You know what my first thought was after reading this?

"Well, we could do a lot worse."

Sad state of affairs.

I think it is more interesting to speculate who the Dems will put up. Kerry (sp?), Lieberman, and Dean won't get another shot as Dems rarely rerun losers. Gore doesn't want it. And Hillary Clinton could be beaten by a shaved lemur whose only campaign slogan is, "I'm not a Clinton." (That isn't a Clinton bash; I've never met anyone who actually liked her, i.e. found her charismatic, and she has too much Clinton baggage without Bill's slickness to be a legitimate contender.) Finally, Barack Obama isn't ready for a run. So who do the Dems have?

Money+War+Fear+Tax Cuts+Popular Family-Democratic Contender = President Jeb Bush.

If we have the sense to find a western or southern governor to run, we have a shot. And that means Gov. Bill Richardson of NM is a real possibility.

Oh, and neither party particularly re-runs losers. The last Republican loser to get another nomination was Nixon, ten elections ago. The last Democrat was Stevenson, 13 elections ago. The nomination system has changed completely since those guys.

This puts me in mind of a story that my wife can confirm as she was with me. (Although, as she identifies herself as a Democrat, she has a slightly different take on it.)

In 2000, I was in a bar/restaraunt in Foxburg, PA, 75 miles north of Pittsburgh with my family. This is a rural part of PA, with lots of guys that 40 years ago would have populated the mills and mines, you know, real blue collar kinda gents. There were lots of "John Deere" and "NASCAR" hats in the room and gun racks in the trucks outside.

There was a TV in the dining room and one in the bar, and whatever was on was interrupted for a special news report. Katherine Harris (remember her?) came on and announced she was releasing Florida's electoral votes for Bush.

The entire place burst into spontaneous applause.

These are the guys that used to BE the Democratic party, you know, "I believe in a fair shake for the working man" types. The Dems have lost these guys, and thus, will continue to lose elections.

(The obvious counter-argument to this is, "Well, in 2004, if Ohio had gone the other way, Kerry'd be president, and these blue collar guys aren't what cost the Dems Ohio." True, but should it have been that close?)

Thus I think that whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be the President.

I still can't understand how the Dems managed to lose the working man. Well, in a way I do; it took thirty years of weakening unions, good working class jobs moving overseas, and a culture war. But still.

Looks fairly likely that Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is thinking about a 2008 run. Got to attend a fairly small (40 or so people) breakfast with him a few weeks ago, and while I've not yet done followup research on him, he struck me as reasonably sane and a good candidate who's actually putting some thought into why Kerry lost. But I'm a lot closer to libertarian than left, so Elmo's mileage may vary considerably.

Depends on whether you're talking civil-liberties libertarian, which I'm, or minarchist-libertarian, which I'm not; I believe government can effectively solve a variety of large problems.

Focusing on why Kerry lost is probably not helpful.

We probably disagree on thinking about why Kerry lost; I think it boiled down to fundamental problems with how the Dems present themselves and a steadily shrinking in terms of populace voter base, and Warner seems to be thinking about it in a similar way as a Dem governor in a red state. He's also in favor of applying some business aspects to government, which he claimed to have successfully done in VA (again, I've not researched him yet outside of what I heard at the breakfast), but he does also think government is the right approach for at least some large problems. I suspect he's more centrist than you'd prefer though.

Mark Evanier suggests Gov. Mark Warner (Virginia). I don't know, but the Salon article he references makes a good case.