COLUMNISTS have a tendency to end up looking like weathermen when they make big predictions: caught in the rain without an umbrella. But even with presidential elections more than two years away, I'm ready to take a gamble. The Democratic presidential nominee is going to be Sen. Evan Bayh and their vice-presidential candidate will be Virginia's very own former Gov. Mark Warner.
These predictions probably come as a surprise to most readers. Many Democrats and Republicans have the forgone conclusion that Sen. Hillary Clinton will get the nod. Already Clinton is seen as the candidate to beat since she has tens of millions of campaign dollars already in the bank and many top Democratic fundraisers locked up. But as the 2004 election made painfully clear, the January front-runner rarely gets the party nomination.
Simply put, Hillary cannot win a national election. She does not have the broad-based support that a Democrat needs to secure victory in 2008, as recent polling data makes clear. A WNBC/Marist poll from February saw that only 47 percent of registered voters want Clinton running for president with the majority of voters, 51 percent, actually opposing her nomination. Furthermore, Sen. McCain trounces her in a head-to-head match-up with 52 percent of the vote compared to Clinton's measly 42 percent. Granted, these numbers must be taken with a grain of salt as campaigns have yet to begin and world events have yet to unfold, but they are telling of the mood of the voters. For McCain to have a double-digit lead over the Democrats' supposedly top nominee before even spending a campaign dollar, there must something that voters see. The obvious reasons are her gender, her philandering husband and the abysmal legislative failure that was her idea for socialized medicine. Clinton will have a hard if not impossible time preventing Republicans from portraying the Democrats as the "Mommy party." It won't take Democrats until the Iowa Caucus to realize that they need a more moderate candidate to win undecided voters.
Enter Mark Warner. He is a rare sight in American politics -- a popular Southern Democrat. Having left office with an over 70 percent approval rating, Warner can do something no other politician can do: hand the Democrats the Commonwealth of Virginia. Even if the Republicans run Sen. George Allen, it is doubtful Virginians will forget who saved their state's finances. Anyone can count to 270, but the Republicans cannot get enough electoral votes to win the presidency without Virginia. On top of that, Warner is a very articulate speaker, has business connections available to few if any other Democrats and is not afraid to utilize his personal fortune for his campaign. Since finishing his tenure as governor, Warner has been flying around the country trying to drum up support for his candidacy and elicit campaign donations. However, Warner has no foreign policy experience. With security concerns and the Iraq War topping voters' priorities in the 2004 elections, it is highly doubtful that a one-term governor can look tough on terror. This makes Warner the ideal vice-presidential candidate.
As this week's Economist rightly observed of the Democrats: "Their weakest issue has long been national security." However, Evan Bayh, Indiana's junior senator, is the Democrats' best chance to rise above this label. The hawkish Bayh has been a staunch supporter of the Iraq war and serves on both the Armed Services Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. While this may anger some of the fringe left, the failure of Howard Dean in 2004 demonstrated that Michael Moore and MoveOn.org do not run the Democratic Party. Furthermore, Bayh will be able to appeal to many across party lines with his record of reining in government spending. Even the Wall Street Journal stated that Bayh's record as governor of Indiana "is one of a genuinely fiscally conservative Democrat." Bayh is a truly moderate Democrat who can appeal to blue state registered Democrats as a long-standing party insider (he is former Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council) while appealing to both undecided and Republican voters. He does not carry Clinton's northeast stigmata and can be expected to deliver in Midwestern, battleground states. The Democrats' best hope for the 2008 presidential elections is to repudiate the far-left and reach into the middle. A Bayh-Warner ticket will be very tough for Republicans to beat in 2008.
Josh Levy's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jlevy@cavalierdaily.com.
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