*juggler of massive budgets and collections of human and material resources,
*strategist,
*spokesman (people forget that he dealt with press and understands many of their agendas), and
*humanitarian.
I think AWOL Shrub would look pathetic next to all that on the debate stage.
(Frankly, I think Clark needs to get better at tooting his own horn relative to his final military command, because many Dems I speak with don't grasp the scope of Clark's experience...as if being Supreme Commander amounts to moving little plastic tanks around on a battlefield map.)
In a sense this isn't a pure pitch, because I also see downsides to the general as a candidate, and have given $ not just to Clark, but also to Dean and Kucinich.
But I think the general is sort of the great unexpected integer (sp?) in Karl Rove's '04 equations. Not that Rove can't easily adjust. He'd attack Clark as viciously as any other Dem candidate who gets the nomination, obviously. But if nothing else, the nomination by Democrats of a charismatic and attractive general who wasn't even on anyone's radar a year ago might have a disruptive, perhaps even terminally unbalancing, effect on the whole Rove Hate-mongering Campaign Machine.
