A Different Democrat in 2004

What would have happened if a different, much better Democrat ran for the presidental election in 2004? Who would it be? What would have happened if they won? Could they have even won? What would have happened?
 
I think if Wesley Clark had taken the nomination, he could have beat George Bush, narrowly. He was popular with the Clinton Democrats in the South, and was more folksy than Kerry. He also probably couldn't have been swift boated, as he already had a very well known service career (Kerry did too, but its more believable with Clark)

genusmap.php

Clark- 277
Bush- 261

Unfortunately, that housing bubble will probably still pop, and Clark loses reelection in 2008 to Rudy Giuliani/ John McCain/ Mitt Romney.
 
Well, there are certainly a lot of possibilities and questions, huh? I think that John Kerry was both a.) inept enough and b.) close enough to say that it's possible a Democrat could have won that election. The problem, of course, is that the other Democrats running lost to a guy as inept as John Kerry.

Well, first the main contenders.

a.) Howard Dean - I think the debacle in Iowa in 2004 proved that Dean really didn't have the chops to run and win a national campaign. There's always the chance that whatever lightning in a bottle he caught June-December 2003 would come back, but it didn't seem likely. He was a candidate ultimately who energized a lot of people who could do a lot of good work for a guy like Obama, but not one who stood a real chance of winning on a national scale.

b.) John Edwards - Well, let's go out on a limb and assume that his cheating would not be a factor (obviously, it hadn't happened yet, and I'm assuming that Rielle Hunter wasn't part of a trend that nobody has discovered so far). He seems like a candidate who would stand the best chance to beat Bush - seeming young and energetic at a time the White House seemed more than a little stale. Ultimately, though, I would guess his lack of gravitas could spell his doom against Bush-Cheney.

c.) Dick Gephardt - I don't really care for him, but he could have run a winning campaign if he really ran hard on his labor support, and avoided the wedge issues that Bush deployed against Kerry. A Gephardt-Vilsack ticket wouldn't have excited any coastal liberals, but it could have pulled Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio into the Democratic column without giving up more than maybe Oregon and New Hampshire. That would be a 279-259 win for the blues. A Gephardt presidency, though, is outside my depth.

d.) Wesley Clark - He never really emerged at all in the campaign, somehow managing to win Oklahoma in the primary. He's such a wild card still that I don't know what to do with him: either his lack of skills displayed in the OTL campaign will just sink him, or else he'll hang on to some of that "I'm a general" legitimacy and maybe bring a few, sigh, "security moms" into the fold. He could run the Kerry+ campaign, hanging on to just enough votes in Ohio to tip the scales.
 
The Democratic Party chose John Kerry in 2004, because they thought he was the most "electable" (obviously they were wrong)

a. Dean: probably not, if anything, Bush would more easily be able to slap the "L word" on Dean than Kerry.

b. Edwards: I could see it, Edwards's populist tactics would work well in Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, and he might even be able to pull in North Carolina.

c. Gerhardt: Tricky, he doesnt really seem like an energetic campaigner, but he'd probably have a better chance bringing in Ohio than Kerry, and he probably brings in Missouri for a win.
 
One problem with Gephardt- you remember how they accused Kerry of flip-flopping? Gephardt was already accused of flip-flopping- in 1988 by Mike Dukakis.
In regards to Clark, it wouldn't have stopped the Republicans from belittling him. (I was at a county GOP committee meeting around that time, and a speaker (from the national RNC) referred to him as "'General' Clark", with an obvious disdain for his military title.)
Dean did rile up the party base, but the media attacked him a great deal. And, he would most certainly be attacked for being a liberal even more than Kerry.
Much of the Republican attacks on Obama could be replicated against Edwards (lawyer, inexperienced, lightweight, etc.).
 
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