Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

What, I had a blog? I hope you were waiting for awesome political commentary, because that's what you're getting. No, I'm not talking about Jim Pederson's surge in the Arizona Senate race, or Pete Ricketts' demand that hard-working Nebraskans pay an extra 30% on everything they buy.

Some people will tell you it's way too early to be thinking about the next presidential race. Those people are assholes. No, it's never too early to begin thinking about the next presidential election, especially now, as the candidates begin seriously positioning themselves for the presidential primary campaign in 2007 and early 2008. I often suggest to people that being in New Hampshire during a midterm election year is a terrific way to meet presidential candidates: they hold events that draw 50 people, at most, and afterwards they're usually more than happy to stand around and meet the activists they're going to have to impress once they announce their campaign. That's how I had an extended conversation with Howard Dean in summer 2002. Sure, it was about skiing, but it's because I waited 15 minutes after his speech to have a chance to talk. Also I didn't mind talking to him in front of C-SPAN. That's how you win ballgames.

At this point, I'd love to know what the candidates and their political folks must be considering. How do you make plans for a many-candidate presidential primary this far out? You don't even know for sure who's running. I imagine most candidates are currently planning their affirmative campaigns, like how John Edwards is running as an outsider focused on poverty this time and Mike Huckabee is running on cultural conservatism, the need to stay healthy and executive experience. (Don't get your hopes up; I don't have any inside information.) But your game plan is going to depend on who else is running and what that means for the shape of the primary. Right now that's just guessing; you never know who's going to be the next Howard Dean. (Although here I have to point out that most of the press coverage in early 2003 asked who would be the next John McCain.)

So I've been thinking lately about these candidate dynamics after hearing rumblings from a few potential candidates who are serious but will not end up winning. Tom Daschle knows how to run the country, but he was never a wildly popular Senate Democratic Leader, and he just lost his last reelection bid. Mike Gravel was an actual U.S. Senator from Alaska, but he hasn't held any public office since he lost his own Senate reelection campaign in 1980. I would include John Kerry and Wesley Clark in there too, but that could be my residual political bitterness talking, so I'll leave them out for now. In any event, it's a good group.

Chris Dodd is a little different, though, if only because The Note reported in 2003 (link long gone to history, sorry) that members of Congress actually did plead for him to run for president, as opposed to the other candidates who just pretend there's some groundswell of support. Still, despite the fact that he remains the only 2008 presidential contender I've seen with his shirt off, I am not convinced what about the Chris Dodd presidential campaign catches fire. Nonetheless, the Hartford Courant story on his announcement makes a fascinating point:

He overcame early skepticism by many party leaders outside New England and proved to be a popular partisan speaker around the country, particularly with minority constituencies.

Now, Joe Trippi is going around saying Hillary Clinton is a lock to win the Democratic nomination simply because she's so popular with African-Americans (which is true) that she basically has almost every state locked up already. Normally I'd just consider it another consultant's pet theory on 2008, but Dodd's entry into the race has me wondering if more people are buying that idea than just Joe Trippi. Chris Dodd himself probably thinks he's being begged to run by people because they actually think he'd make a good president, but I have an unsubstantiated crackpot suspicion that he's being recruited to break up the African-American vote. Again, it's just wild speculation, but there are a lot of DC Democrats who don't want Hillary Clinton to win the primaries, and they think this stuff through. So that's my irresponsible guesswork on 2008. For today.

I will, however, make one bold yet eventually provable prediction. This campaign is going to be different from last time in that there will be several nationally known candidates when the campaign starts in 2007, whereas in 2003 that was only even plausible for Joe Lieberman, and we saw how that went. Most candidates launched their campaigns in late December 2002 or January 2003 last time, but I don't expect that this time around. There will be a glut of candidates and an advantage in appearing above the fray, so I suspect any candidate who can afford to skip the early fundraising and politicking will hold off for months. That means it could be summer or early fall before McCain, Clinton and maybe Kerry and/or Edwards announce their bids. (I think Hillary Clinton especially has to prolong her pretense of focusing only on her job as senator for a long as possible.) But that's not my bold prediction.

Again, I think Clinton and McCain are more or less locks to wait out the campaign season as long as they can, simply because the moment they announce they turn from national leaders into just politicians. In the meantime, I predict either Edwards or Kerry will wise up and decide that the best way to present themselves as a major national figure is to join Clinton and McCain in not announcing their candidacy next winter either. As a result, the press will start dividing the candidates up into tiers based upon the idea that when you announce signifies how much of a longshot you are. If this shakes out early enough, maybe everyone will hold off on the early campaigning, and we might even be spared a presidential campaign that starts a year before the New Hampshire primary. And wouldn't that be wonderful?