25 thoughts on “Any minute now?”

  3. I once had a philosophy class in College (prob’ly got a Gentleman’s C, too!), where the professor would open his lecture with some silly broad questions that somehow related to his impending talk. I recall his favorite:
    “Didya ever hear the sound of one hand clapping”?
    I never understood what the hell he meant.
    But, nearly 20 years later, I have my answer:
    “Yes, Professor I’ve finally heard it! The collective response of America when Dick Gephardt is chosen as Kerry’s running mate!:)

  4. Go Gephardt! The most liberal Senator in the Senate coupled with ideoligically empty, dinosaur-liberal Gephardt. A real dream team.

  5. They picked Kerry didn’t they? 😉
    Point. And ouch.
    Kerry was number four on my list. Number four. There weren’t that many others left on that list before we started hitting Kucinich territory. And I still blame Terry McAuliffe for all of this. Before the compressed primary schedule, there was a full month between Iowa and NH; post-McAuliffe, there was a week. That week was dominated by two and only two stories: Kerry’s Iowa win and the Dean Scream. No one took notice of Edwards, a scant three points behind Kerry, or Clark, who right before Iowa was leading in NH.
    After Kerry broke out in Iowa, the party men were so thrilled to see Dean go down they rallied behind him immediately; there was plenty of nasty talk about how Edwards should drop out of the race early “for the good of the party.” Kerry never got the full frontrunner scrutiny until he had the nomination locked up.
    What I’m saying is: Kerry was an enormous fluke. This doesn’t reflect on him as a person, as a leader, or as a potential president. But it sure as hell reflects on him as a candidate. Any campaign that didn’t have its head jammed up its ass wouldn’t let Gephardt within five hundred yards of the short list.
    Now, I can’t believe that everyone on Kerry’s team is an idiot, that they haven’t looked at Gephardt and Edwards side by side, that they aren’t reading op-ed after op-ed saying Gephardt is a walking disaster without processing this information themselves. So if inclined to make a bet, I’d bet Edwards. It’s the fact that they were considering Gephardt at all – which no really sane campaign would have done – that throws me off.
    Of course, Moe and Tac are rooting for the other team, so of course you guys want Gephardt on Kerry’s ticket. So I take everything said by you guys with a grain of salt.

  7. “Of course, Moe and Tac are rooting for the other team, so of course you guys want Gephardt on Kerry’s ticket.”
    Actually, if it were up to me I would have picked Lieberman. Biden would have done in a pinch. Or any other Democratic hawk (although Gephardt’s not as bad as some).
    Moe
    PS: If you don’t trust that I’ll give my honest opinion to the best of my ability, Iron Lungfish, there’s about umpteen million websites out there that have no connection with me whatsoever. I’m sure at least oneof them talks about politics…

  8. I trust you to give your honest opinion, I’m just sayin’ back when all I saw was you and Tac, I figured maybe some wishful thinking got involved. (For the record, a “winky face” probably should have been at the end of my post to indicate I wasn’t seriously challenging your honesty, but I’m morally opposed to emoticons.)
    Then I went over to Kos’s, and there he’s got this long apologetic “Gephardt: He’s Not A COMPLETE Douchebag” post up, and I start to shudder involuntarily.
    So I think it’s safe to say the wishful thinking may be on my part.

  9. So far as I can see, only one person who has been thinking of voting for a Democrat has commented on this thread – any others? I’m curious to know the thoughts of people who are thinking of voting for Kerry, before this thread fills up with the thoughts of those already determined not to… I don’t learn very much that way, you see! 🙂

  10. “After Kerry broke out in Iowa, the party men were so thrilled to see Dean go down they rallied behind him immediately”
    I didn’t think it was party officials, exactly; my read was that ordinary rank and file Democrats are absolutely determined to defeat Bush (rightly, in my view), and wanted to pick someone electable (again, right, though that would never be my only criterion), and (here comes the big mistake) took the fact that he had won in Iowa as a sign that he was the most electable (oops!). I did a lot of work in the primaries, and the eagerness to get through the nominating process so that we could get on with the real task at hand, which for Democrats was defeating Bush, was amazing. Kerry was never my first choice — as far as I was concerned, there was Clark, and then the rest of the more or less serious candidates, and then Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley-Braun, and the gulf between each of these three tiers and its neighbors was immense. But hey, he’s a reasonable guy, and at the moment that seems like an awful lot. As long as he nominates someone who passes the laugh test for VP, I really don’t care who it is.
    My standards are so low at the moment: all I ask is someone who has some passing acquaintance with the constitution (and thus doesn’t claim that the President can set laws and treaties aside at will and/or detain citizens indefinitely without trial), will take some precautions to avoid having our soldiers engage in torture, will not go out of his way to make the citizens of other countries hate us, and will not destroy our fiscal situation. I suppose not actually damaging either our environmental laws or social security would be a plus, but hey, I’m not picky.

