Honorable Mentions

[Epitome22]

A GUIDE TO THE SECOND-TIER DEMOCRATIC '08 CONTENDERS.
Honorable Mentions
by Reihan Salam




The day after the election, Slate's William Saletan laid out the task facing Democrats: "Find a compelling salesman and get him ready to run for president in 2008. Put aside your quibbles about preparation, stature, expertise, nuance, and all that other hyper-sophisticated garbage that caused you to nominate Kerry." This, of course, is exactly what Republicans did after their congressional setbacks in 1998: They coalesced around Texas Governor George W. Bush, and they've never looked back. (For better or for worse, one hastens to add.) Saletan sees John Edwards as the logical choice, but he is hardly alone in having already declared his preference. Joining him are the always-reliable band of Hillary boosters, the battle-scarred Deaniacs, and the still fresh-faced and starry-eyed Obamaphiles.

Somehow this all seems too pat. There's something too insidery about the humdrum list of '08 contenders that already passes for conventional wisdom. As Taco Bell, makers of our nation's finest tacos, instructs us regularly, we need to "think outside the bun." Yes, the names on the short list are there for a reason, and many of those on the short list have, simply put, "nice buns," plus the name recognition it takes to make a splash. But will this be enough? Remember: As Ron Brownstein recently wrote, Democrats need a "red-blooded candidate," the kind of guy or gal who can "widen the electoral battlefield." With that in mind, TNR Online grades the 2008 Democratic contenders who haven't made anyone's shortlist--yet.

First, though, a warning: TNR Online doesn't believe in grade inflation. If you don't like your grade, suck it up, hunker down, and try studying for a change. Boozing it up with the popular kids is a load of laughs--until midterms.

In addition to letter grades, we've identified some areas of improvement for each candidate, based on the following key:

* Try growing a personality in the lab, with the aid of revolutionary advances in stem-cell research.

^ Accomplish much? Accomplishing something, anything, might help.

$ How will you finance your campaign, with a bake sale? Good luck.

@ No coattails? Listen pal, you're naked without coattails, and it's 30 below zero. You just frostbit the dust. What have you done for Democrats lately?

# There's such a thing as being ideologically out of step, but you're doing some kind of shim-sham freestyle tap dance while the rest of us are doing the foxtrot. Feliz Navidad, you maniac.

~ I know I'm from the Northeast or the West Coast, but I can't help it!


*

Phil Bredesen. The Democratic governor of Tennessee is a star. Let's start with the obvious: He is the Democratic governor of Tennessee. What's more, he was elected in 2002, a year during which the Republican tide was tsunami-like. What better way to widen the electoral battlefield than to nominate a proven vote-getter from deep in the heart of Red America?

It's a bit more complicated than that, of course. Bredesen, a native of upstate New York, began his political career in Massachusetts, several thousand miles from the mainstream. In Tennessee, he's been tarred by opponents as a Yankee, but to little effect. Having reinvented himself as a dynamic, go-getting face of the New South, he's managed to bridge a pesky regional divide in a way that might come in handy: Along with millions of other middle-of-the-road Americans, Bredesen picked up and migrated from the Frostbelt to the Sunbelt--a journey that parallels that of the Bush family, minus the inherited fortune.

Speaking of fortunes, Bredesen belongs to the choicest, most desirable of minority groups: the self-made millionaires--vastly more popular with the folks at home than those who've married irascible heiresses. Like fellow millionaire Jon Corzine, he's demonstrated fund-raising prowess and, more importantly, managerial talent. Alas, Bredesen made his filthy lucre in the less-than-popular HMO sector--but the same problem certainly hasn't stopped fellow Tennessean Bill Frist.

More troubling is that Bredesen suffers from the same malady that afflicted Tennessee Democrat Al Gore: He's seen as cerebral and standoffish, anything but a backslapping pol. During his successful run for mayor of Nashville in 1991, Bredesen described himself as "a fairly shy, fairly low-key person. ... I think I come across to people as fairly distant." This is touching. One only hopes Bredesen hasn't hired Naomi Wolf as a color consultant. That said, he comes from an appealingly humble background that ought to offset his Harvard pedigree.

Bredesen has also proved resilient. As a very young man, he vied for a State Senate seat in Massachusetts and lost. He ran twice for mayor of Nashville before winning on the third try. He also lost the first time he ran for governor of Tennessee, in 1994. But he returned to beat a bitterly divided Republican Party by swearing off a state income tax, pet project of his unpopular Republican predecessor, and promising a leaner, more efficient, and more responsive state government, with a particular focus on expanding access to health care for children. (And really, who is opposed to that?)

