I have a growing gut feeling (and it's not just because my gut is growing from too much rich food!) That our best team would be some combination of Edwards/Richardson. They would not be my personal picks, but I think the combination of geography, constituency, message and, with Edwards at the top of the ticket, the fact that the Dems who get elected president tend to be attractive younger men, indicate that this team might be our best shot.

he won.

Now that we have an honest Democrat as secretary of state of Ohio instead of corrupt Republican Blackwell, the chances for fraud in that particular swing state are reduced. Had Brunner been there in 2004 instead of Blackwell, I strongly suspect Kerry would be our President because many more votes would have been accurately counted.

Again, another fallacy of the 2004 election. Kerry wasn't the nominee because people thought he was "electable". He ran am awesome ground game completley under the radar in Iowa and Dean imploded. That gave Kerry the momentum out of the box when it mattered (i.e primary season). That's what got him the nomination. Now, his campaign afterwards is another story but stop believing the media narrative that he was the nominee because he was "electable"

Kerry was the early frontrunner, until the Dean phenomenon happened. Then, of course, he regained that status. The psychology was complex, but many people went for him because they thought he was the most likely to beat Bush. And on paper, he was. War hero, purple hearts, the whole nine yards; conventional wisdom had it that that was required.

That said, Kerry didn't go into '04 with half the country hating him, which is of course the problem confronting Hillary.

"That said, Kerry didn't go into '04 with half the country hating him, which is of course the problem confronting Hillary."

No, he went in with half the country having no idea who he was...in politics that can be worse. People underestimate the tenacity and political smarts of Hillary Clinton at their peril. How many conservative and republican voters in Upstate NY hated her in 1999? Now she could probably be NY Senator for Life if she wanted.

And yes, Kerry was the early frontrunner until the "Dean phenomenom" but Dean's implosion came after Kerry's win in Iowa. In fact, it started that night with the "Dean Scream".

[Ed. note]: this commenter is politely requested to create an account, so as to no longer require manual comment approval. Heh.

Dean's implosion didn't begin on the night of "the scream" - in fact, that was merely the point at which it came to the attention of the mainstream media. Dean's campaign was already running off the rails well before that.

Even though I was a fervent Dean volunteer, by that night it was plain to me that things weren't going as they should. Not only was the campaign starting to show the weakness of its reliance on a lot of undisciplined and casually-trained volunteer workers (you don't have kids with nose rings canvass door-to-door in Iowa!), and Dean's habit of making easy-to-attack statements, but Kerry and Gephardt had decided that, whatever happened to either of them afterwards, it was in their mutual interest to take Dean down asap, which they did.

Now, to the question of this post, is Hillary electable? I don't think so, for several reasons, some of which have already been enumerated here: lots of Republicans and independents hate her guts; she's carrying a ton of baggage; she's a Senator - from the Northeast, yet! She's not popular with her own base, partly because of her perceived preference for taking the opportunistic position over the principled one, and ironically, for taking what might actually be a principled, but completely wrongheaded, position on Iraq. Her public image is cold and calculating, and (unlike Bill) she is an indifferent public speaker.

Despite all of those factors, I still think that as smart and as tough as she is, she could pull it off, except for one other thing: she's a woman. While I think, under ideal circumstances, the country might be ready for a woman president, she'd have to be the perfect candidate in every other way, and Hillary isn't close to perfect.

I'm a woman, and I'm just being realistic about this. I recently read about a survey that reported that women are less likely to think a woman could be elected, and African-Americans are less likely to think that an African-American could get elected (memo to Obama), and it's simple to understand why: we're the only ones who know first-hand exactly what kind of discrimination we've faced. It's pretty shameful when you consider that women have run countries all over the world, including some with pretty deep histories of sexism, India, for example.