Nick Confessore in The American Prospect, "based on talks with some of my sources and colleagues," contends that "conservatives clearly think [Clark] is the most electable Democrat in the race. (Unlike some liberals, they believe -- and I suspect they're right -- that Clark's Republican past will actually be a huge asset, especially in the general election.)" As I have been known to say myself.
Since The Washington Post made a similar argument on behalf of Dick Gephardt yesterday, my Clark/Gephardt ticket may be getting some traction.
Today everybody seems to be weighing in on Clark's positive demographics, while criticizing Dean's. The Carpetbagger Report provides a tally of Congressional endorsements to date:
Dick Gephardt -- 32 endorsements
John Kerry -- 18 endorsements
Joe Lieberman -- 13 endorsements
Wesley Clark -- 12 endorsements
Howard Dean -- 10 endorsements
John Edwards -- 8 endorsements
Carol Moseley Braun -- 2 endorsements
Al Sharpton -- 1 endorsement
Dennis Kucinich -- 1 endorsement
(Bob Graham had 7 endorsements -- mostly from Florida lawmakers -- before dropping out)
Carpetbagger observes: . . . Clark's support is unusually strong in geographic balance. Among the 12 are Charlie Rangel from New York, Rahm Emanuel from Chicago, Jim Matheson from Utah, Betty McCollum from Minnesota, Mike Thompson from California, and Gene Taylor from Mississippi.Not only are Clark's endorsers from all over the country, they're also from all over the ideological spectrum. Matheson and Taylor are from the more conservative wing of the party, while Rangel and Emanuel are from the more progressive side.
In addition, Clark backers on the Hill are suggesting his endorsements are likely to grow by quite a bit. Rep. Marion Berry, a fellow Arkansas Democrat, told the AP a few weeks ago that "more than 30" members of Congress have told him they will back Clark in the primaries. If these come through, Clark's endorsements will soon rival -- if not surpass -- Gephardt's.
For Clark, these endorsements suggest a remarkable opportunity. Remember the old Will Rogers joke? "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." That's the trick of national Dem politics -- it's incredibly difficult to bridge the chasms within the party. One candidate has to do everything possible to draw support from liberals in the North and West, conservatives in the South, labor in the Midwest, grassroots activists on the 'net, establishment players on the Hill, and fundraisers everywhere. It's not easy.Somehow I feel the endorsement splits are yet another reason why Clark/Gephardt are a good fit.Clinton did it and he became a Dem icon. As evidenced by the use of his name by the nine Dem candidates on the campaign trail, Clinton remains the one figure who is popular with all of the various factions of the party.
Looking over the current field, and their totals in the Endorsement Primary, I can't help but wonder which candidate is best positioned to bridge the party's gaps. It's not Dean, who is as widely disliked by the party as he is liked. It's not Lieberman, for the same reason. It's not Gephardt, who seems to have limited support outside of Labor. It might be Kerry, but his support seems limited to the North for now.
And it very well may be Clark, who appears to be uniquely well positioned to appeal to all of the various (and competing) constituencies of the party. Outside of party identification, there isn't a whole lot that liberals like Charlie Rangel and conservatives like Gene Taylor agree on. The fact that both want to see President Clark speaks volumes about the General's broad appeal.
Gene Lyons, interviewed on BuzzFlash, comments on Clark's appeal to conservatives in the South.
BUZZFLASH: If Wesley Clark gets the nomination, it upsets the Republican Southern strategy. Give our readers a little bit of context and history to what the Southern strategy is, and how Clark affects the geo-political landscape and culture war.LYONS: Well, basically the Southern strategy started with Nixon in the late ‘60s. The idea was to convince the core constituency -- Southern white men -- that the Republican Party was their home and that the Democrats were the women's party, the black people's party, the homosexual party, the party of disgruntled minorities who were anti-religious, anti-patriotic, and anti-American, in a fundamental way. That Democrats supported "race-mixing," immorality, and the welfare state. It worked well enough to swing the South to the Republicans in the wake of the Civil Rights Act.
Lyndon Johnson is famous for having predicted this. Dale Bumpers, the former Arkansas Senator, told me that as a very young man he congratulated LBJ for signing the Voting Rights Act of '64, and Johnson said, "Well, just as long as you understand that the whole South is going to be Republican in 10 years." And it has worked for a long time.
But I think that as a person and as a symbol, Clark has the potential to take all that away from the right-wing. I might add that I also think that there are an awful lot of genuine conservatives, in the classical sense, who are uneasy about where Bush is going. The conquer-the-world schemes, the giant sinkhole of the federal budget. Some of the best writing about Iraq has come from conservative or libertarian columnists like Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune or James Pinkerton of Newsday. Now this is sad, but those conservatives aren't going to listen to Carol Mosley Braun make the same criticism as that coming from Wesley Clark, who is a Southerner and a decorated military man. I think it's sad but true. Again, I think it's a battle of symbols.
