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January 28, 2004
The Big E

Electability. It's all you hear about these days. I was just watching Nightline, and besides Ted Koppel shamefully fawning all over John Kerry while practically suggesting to Howard Dean that he just pack it in and go home right now, the talk is all about electability. A poll was cited (I can't find it on their site) saying that something like 54% of voters cited "the ability to beat Bush" as their number 1 issue.

What I don't get is when the news people and pundits ask each other and the candidates if electability is the central issue. Koppel asked Kerry that tonight.

Of COURSE it's the central issue. In a way, it's the ONLY issue. If you can't get elected, then it surely doesn't much matter if you have a great plan to overhaul medicare, does it? A great scheme to get the U.S. out of Iraq from an ex-governor of Vermont probably won't have a very big impact on our foreign policy. It all goes together. Electability isn't so much an issue of it's own as it is a byproduct issue of a candidate's stance on the actual issues and his public image, with a dash of haircut.

Every Democrat -- really every sensible American -- should be concerned with the eventual nominee's so called electability. If they can't be elected, it's a waste of time.

That being said, I don't think a quality as nebulous as that is decided this early. It's easy to forget that it's still very early. The majority of voters don't start paying attention to this stuff until the fall. By then, whoever has won the nomination will be looking a lot different.

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