Since his 2002 victory, Bredesen has delivered, rescuing the state from an impending fiscal crisis by sharply cutting spending--not raising taxes--and demonstrating a knack for bipartisan problem-solving. This statement, from a Bredesen interview with Gannett's Larry Bivins, says it all: "My politics, more than Democrat or Republican, is small town." Of course, the left won't love his politics; but, then again, the left didn't love the Man from Hope either. If Bredesen doesn't make Democrats swoon, something has gone terribly wrong.

Overall Grade: A-
Things to Work On: * @



Mike Easley. Why stop at one conservative Democratic governor from the South? Easley was reelected two weeks ago in North Carolina, on the same day the very well-financed Erskine Bowles bit the dust in his Senate bid, and native son John Edwards failed to even come close to carrying the state for John Kerry. Unlike Bredesen, Easley was born in the South. Also unlike Bredesen, he's known as a real charmer. Not at the level of a Clinton or an Edwards, but enough to melt hearts with a sugary drawl. Easley began his career in public life as a famously tough prosecutor. (By night, he roamed the streets as Batman. No, not really. I digress.) As attorney general, like so many other enterprising New Democrats, he personally wrestled convicted felons into a headlock, or rather promoted a "throw away the key" approach to law enforcement.

When the 2000 gubernatorial race rolled around, and after quickly dispatching with a more liberal primary challenger, Easley looked like a shoe-in. The trouble was that the Democratic label, tough talk notwithstanding, proved a formidable obstacle, and Easley's opponent, Charlotte mayor Richard Vinroot, tried to tar him by association with President Clinton. This despite the fact that Easley conspicuously avoided any open involvement with the Gore-Lieberman ticket, declining even to appear at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. (While debating Vinroot, Easley was forced to say, emphatically: "I'm not Al Gore. I'm Mike Easley.") Easley was no pushover--he alleged, unfairly, that Vinroot was anti-police--but the Republicans' tactic worked, for a time, and the Easley campaign was reeling in the final weeks. In the end, though, Easley's rural roots carried him to victory with 52 percent of the vote.

Without a Democratic administration in Washington hanging around his neck, Easley spent his first term fighting for spending increases in health and education and dealing with a rapidly deteriorating fiscal picture, relying heavily on projected revenue from a planned state lottery. He suffered a political reversal during midterm legislative elections, when the GOP made gains. This led to six Republicans vying for their party's gubernatorial nod this year. Patrick Ballantine was the last man standing, and he was badly underfinanced, not to mention, get this, a bit too moderate. Despite economic difficulties, Easley was reelected two weeks ago with an even wider margin. Once again, he distanced himself from the national party and performed particularly well in the same rural areas that went for Republicans up and down the ballot.

Does Easley make sense as a Democratic presidential contender? His reluctance to identify with the national party suggests that he might have a tough time winning primaries outside North Carolina. Plus, the state is an anomaly in that it has been sending Democrats to the governor's mansion pretty consistently while trending Republican on the national level; as a result, it might not be the best bellwether. Still, Easley's rural, red-state appeal--increasingly unusual among Dems--probably makes him worth a look.

Overall Grade: B-
Things to Work On: @ #



Kathleen Sebelius. The fact that Sebelius won the governorship of Kansas, which gave 62 percent of its votes to President Bush this year, itself suggests that something strange was afoot in 2002. That something strange was a civil war within the state's Republican Party, which has raged for over a decade. In 1998, TNR editor Peter Beinart described this as a "battle for the 'burbs" that pitted an old guard of "frugal, tough-minded pragmatists" against a new generation of suburban evangelicals. Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, frames it as a conflict between affluent voters (he calls them "Mods") keenly focused on their economic interests, often embracing the same lifestyle liberalism as the "secular elites" on the coasts, and an army of lower-middle-class voters (he calls them "Cons") dedicated to their religious convictions to the exclusion of all else. This has allowed a handful of capable Democrats to cobble together a coalition with moderate Republicans to win elections. Sebelius is one of them.

Because Democrats have so few seats in Kansas's legislature, Sebelius has relatively little to show for her tenure thus far. She's proposed a tax package to finance school improvements, but it's gone nowhere. Moreover, Sebelius has failed to strengthen Democrats' numbers in the legislature. In fact, Democrats lost seats in the lower house in the 2004 election. As a result of these setbacks, it's probably unwise to bet the farm on Sebelius winning national office.

Overall Grade: D+
Things to Work On: ^ $ @

Jim Doyle. After knocking off Scott McCallum--successor to the legendary Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, who reshaped the state's politics during his long tenure as governor--Doyle has done his best to get out from under Thompson's mammoth shadow. Ever since Doyle's election as attorney general in 1990, the two men have feuded bitterly, thus adding an element of local rivalry to the race for Wisconsin's electoral votes this year. Thompson, an affable man under most circumstances and more popular to this day than Doyle in his home state, seemed determined to deliver the prize to Bush. That Doyle successfully defended his turf--unlike a host of would-be Democratic contenders--may merit him a closer look between now and 2008.