I think that in practical terms Clark puts several Southern states back in play. Right now, Bush would be very hard-put to win any of the states that Gore won in the last election. So if you can take away from Bush, or at least strongly compete in Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, possibly Georgia, Florida, with all of its military people, you all of a sudden take from Bush this air of invincibility and fundamentally change the electoral map. When you look at it like that you have to ask, how in the world is Bush going to win this election? Where are his electoral votes going to come from? BUZZFLASH: There's this perception among progressives and Democrats that because the Bush administration is so right wing, and effectively all three branches of government are in the control of the Republican Party, that we're underdogs. But people forget that Gore won the election by a half-million votes. And let's not forget over 95,000 people cast their vote for Ralph Nader in Florida, while Bush "won" by 537 votes. When you look at the electoral map, the Democrats start out much stronger than what you would think they do. I think that the Democrats could feel a little bit more aggressive and empowered based on those things. As you've pointed out, if the Democratic candidate wins every state that Gore won, all the Democrats have to do is just pick off one more, whether it's Arkansas or West Virginia, and the Democrats take the White House. LYONS: Well, I've been reminding people of that all along. But I also think Clark does more than that. My subjective view was that culturally there was no way that Dean, for example, could win in the South -- he would be a complete non-starter. Dean has a terrific line about this. He says he'd tell the pickup driving set (a group that would include me, for what it's worth) that they've been voting Republican for 30 years, and ask them "What have you got to show for it?" Great line, but would they ever hear it at all coming from a Vermont Yankee? I've got my doubts. And that would allow the Republicans to spend a lot more money in places like Missouri and Pennsylvania and Michigan that are states that are very competitive. And it would make it extremely difficult for Dean to win in that he'd have to run the table in all the other states and pick up one more state somewhere.I'm just talking about pure symbolism now. I'm not talking about the candidates or their virtues or standards. The symbolism of Clark -- because we are talking about a television show, after all, if we're talking about a presidential campaign -- means you have trouble finding a way for the Republicans to win.
I think Clark would bring back a lot of military people. I think there's great disquiet among people of the old-fashioned style of patriotism right now, and it's looking for a place to go. And I think there's a very good chance it would go to Clark. I think that he would have a strong chance to unite that which has been divided.
. . . You almost wouldn't know it from the campaigns of the Republican Party that used the Southern strategy. There is more open opportunity and more genuine friendship among and between different racial groups than ever before. The Republican campaigns in some parts of the South would make you think that everyone was a George Wallace supporter, or would be happy to vote for George Wallace, which isn't true.
Even so, many people that won those kinds of elections are sort of embarrassed by all that -- even people who voted for Wallace are ashamed. Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, for example, is neither racist nor reactionary. I mean, yes, there's a subdued minority who are both of those things. They were the core of the Clinton haters, for example. But remember, Clinton always won.
That Jason Vest of the American Prospect is no particular fan of Wesley Clark makes his "fair and balanced" analysis of the general's potential strength in red states all the more encouraging.
". . . if his campaign gets its act together and runs the Clark who wowed students and seniors at DePauw University in late September, it might even affect more than Kerry's and Dean's poll numbers. While George W. Bush holds a comfortable lead among both Republican and Democratic voters on national security, many current and former members of the military's officer corps -- as well as some civilian conservatives who increasingly see the neocons for the spendthrifts they are -- have had it with Bush's crew and are poised to become, as one officer put it, "Clark Republicans."As an archetypal New York City Upper West Side liberal, I can't remember the last time I voted Republican. Even when I reluctantly voted for Rudy Giuliani for a second term it was on the Liberal Party ticket. But Clark's partisan agnosticism is a plus for me: more than ever, putting this country back on track requires a reinvigoration of commonly shared values and goals around a leader who should be judged on his effectiveness rather than his party loyalties. And there's almost no American institution that has remained relatively apart from the rabid partisanship of our day aside from the military. Had the Republicans chosen to run Colin Powell in 2000 (and I can't fault the man for opting out), I would have given him a very close look over Al Gore.
Vest continues:Though it was a far cry from Bobby Kennedy's raucous 1968 reception in another conservative corner of the Midwest, Clark's warm welcome by nearly 3,000 people -- including folks from as far away as St. Louis, Cleveland and Chicago -- in staunchly right-of-center Greencastle, Ind., was significant. . . What explains this unlikely enthusiasm? . . . Korean War veteran H.J. Trubitt, a retired colonel in Army intelligence and a professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University, met with nods of approval from fellow veterans as he explained to the Prospect his view of Bush versus Clark: "Those of us of my vintage -- those who fought or served in the military during the Cold War -- remember a time when we had leaders, men like [Dwight] Eisenhower, who understood the importance of unifying nations, not just against something but for something. I think a lot of people here are increasingly unhappy with the 'go it alone' approach."
