Gore Bows Out
Yes, I know you probably heard this somewhere else, but damn it, I'll do what I please

I don't think Gore is politcally dead, he's just sleeping. He is still relatively young and maybe just hiding in the political wilderness untill he thinks he has a better shot at success. Richard Nixon's 8 years out of government following his loss to Kennedy come to mind. Whether there will be an auspicious time for Gore is any ones guess.

As for the 2004 race, I think the democratic primary may turn into a battle between Edwards and Kerry. Howard Dean is liberal, from a small state and his campaign is poorly funded. At most he'll be the Paul Tsongas of this campaign, forcing the other candidates to debate his ideas. Lieberman is dull and probably too conservative to have a chance and most commentators don't expect him to do well in the primaries. Dick Gephardt is doomed, there is no way he's going to be able to wash the stench of the Democrats' failure in 2002 off himself and he wasn't an attractive candidate even before 2002. I think Daschle may have the same problem as Gephardt, he's tainted by the midterm losses and he's also been a lightning rod for the right since Bush became president and may very well be burnt to a crisp by 2004.

I have decided to reverse my posistion on Edwards, because I think he has a good chance at winning (the thought of Bush serving 2 terms is extremely noxious to me) and his posistions are pretty appetizing, at least to a pragmatic centrist democratic such as myself. Earlier I blasted Edwards as an opportunist and nothing but a charmer, but now I'm begining to come around. First of all he is a hawk, which gives him points in my book and will be a political advantage if the US blows down Saddam's playhouse with ease, an outcome that is more than likely given enormous advantages the United States has. Secondly, he is a southerner, it has been fourty years since a Democrat from outside the south has won and I don't think that trend is likely to change. Thirdly and possibly most importantly, his posistion on taxes is very attractive. He's insulated against charges of being a tax and spend liberal because he voted for the Bush tax. Edwards has also come up with an inventive way to attack Bush's tax cut. He proposes repealling the parts of it which benefit the wealthy while making permanent (right now their scheduled to expire in a few years) the cuts for the upper middle class and middle class tax payers, further bolstering his ant-tax credentials and making Republican claims to the contrary sound even more ridiculous.