Re-Runs for Kerry and Gore in 2008?

Ann Althouse reacts with an "Ugh!" to reports that John Kerry will enter the 2008 presidential race. She dismisses him as a candidate who's had his turn and says that Al Gore has more right to a re-run than the Massachusetts senator. I reacted:

There has been one tradition in US politics of losing nominees from major parties being renominated for the presidency. Unfortunately for renominated candidates, another part of that tradition is that generally, the candidates have lost again.

William Jennings Bryan lost three times...and deservedly so. Thomas Dewey lost twice. Adlai Stevenson lost twice. Richard Nixon, as you point out, is the only one to break "the curse," so to speak, winning in 1968 after losing in 1960. (He also lost the California governorship in 1962, making his subsequent win all the more remarkable.) It's fair to point out that after having pulled off one of the most notable comebacks in US political history, Nixon also disgraced himself as President and was forced to resign; so, his resurgence as a presidential candidate may be seen as a hollow thing.

The key to Nixon's comeback, by the way, was that he campaigned hard for Republican candidates in the 1966 elections. GOP success that year came two years after Barry Goldwater was crushed by Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election amid predictions that the Republican Party was, if not dead, then ticketed for permanent minority status. Nixon was seen as a key ingredient in the Republican resurgence that year and many newly-elected or re-elected Republicans owed him big-time for their wins. Nobody else, including the successful Republicans of 1966 who didn't owe Nixon anything for their victories and who challenged him for the 1968 nomination, notably Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney, had as many chits to call in as Nixon did that year. The lesson is clear: If Kerry and Gore want to run for President again, they need to campaign for Dems in 2006 as though their political lives depended on it.

But of course, the incidents of political resuscitation I've mentioned represent the exceptions, not the rules, in our presidential politics. Americans, it seems, may be forgiving in many ways; but once they've spurned a major party nominee for President, they're pretty much voted off of the White House island forever.

Kerry and Gore though, both have some legitimate reasons for thinking that they each deserve another shot and that they could win the whole thing.

Gore nearly won in 2000 and Kerry got more votes than any Democratic nominee in history...and he did that in the middle of a war when Americans were inclined to rally 'round the flag and the Commander-in-Chief.

Both are lackluster campaigners--except when Al gets into one of his bizarre moods and sounds like an angry, volatile, sawdust preacher-wannabe. If either of them do run, I doubt that they will perform well.

But who knows what might happen in a crowded Democratic field in 2008?

It seems to me that both parties are going to produce a boatload of candidates for President in 2008, making their nomination processes more like crapshoots. That will embolden people with only the slightest chance of being nominated or elected--even Gore and Kerry--to get into the race.

Dems, anxious to support a consensus candidate able to beat George Bush in 2004, fell in behind Kerry in a hurry after his surprise win in the Iowa caucuses. They may not be as inclined to move to consensus so quickly in 2008, especially since the current frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, would probably be a disastrous nominee in the general election, even if Dems love her for being a "true believer."

The crapshoot quality of the process will likely give every candidate reason to hope that lightning will strike their campaigns. But in the end, I think Democratic voters are going to go for someone they think can win, rather than casting "statement votes."

What do I mean by "statement votes"?

Dem voters might want to make the statement that in 2000, they thought they were "robbed" and so vote for Gore.

They might want to make the statement that "Bush lied" and thereby secured his 2004 victory by voting for Kerry.

They might want to state that they are unreconstructed liberals and that "impeachment-was-about-sex" by casting their votes for Clinton. (Hillary may be their recipient of statement votes on behalf of the idea of a female president as well.)

But in the end, I suspect that the desire of Democrats to win back the White House in 2008 will incite them to forego making statement votes and to simply cast their lots with the candidate in the field closest to themselves ideologically and the one most able to carry the fight credibly in the fall.

I've said here and other places before, I think, that I believe that Mark Warner will win the Democratic nomination in 2008, no matter who else runs in his party.