The Great Mirage of 2008

If you watch the Sunday morning news shows you’ve seen the face of Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) popping up all over the place. He’s calling for W’s impeachment, he’s calling for troop pullout, he’s continuing to call for campaign finance reform, in short he’s calling for a return to a strong Democratic party. Besides getting out the message and helping with the mid term elections, many analysts are pointing towards a run at the 2008 nomination as a reason behind Feingold’s new visibility. Now as a self confessed liberal and a self confessed cynic this puts me in a tough spot.

Feingold is a bright star in the party and has been since he came to Washington. Shortly after I moved to Wisconsin I watched Feingold win his first term. Now coming from Minnesota where we had one of the greatest liberal minds of all time, Paul Wellstone, serving in the Senate, I immediately gravitated towards Feingold. Over time I’ve become a huge follower of his. The problem is I already see the writing on the wall, and it says “don’t get excited because in the end the media and the party will turn Feingold into a younger better looking Dennis Kucinich.”

Our supposed left leaning media is no friend to liberals. A big reason for this has been the continued use of the word “liberal” in a negative light. Some might blame the Republicans for this but the fact is Reagan used it a few times in a negative context and the media picked up the ball and ran with it. Liberal is now equated with extreme. Somehow “conservative” has escaped the same fate. When and if Feingold announces a run at ‘08 I imagine we’ll hear it announced by CNN as, “Liberal Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.” That will be the first nail in the coffin.

The main culprit in derailing any realistic chance Feingold has will come from his own party. The Democratic Party has been a lame duck party for the last 6 years. Even before Al Gore won the 2000 election (yes I said won, I’ll never let that go) the party was well on its way to a centralist agenda. No one has realized that moderation will never win elections because the Republicans simply do it better. Clinton was an exception only because he ran against weak opponents and quite frankly, the man was a charmer. Yes Howard Dean is the head of DCCC but he’s simply a figure head used for fund raising. The core of the party leadership still believes the only way to reclaim the White House and Congress is to mildly disagree with the current administration and betray the values the party was built on like equality, responsible foreign policy, and a commitment to education and social issues. Just look at who the DCCC is pushing on the media as possible ‘08 candidates, a gaggle of inbred southerners, a cardboard cutout of John Kerry (same as the real thing), and worst of all, Hilary Clinton version 2.0 who now reminds me more of Condi Rice then the Hilary we all loved back in the 90’s.

I’d love to dream about a Feingold/ John Edwards ticket in ‘08 but it’s just a dream. It’ll be great to see him debate and stir stuff up but in the end we all know what’s coming, another candidate that will talk out of both sides of his mouth that mismanages the election causing him to lose. Of course there’s still the possibility that W will declare himself Emperor for life and this will all be moot.