. . . Bush does have a weakness that Clark is singularly well-suited to address: When it comes to national security, as The Wall Street Journal noted last month, the president's numbers, though strong, have been dropping among the general public -- and, if anecdotal evidence is any indicator, possibly with active and retired military officers, who went all out for him in 2000. In interviews I conducted this summer with more than three dozen current and former military officers and some of their families, the vast majority proffered variations of the line, "I haven't voted Democratic in two decades, but if Wesley Clark runs as a Democrat, I will."
. . . As evidenced by increased back-channel collaborations between some high-ranking brass and the Department of State, the military has about had it with being lectured to by powerful ideologues who have the president's ear. Whatever their "defense intellectual" credentials, these neocons are resented by the military for their condescension, for having never served and for usurping the military's post-Cold War power niche, which embraced diplomacy as well as combat. By putting ideology and geopolitical dreams before everything else in the service of some truly dubious objectives, and by leaving National Guard members and reservists (and their families) to wonder when they will be coming home, Bush has invited serious discord. What's more, while this doesn't necessarily translate into larger conservative civilian defections, some conservatives -- particularly hard-liners on deficit spending -- are growing increasingly restive.Vest's conclusion? "Whether or not he wins the primary, his powerful presence on the campaign trail as an articulate critic of Bush's foreign and national-security policy is sure to hurt the president." Despite his inflamed vocal cords, WKC this week appears to be recovering the poise and charm he has consistently demonstrated in town hall settings; his retort to Judy Woodruff's latest "but you praised Bush" zinger yesterday was both firm and witty. It's true that from time to time we are uncomfortably exposed to the wheels turning in Wes' mind, but I think the real payoff will come when the general has a tag team partner and running mate. I'm liking Dick Gephardt a lot as the partner who can bring out the Democrat in Wesley Clark.While this may not lead to widespread conservative civilian defections, when one recalls how incredibly close Bush's margin of "victory" was in 2000 (537 votes), it's clear it wouldn't take many to defeat the president. If Clark peeled off some military-family votes along with a smattering of deficit hard-liners and the so-called NASCAR Dads (described by The New York Times as "Bush Republicans who could be won over if a Democratic man's man came along"), it would not make for a happy Karl Rove, indeed.
. . . But in the near term, the problem for Clark is one of image, of how to replace the stumbling novice backpedaler with the engaging and nimble stump speaker and glad-hander.The latter was evident at DePauw during a small, private forum with students after the speech. Hit with trenchant questions posed in less than deferential tones about everything from his abortion-rights and pro-affirmative-action views to his historically Republican inclinations, Clark responded with clarity and earnestness. Asked how a general recently ensconced in a Belgian chateau could relate to the average American, Clark spoke of his pre-four-star days, when he lived close to the bone. He recalled wrecking the family car as a lieutenant colonel; with only $4,000 in savings, he spent a leave in the Fort Carson, Colo., auto shop rebuilding the vehicle. Queried about affirmative action, he discussed how, as a major general at Fort Hood, Texas, several events forced him to recognize prejudice and discrimination in his beloved Army.
Explaining his history of voting mainly Republican, he presented a story of evolution fused with apostasy, of how, as a young officer, he'd faced a society hostile to the military. "In the summer of 1971," Clark recalled, "I was a captain, and 100,000 people converged on the Pentagon, throwing blood on the steps. They probably weren't going to vote Republican, and it was pretty clear most of us in the military weren't going to vote with them." Yet after the Cold War ended, he continued, when it came to the state of the armed forces, "Republicans became more interested in weapons than in people. I found that the Democrats believed more in people. I saw few in the Republican Party who had the right answers."
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The general is regaining his pre-announcement poise on-camera as his CNN Inside Politics segment yesterday demonstrates.
Confronted by Judy Woodruff over his speech at yet another Bush love-in, Clark was quick to put a constructive spin on his remarks.
Well actually, the full quote I think was "all the troops who fought. And then the top of the chain of command too."I think that as a fair person, you have to give credit to Russians, Chinese, Frenchmen, and even Republicans when they do things right. And that's what I did here. And I supported the war in Afghanistan.
Now, I've also said in my recent book, "Winning Modern War," that . . . the failure in Afghanistan was not to finish the job on Osama bin laden. We didn't put in the American troops, we didn't finish the job.But, you know, Judy, you have to recognize when somebody does something well. If the Republicans -- and "TIME" magazine had quoted the rest of the speech, you'd have seen the bulk of the speech indicted the administration for not having an effective strategy for leadership, for American leadership in the world today. That's the subject I've been speaking on.