Feingold vs Allen 08

Not sure who for VP - Gary Locke? Parris Glendenning?

As a Maryland resident, I can confirm that Glendening is a truly awful candidate. The only person he'd ever beaten in a statewide race was Ellen Sauerbrey, who was essentially a Tea Partier before Tea Party was cool (and, um, it's probably never going to be cool out here in Maryland).

Kathleen Sebelius has just won in Kansas, so she's out. Locke isn't a bad choice.

To be honest, though, probably any non-southern Democratic candidate takes John Edwards as their VP in 2004.
 

JoeMulk

Banned
My POD would be Obama deciding not to run and Feingold jumping in instead. If Feingold ran he would be the candidate of the left and Edwards would still just be a southern blue dog, that if anything picks off some white working class support from Hillary. So they'd be the top three and Edwards drops out about the same time as OTL. Feingold wins thanks to a strong grassroots style campaign and they aren't able to pull a screaming Dean on him.
 
Maybe he takes Obama as his running mate, to get out the black and youth vote? He'd proven he can do great speeches in 2004, so he could help fire up the base.
 
Obama is probably a pretty bad '04 VP pick, to be honest. You'll get the same scandals/slurs/attacks that he faced in OTL in 2008 -- Jeremiah Wright, Obama/Osama/secret Muslim, past drug use, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, etc. Then, Feingold has two bad options: either 1) he gives Obama a platform to address and rebut the attacks, which takes him off message, or (more likely) 2) he just ignores them and Obama is viewed as a drain on the ticket.

Also, on a purely objective basis, you have a very, very liberal ticket. I suppose if you're going a straight GOTV strategy it might work, but it strikes me that in 2004, Feingold/Obama might be a tough sell in Pennsylvania (to say nothing of Ohio and Florida).
 
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