Best Possible Democratic Pres/VP Tickets in 2004

[liberalpragmatist]

Earlier I posted a long message in which I paired each of the mainstream 6 with a list of possible running mates. I still stand by those, but here I've narrowed it down far more, to who I see as the most intelligent and best possible tickets to win. I don't include all of the mainstream 6 as presidential candidates here, not b/c I don't think they can't win the nomination or the presidency, but b/c I think these would be the BEST tickets. So, in no particular order:

* Kerry/Clark
* Kerry/Edwards

Either would be excellent and really unite the party and prove exceptionally strong in November. I personally favor Kerry/Clark over Kerry/Edwards, and I think that since Edwards likely would have dropped out of his senate race, he should be appointed Attorney General. The only problem w/ this scenario is that in 2012, should Kerry have served 2 terms, there could be a major battle for the nomination between Edwards and Clark. Possibly some deal could be worked out, whereby Clark would only serve 1 term (he'd be 68 or 69) or agrees to support Edwards for the nomination in exchange for a commitment to be the secretary of state.

* Edwards/Dodd
* Edwards/Mitchell
* Edwards/Clark

Edwards/Dodd and Edwards/Mitchell would really help balance the ticket geographically, politically and provide crucial washington insider experience to Edwards and help him win support for his programs in Congress. Edwards/Clark would also be good and would greatly help shore up his national security credentials. One possibility would be to name Dodd or Mitchell (or someone like them) as running mate and also announce ahead of time the top 5 cabinet posts: state, defense, attorney general, treasury, and homeland security, and name clark to defense or state, that way also shoring up national security credentials.

* Gephardt/Edwards

Geographically balanced and ideologically united, w/ a strong populist bent.

* Dean/Clark
* Dean/Richardson
* Dean/Cohen (William)

Dean/Clark would shore up the national security issue and bring in independent voters. Richardson would bring in Hispanic support and give a link to the clinton administration, though he'd have to be willing to give up the governorship after only 2 years. Cohen would be an intriguing choice -- he may still be a Republican, but he was a liberal, maverick one who'd probably get along well w/ Dean, and such a ticket would not only help us on the national security issue, it would bring in many independent voters and even liberal Republicans. The only problem is that it wouldn't be geographically balanced.

I mean no disservice to Lieberman or Graham, but I've concluded that they wouldn't offer tickets that would really excite us and prove the best possible ones at defeating Bush -- they could do it, I just think it'd be harder for them to b/c they wouldn't be able to unite the base as well as these tickets could.