For whatever reason, Wisconsin's economic expansion has been fairly robust for the past year, with considerable, if not stellar, job growth and a slow but steady recovery in the manufacturing sector. The Bush camp certainly tried to claim credit. Doyle wouldn't let them. In a stunning display of self-sacrifice, he claimed the credit for himself. Nice work.

Some of Doyle's toughest battles have been with other Democrats in the state, particularly the ambitious attorney general, Peg Lautenschlager. His outspoken opposition to school choice has placed him at loggerheads with some Milwaukee Democrats, but this, coupled with political capital spent in opposition to a concealed weapons law, might strengthen his hand with some on the left of the party. At the same time, Doyle's efforts to close the state's budget gap have centered on reducing the size of the public sector workforce, he's emphasized his opposition to raising taxes, and he's gone out on a limb in favor of open trade with China. In other words, he's an ideologically mixed bag--which could make for a winning combination, particularly if Democrats find themselves polarized between liberals and moderates in 2008.

There's only one catch: Doyle won in 2002 with the help of one Ed Thompson, Tommy Thompson's eccentric brother. Doyle beat McCallum by a decent margin, 45 percent to 42 percent, but Brother Ed, on the Libertarian line, managed to garner a whopping 11 percent of the vote, much of which would have gone to McCallum. And Doyle's approval ratings are hardly earth-shattering. Worst of all, like a distressingly high proportion of promising Democrats, he has a degree from that bastion of Northeastern elitism, Harvard.

Overall Grade: C
Things to Work On: * ^ @



Ed Rendell. For whatever reason, Rendell isn't being taken very seriously as a presidential contender, despite being the moderate Democratic governor of a populous swing state that sends two Republicans to the U.S. Senate. It could be that he's seen as too much a product of the Northeast. Indeed, as a Jewish Ivy Leaguer born and raised in Manhattan, with all the brashness that comes with having been a long-serving district attorney in Philadelphia, he could be seen as too culturally alien for Southern or Midwestern consumption. Strangely enough, Republicans coalescing around Rudolph Giuliani, another New York-bred former prosecutor with a mercurial streak a mile wide, don't seem to accept this logic. Like Giuliani, Rendell is known for his outsized personality, which could be a winning formula against taciturn, tight-lipped competition. There's no doubt that he's charming, and that he helped deliver a key swing state in 2000 and 2004.

On the other side of the ledger, Rendell was lucky to win the governorship. A 53 to 44 percent margin might not look narrow to the untrained eye, but Rendell was running against lackluster Attorney General Mike Fisher and not incumbent Governor Mark Schweiker. Schweiker, popular successor to the very popular Tom Ridge, may well have thrashed Rendell, sending him howling back to Philadelphia. But Schweiker, bless his heart, wanted to spend more time with his family, and he meant it. Rare in this business, but what can you do. He handed Pennsylvania to Rendell on a platter. The Democrat scored lopsided margins in the Philadelphia suburbs, where pro-choice Republicans (now known as "Rendellicans") crossed over in large numbers rather than vote for the pro-life Fisher. Rendell didn't win by taking a majority in the culturally conservative center of the state. This is like winning big in the blue states and getting clocked everywhere else. In Pennsylvania, this makes you governor; in the United States, thanks to the Electoral College, this makes you a loser. Also, is there any way for Rendell to replicate his success with suburban Republicans in areas of the country that aren't as polarized by the politics of abortion? At least for now, a Republican legislature has made it difficult for him to rack up marquee accomplishments. The concern is that Rendell, with his outsized personality, is all cheese and no steak.

Overall Grade: B
Things to Work On: ~



Dick Durbin. If the left of the party demands a forthright and aggressive advocate, Durbin might be just what the doctor ordered. Though he's in the Senate, toxic for most presidential nominees, he has the combative personality it takes to separate himself from the pack. Now that he's been named minority whip, he's going to become even more visible. His origins in gritty East St. Louis make it difficult to caricature him as a spoiled son of privilege, thus lending authenticity to his hard-edged brand of economic populism. If left-wing Democrats are right that "progressive centrism" will prove a nonstarter with white working-class voters, then expect a Durbin boomlet.

Overall Grade: C-
Things to Work On: ^ $ # @



Phil Angelides. California's state treasurer is largely unknown outside the Golden State. Right now, he's gearing up to challenge Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. Angelides's main beef with Schwarzenegger is that the governor's budget proposal simply shifts the debt burden in lieu of tackling it through increased taxes. He's also called for reversing the infamous Proposition 13, which sharply limited California property taxes. If by some mysterious turn of events there's a groundswell for higher taxes over the next four years, Angelides might be the right man to sell that message on a national scale. Known for a zesty speaking style and outsized ambition, it's faintly possible that he'll beat Schwarzenegger in 2006, instantly propelling him to national name recognition. That, plus megabucks derived from years spent as a real estate developer, might make him a formidable player. Stranger things have happened--but not much stranger.

