Reply #4: Politics is three dimensional chess

[Tom Rinaldo]

But Clark is doing exactly what you so clearly point out is needed. This is what he is up to today:
"Take Back the House with General Wesley Clark, Stephanie Miller of LA's Progressive Talk AM 1150, & Democratic Congressional Candidate Francine Busby

Unite with fellow Democrats to Turn the House Blue

At a FREE rally on February 4th General Wesley Clark will inspire the troops and lead the charge to take back the House of Representatives in 2006! We are bringing Democrats together from all over Southern California to support Democrat Francine Busby, who is running for indicted Republican Duke Cunningham's old seat (CA-50) in a special election April 11th..."
http://securingamerica.com/node/556


Being brutally frank, all of us here are at best pawns in the game. But, literally, pawns ARE still players. We are on the board if we want to be, and we have roles to play. Clark is doing everything that he can to make sure that his core supporters stay involved in the elections that matter between now and 2006. I put a lot of time into helping Tim Kaine, for example.

Having said that however, the way the Presidential race is now run, waiting until 2007 to advance the potential merits of a potential candidate is almost a certain way to ensure that that candidate will not seriously be in the running. All of the major potential players for 2008 are already putting their chips in a row. They are accumulating political IOU's, they are assembling war chests and/or pledges, they are talking to if not already hiring staff experienced in Presidential campaigns, they are showing up in all of the early Primary States, etc.

More relevant to us here though, they are all courting "a buzz". That is part of the current game. Making sure their name gets mentioned every time people speculate on who will run in 2008. And all kinds of people speculate on that all of the time. The Main Stream Media certainly does. Nowadays they have incorporated various versions of "blog watches". They literally talk about what we are talking about at places like this.

You know that this flurry of Clark threads in the wake of what I believe was really a great speech by him, is not unique to DU Candidate discussions over the last few months. Granted, 10 months ago it was lopsided on DU, with many more threads about Clark than most leading Democrats. It's not like that anymore and hasn't been like that for a long time. In fact, until this week, threads about Gore and Kerry way outnumbered Clark threads, and threads for Feingold and Warner may have also, not to mention the steady stream of Edwards threads as well.

So I am trying to keep some type of balance personally. Until this week I started very few Clark threads on DU this year, and I stay involved with other issues. But I do understand that in all too real a sense, "out of sight is out of mind", and I do not want traditional power brokers to be the only ones getting to influence who I will have a chance to elect in 2008.

edited to add Warner's name to the list above