  11. “I trust you to give your honest opinion, I’m just sayin’ back when all I saw was you and Tac, I figured maybe some wishful thinking got involved.”
    Oh. Well, don’t I look all stupid and needlessly beliigerent, now. As for Rep. Gephardt… shoot, when was the last time a Veep pick ever decide an election, anyway? 🙂

  12. shoot, when was the last time a Veep pick ever decide an election, anyway? 🙂
    Y’know, Jon Stewart a week or so ago was on Larry King talking about how George H W Bush beat Dukakis with Dan Quayle, and how picking Quayle was Bush thumbing his nose and saying “I can beat you losers with this dummy hanging around my neck.” And I try to think of it that way. But then I get these hallucinatory campaign posters running through my mind: Kerry-Gephardt, Kerry-Gephardt, Kerry-Gephardt, and I freeze in mortal terror.

  14. I doubt Kerry will pick Gephardt. He would be a poor selection in any case, and his long paper trail opens up too many attack opportunities. All the talk could easily be for show.
    So I’m betting Edwards or a surprise choice of some sort. I think a surprise choice would be poor tactics, though. You do this sort of thing when you think you’re far behind and need to take a big risk to get back in the game. Think Mondale-Ferraro or Dole-Kemp. That’s not Kerry’s situation.

  15. “So far as I can see, only one person who has been thinking of voting for a Democrat has commented on this thread – any others?”
    I already gave my opinion on this in Moe’s last Gephardt-as-veep post. It should take just a moment to use OW’s search function to find that… oh.
    😉

  16. ” As for Rep. Gephardt… shoot, when was the last time a Veep pick ever decide an election, anyway?”
    1960. And Mondale helped a bit in 1976, and Gore helped a bit in 1992. (Remember when Gore was the super-honest wonkish boy scout respected by all, back before the Machine mauled him?)
    To save James the trouble, I think Gephardt would be a crap choice, and I’d be quite disheartened if Kerry picks him. Not disheartened enough to not vote for the ticket — not even close — but I’d certainly sigh heavily.
    Despite the very sound argument that the battleground will be the midwest, not the south, I’m doubtful Gephardt would help there more than Edwards or Vilsack, and might even help less; in general, the man has the charisma of a sack of potatos, and his record is undistinguished, despite being so long.
    I wish I could get a penny from every non-Democratic numbskull who has been stupid enough to push the “it’s going to be Hillary!” line (and won’t I look foolish tomorrow if Kerry astonishes us? — but it won’t happen — no way). That’s out in looney land, and anyone who has said otherwise shouldn’t be listened to again on Democratic politics for at least four years.

  17. Instead of my previous incoherent “noooooo!!!!” I should perhaps explain my problems with Gephardt.
    1) He’s wrong on trade.
    2) He’s an old school tax and spender. His health plan was not only worse than Dean’s and Kerry’s, but actively lousy. So little bang for the buck that I would probably vote against it in a referendum.
    3) He’s very weak on the environment. I don’t think he’s especially strong on civil liberties, though I have less basis for that.
    4) A biggie: I opposed the Iraq war. Gephardt is more responsible than any other Democrat for the lack of serious Congressional debate or opposition, and I am pretty well convinced, with him as with Kerry, that his actions were determined by his presidential ambitions. This was back when it was clear that some sort of Congressional resolution would pass, but the question was what. Joe Biden and Dick Lugar had a version that required Bush to get U.N. approval or come back to Congress and explain why Saddam was a threat to the U.S. requiring immediate action–I can’t remember whether another vote was required, not required, or if it was left ambiguous. It’s pretty unlikely that this would have prevented the war; Bush had made the decision long, long ago. But it was the best feasible alternative and might have changed how things went.
    Biden and Lugar were struggling hard to get the votes in the Senate. Then Dick Gephardt announced his support of the Bush administration’s version of the resolution–the blank check that passed, more or less. This effectively killed Biden-Lugar and ended the chance of a real Congressional debate.
    I don’t know if it was in that speech or later that Gephardt explained he supported the war because “September 11 was the ultimate wake up call”, endorsing the administration’s false link of Saddam to Al Qaeda–he continued to do this throughout the campaign.
    Some of the more hawkish senators–even Lieberman, who I can’t stand–do at least seem to take foreign policy more seriously than most of Congress. Your Joe Bidens, your Bob Grahams (of course Graham opposed the Iraq war, but I think he’s pretty hawkish overall.) Gephardt doesn’t.
    5) He was not an effective leader in the House. Not only have the Democrats stayed in the minority, but Delay has totally silenced them & re-made the way the House does business in an appalling way. I don’t know to what extent Gephardt could’ve prevented this, but he either didn’t try or was completely ineffectual. Pelosi is doing a much better job these days.
    6) More important than any of the above, where the vice presidency is concerned: he does nothing for this ticket. Except for the “Massachusetts liberal” label he has all of Kerry’s weaknesses. Boring. A Washington insider. A lack of charisma. No appeal to moderates, no excitement for the party base.
    Missouri is kind of a swing state, but Gephardt is from St. Louis and is not popular in the rest of the state. Outside of Missouri, there is no apparent regional appeal. He came in fourth place in Iowa, behind candidates from Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Vermont. Union appeal? It’s not a weakness of Kerry’s, and it’s not that great a strength of Gephardt’s. Dean got almost as many endorsements; Edwards and Kerry, if I remember correctly, got more support from union households.
    I can’t think of any group of voters with whom Gephardt helps Kerry more than Edwards. Not one.
    7) Also: a vice presidential candidate often becomes the party’s next presidential nominee. Gephardt’s an even worse 2008 or 2012 presidential candidate than 2004 vice presidential candidate.
    8) Finally. (foot stomp.) I will NOT see our candidate lose the vice presidential debate to a malevolent, secretive, foul-mouthed cyborg for the second election in a row! I do not even want a boring draw.
    Yes, I am exaggerating that last one for comic effect. But really.
    I know the CW is that vice presidential candidates don’t usually decide elections. It’s probably correct. But this is likely to be a very close election, and a Gephardt choice, in addition to being bad in itself, would be a sign of a SERIOUSLY tin ear in the candidate and his staff.