Overall Grade: D-
Things to Work On: ^ @ ~



Jennifer Granholm. Another candidate who might be helped along by Schwarzenegger's national stature is the British Columbia-born governor of Michigan (also, disturbingly, a graduate of Harvard Law School). If Schwarzenegger devotees manage to pass a constitutional amendment to get their man on the presidential ballot in 2008, Granholm might make a serious run for the White House. She has impressed a wide array of journalists, including TNR's Jonathan Cohn, a man known for his nose for political talent. (See Dean, Howard.)

Unfortunately, like many of the Democratic governors on this list, she performed less well than expected against an unimpressive Republican nominee in 2002. Just as Rendell relied on the Philadelphia suburbs to win in an otherwise reddish state, Granholm received overwhelming support in Detroit, without which she would have lost.

Granholm has won praise for dealing aggressively with an appalling fiscal situation, and for her political moderation. Otherwise, a Republican legislature and a less-than-stellar economic picture have made passing bold initiatives tough. Assuming the stars align and Granholm is even eligible for the presidency, it's far too easy to imagine her getting--wait for it--"terminated." (I am so ashamed.)

Overall Grade: B-
Things to Work On: ^ @



Mark Warner. The Virginia governor has hardly gone unnoticed (yes, we're cheating by including him on this list) but it's safe to say that he ought to be noticed more often. He's very clearly positioning himself for higher office--serving as chairman of the National Governors Association doesn't hurt--and while he's not yet in the first tier of would-be presidential candidates, he soon will be.

Best known for his rural appeal, partly a function of his willingness to conspicuously embrace conservative positions on gun rights and abortion, Warner is the first Democrat to be elected governor of Virginia since his mentor, L. Douglas Wilder, another moderate with national ambitions. After Wilder left office, his brief presidential run having fizzled, Republicans, including the very popular George Allen, dominated state politics for the next eight years.

Despite Warner's whisker-thin victory in 2001, Republicans continue to hold a firm grip on the legislature and the state's electoral votes, the increasingly leftward tilt of northern Virginia notwithstanding. Like Bredesen and Easley, Warner has been swimming against a Republican tide. Perhaps his major accomplishment was to split Virginia's Republicans down the middle, with zealous anti-tax rebels on one side, working against him, and pragmatists from infrastructure-hungry growing suburbs working with him, cooperating on various "pro-business" initiatives.

However promising Warner may seem, there are serious risks. He is, for one thing, a self-made multimillionaire with a degree from Harvard--shades of Bredesen. But when not combined with Bredesen's self-effacement, this isn't always political gold. Warner won the gubernatorial race by spending massive amounts of money against then-Attorney General Mark Earley--and by a far narrower margin than had been anticipated. This was partly attributable to the 9/11 attacks, which happened two months before the election, but also to the strength of the state GOP and Warner's own weaknesses. Just as Wesley Clark, a charismatically challenged cerebral type, was no plainspoken Eisenhower, Warner is not the second coming of Bill Clinton by a longshot. That said, he's won some tough battles and is worthy of consideration.

Overall Grade: B+
Things to Work On: *



Tom Vilsack. The governor of Iowa has made no secret of his ambitions. Of the Dems on Kerry's rumored vice-presidential shortlist, Vilsack was the only sitting governor. He's also the only one still in office. As Vilsack told The Des Moines Register last Sunday, "I think I've got some ideas and thoughts I'd like to share." Which is fantastic. Ideas and thoughts are always welcome. But before declaring Vilsack a shoe-in for the Oval Office, one ought to keep a few things in mind.

Vilsack has thrived as governor of a socially conservative, Midwestern state, and his life story--he is the adopted son of alcoholic parents--is inspiring to say the least. He has a reputation for competence and, better yet, political courage. Vilsack's courage has been particularly evident in his unpopular stands on social issues--vetoing a waiting period on abortions and vetoing an effort to repeal an anti-discrimination law that protected gays and lesbians. The catch: Could more effective, charismatic opponents have used this against him? Vilsack's victories in Iowa have been solid--52 percent in 1998 and 53 percent in 2002--but he's run against poor candidates in both cases. In 1998, for instance, he was at a distinct disadvantage in terms of name recognition against Representative Jim Ross Lightfoot; but Lightfoot was a very, very strange fellow and a poor campaigner by any standard. On top of that, the Iowa economy has seen better days.

Overall Grade: C+
Things to Work On: @


*

Final thought: It's true. We've been harsh. Perhaps too harsh. But it's only because we care. Years from now, when these folks are on the campaign trail, they'll thank us profusely. And when, whether in 2008 or 2012 or 3076, one of them is elected president, we fully expect to be granted suzerainty over Hawaii.

[Drbio]

I'm hoping they go kerry again. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]