Priming the 2016 upstart
by digby
This clever piece by Walter Shapiro spells out quite nicely what the next Howard Dean should do to become the upstart candidate in 2016 and capture the hearts and minds of the activists in the Party who might be looking for a change from the change:
Let me start with the year 1960. Do you know its significance beyond the Kennedy-Nixon debates? It was the last time that any presidential candidate (incumbent presidents aside) was handed the nomination rather than having to fight for it. And even in 1960 Richard Nixon had to bow and scrape before Nelson Rockefeller to head off a primary challenge.
What this means is that you have a chance no matter how daunting the polls or lopsided the potential fund-raising gap. Someone is going to be embraced by grassroots Democratic activists as the different-drummer alternative—and it could easily be you. But to be anointed THE CHALLENGER with capital letters, you have to be peddling more than the Maryland Miracle, the Colorado Comeback, the Albany Apotheosis or an uplifting personal story about how you grew up on a played-out rutabaga farm as the child of alcoholic parents.
To succeed, you have to anticipate the answer to a very tricky question: On the eve of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, what aspects of the Obama presidency will have angered, exasperated or disappointed loyal Democrats? The answer explains whom you will become—the candidate who convincingly promises to save the Democrats from Obama’s deficiencies.
It's an interesting question and the answers he provides sounds right to me.
As Shapiro admits, if President Obama is riding high in the polls and everyone in the country is yearning for a third term, the only people who have a chance are those who were in the administration --- meaning Clinton or Biden (probably.) But if there's the usual ambivalence (or downright hostility) t the end of the second term, there is a chance for an upstart to emerge. And they're going to have to make a case for how they will be different. These questions are a good place to start.
(I'd add a pledge to deep-six the Chained CPI, expand Social Security and turn the word "austerity" into an epithet. But that's just me.)
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