  19. Katherine — if our candidate lost to the Boy Prince, it would be the first time, not the second. Otherwise, I second everything you wrote.
    That being said, however, when I get back from travelling in a month or so, I will be working my heart out in support of Kerry and whomever he picks. He could choose My Friend Flicka and it wouldn’t faze me. I’ve already gotten over the serious heartbreak of watching my candidate lose the nomination to someone I do not particularly like (and I’m originally from MA, so I know whereof I speak.) But every time such thoughts enter my head these days, I just think of Bush and Cheney and what they are doing to the country I love and my motivation rises, phoenix-like, from the ashes. I mean: I have been working in presidential elections since the mid 1970s, when I was a precinct captain who was too young to vote, and i have never, never worked like this before. And everyone I talk to seems to feel the same.

  20. Katherine, your summary is completely accurate, of course, with the sole exception of the following, which I think is explainable in different fashion, though still entirely possible to disagree with, of course:

    I don’t know if it was in that speech or later that Gephardt explained he supported the war because “September 11 was the ultimate wake up call”, endorsing the administration’s false link of Saddam to Al Qaeda–he continued to do this throughout the campaign.

    It wasn’t my take, as I recall, that Gephardt was “endorsing… the… link of Saddam to al Qaeda,” but simply stating — and I repeat again, one can perfectly well disagree with this, but it’s a different thing to disagree with — the notion that September 11th made clear that there was a great terrorist/surprise attack threat out there, and therefore preventative war, not just pre-emptive war, was now reasonable to contemplate.

    I may have missed something, to be sure, but if you have any quotes from Gephardt that indicated that he bought a direct Saddam-colloborated-in-9/11 scenario, I’d quite like to see them, because I surely did miss such.

  21. That may have been what he meant; I don’t know. But at a time when the polls show you that 70% of the public mistakenly believe that Saddam probably was at least partly responsible for 9/11….what he meant is one thing, what he implied to the average voter is another. That line was careless at best.
    Well, I still think it will be Edwards.
    I donated to Kerry on Thursday just in case it is Gephardt, and my resolution to suck it up and actively support Kerry falters for a while. Remember, he’ll be using public funds after the convention so the time to donate is now.

  22. But at a time when the polls show you that 70% of the public mistakenly believe that Saddam probably was at least partly responsible for 9/11….what he meant is one thing, what he implied to the average voter is another.

    Again, I don’t think he implied that, though I stress again that I’m perfectly prepared to find that I’m wrong, if you have a quote for me to revisit and consider.
    But I agree with every single other thing you’ve said about Gephardt, with the sole exception that, and I’ll emphasize this, not only am I not aware of any reason to have taken his Iraq stance and comments in the way you are here characterizing them, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of the idea (not, of course, that he wasn’t crucial in undermining Democratic alternatives to Bush; I’m speaking solely of this “he was endorsing a Saddam-was-behind-9/11-connection” notion). This may, and I mean this sincerely, be simply a case of my having missed a relatively common reaction and interpretation, but all I can say is that every single other criticism you’ve made of Gephardt is one I’m signed on with, and is commonplace, and found everywhere, and may be found in a million places.
    That Gephardt ever endorsed the notion that Saddam was connect to September 11th is a notion I’ve never seen before.
    So I’m now redoubled in wondering if you might possibly, at your leisure, please provide a cite or two, as you’ve aroused my curiosity to resolve the truth of this.
    What some voter might have inferred, of course, is different than what he may have implied; clearly, at the least, you inferred such an interpretation.

    That line was careless at best.

    Perhaps so; as I’ve made clear, yours is the first I’ve heard of such a charge; is this something you’ve heard or read other people bouncing back and forth, and if so, might I ask where?
    Is there any possibility that since you might not agree with the notion that September 11th implied that preventive war is now a reasonable notion (it’s certainly debatable, at the least), that you might not have considered that that was what he was talking about, assumed he was implying a direct Sadda-9/11 connection, and therefore assumed that’s what everyone else understood him to be saying? Or am I just being wacky here because I missed some speeches of his?
    I’m just trying to figure out if this one thing is a widespread belief — and a true one, or not — about Gephardt, or something more limited; can you help me here?

  23. Just butting in briefly to thank Gary and Katherine (and others) for the “going to vote for Kerry but hope he doesn’t pick Gephardt” info. 🙂

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