There has been some speculation about the connection between Tom Vilsack and Hillary Clinton. Perhaps some of the ’sack staff will move to the Clinton camp, and that would be a huge boost to Clinton if it happened. But while the staff might go to Clinton, it is way too early to assume that Vilsack’s supporters will automatically flow that direction, too. So the question remains: who will fill the Vilsack vacuum here? Who gains the most politically from the drop-out?
That’s a question that requires two answers, because, here in Iowa, we have gotten to know two different sides of Tom Vilsack. The first Tom Vilsack is the conservative DLC Democrat who was our governor for eight years. He was well-liked by moderates because of his political positions, and he was well-liked by many progressives because he was able to win. It is safe to say that the majority of Vilsack’s caucus support over the past few months has come from folks who got to know Vilsack as a moderate, and these folks are going to be looking for another moderate, probably with some executive experience.
The second Tom Vilsack is the McGovern-esque presidential candidate he had started to become over the past few months. He ran far to the left on the Iraq war, calling for immediate withdrawal and a cutoff of all funding in Congress, and he fashioned himself an expert on environmental issues in general (and renewable energy in particular). He was getting some traction on AirAmerica Radio and on certain liberal blogs (although clearly that wasn’t enough) and using “Courage to Create Change” as his tagline. In many ways, his campaign might have hoped to be 2008’s Howard Dean, another candidate who had a somewhat moderate record as a governor but who broke out as the antiwar left’s poster candidate during his campaign. (Vilsack was even using Blue State Digital, the team that handled Dean’s online strategy 2003-2004, for his web stuff.)
So these are two different voids. In Iowa, though, it is the moderate Vilsack who attracted most of the supporters. So the question is, which candidate matches up the best?
Ironically, Evan Bayh and Mark Warner would probably have gained the most. Unfortunately for them, they both dropped out months ago, perhaps because Vilsack was sucking up all of the moderate governor oxygen. (Yeah, in Bayh’s case, he has Senatorial experience, too, but it was his experience as Indiana Governor that he seemed to be emphasizing to distinguish himself.)
Without Bayh and Warner, it seems that the most likely to gain will be Bill Richardson, but he doesn’t draw as many obvious comparisons to Vilsack as Bayh and Warner would have. If Richardson doesn’t have an excellent Iowa field campaign soon, he will lose whatever advantage he might have gained, because folks who were comfortable settling on Vilsack this early could be looking for another candidate to settle on soon. He has a strong Iowa field director already, but that won’t be enough. Maybe this will encourage him to buy access to the state party’s VAN (the super-high-tech voter file), which is the mark of any serious Iowa Caucus campaign.
Either way, all of the non-”rock star” candidates must be breathing a sigh of relief today. Tomorrow, we’ll find out which one is “rock solid” enough to fill Vilsack’s two pairs of shoes.
February 23rd, 2007
In Iowa, presidential candidates are no doubt already scrambling for high-profile endorsements. Since Tom Harkin took the relatively safe route and endorsed the home team very early, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at our Democratic Congressmen in Iowa to see who they might pick.
Of course, the decision of whether to make an endorsement at all is relevant to the discussion. During the 2004 campaign, Leonard Boswell (IA-03) did not make any endorsement, instead remaining neutral and showing up at any major candidate’s campaign stops that he could get to for a bit of extra face time. This year, he might be planning to do the same. He already showed up at Hillary’s event in Des Moines:
Mrs. Clinton was introduced by Representative Leonard Boswell, who drew a huge ovation when he called her “a great first lady,” and then noted that the day had meaning for women in his family and, surely, many women in the audience.
I don’t blame Boswell for remaining neutral, because it may well be in his political interest. But with questions about whether he even plans to run for reelection, it remains to be seen whether he will pick a horse.
In 2004, Bruce Braley (IA-01) was an Edwards activist, as his biography on the DCCC’s site points out. Perhaps he will endorse the fellow trial lawyer again, but so far he seems not to have announced one way or the other. Getting elected to Congress can sometimes change your allegiances, after all.
Dave Loebsack (IA-02), somewhat predictably, was a Deaniac in 04. The bottom of his online CV at Cornell College notes that he was “one of the Linn County coordinators for Howard Dean for President,” and other sources tell us he was a precinct captain. (It’s also worth noting that Loebsack was a Bill Bradley activist in 2000, for whatever that’s worth.) Since Dean isn’t running again, of course, it isn’t clear how this will impact his decision this time around. Either way, if he endorses a candidate, it is likely that it will be someone on the left.
And while I could opine about how Steve King might endorse Tom Tancredo’s TEAM AMERICA, I’m certainly not an expert on such things, so I’ll leave it at the Democrats.
January 27th, 2007
In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s announcement that she’s running for President, there has been another avalanche of articles on the competition to be the Democratic nominee in 2008. However, they all seem to think that there are only two candidates running, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Every other candidate is almost totally neglected. There are obvious reasons to do this, Obama and Clinton are the two most well known candidates and it’s always easier to boil things down to two options but the problem is that it’s a year out. Already just about every different branch of the media, from a major newspaper to a major blog to the BBC is making this a two-horse race. One can imagine that John Edwards must be completely exasperated. First, in 2004, (as detailed in this subscription only New Republic article) he and his inner circle believe that Howard Dean’s scream kept him from getting any media attention for his strong second place finish in Iowa. Now, the media is ignoring him because he doesn’t fit the plotline of the Hillary vs. Obama competition. But Edwards comes off relatively lightly compared to Tom Vilsack who will be very surprised to discover that his wife is a newspaper columnist named Ann according to this article in The Observer. And as for Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson (who is declaring his candidacy this morning on ABC’s This Week), the only way they can get any media attention right now is if they audition for American Idol. One hopes that this attempt to artificially narrow the field will not last long once the initial burst of attention for Clinton and Obama is past. Caucusgoers and primary voters deserve as many choices as possible and narrowing the field nearly a year before the first caucus is in no one’s interest.
January 21st, 2007
