I attended a Virginia Dems breakfast this morning that had surrogates from 7 of the 8 remaining candidates (all but Sharpton, not for lack of asking his campaign), each of whom gave presentations and then in turn took questions from the audience. The recurrent word from all the surrogates was "electability": every single one made the case that his or her candidate was most electable in the general election. Even the (very articulate) Kucinich rep, in the face of all the polls, arguing that only the strongest contrast with Bush will bring in new and previously apathetic voters.
Well, we've all heard these claims many times by now. But I'm surprised that I haven't heard much talk about which of the Democratic candidates has the most "governability", if I can twist that word to mean the ability to govern, and specifically to get one's agenda through a Congress that is likely to be Republican-dominated? I posed a question like this to the Clark surrogate (okay, I was purposely lobbing a softball...), and he cited our governor Warner's relative success in dealing with a Neanderthal legislature as an analog to how he felt Clark might handle Congress. But would outsiders like Clark or Dean do better than old hands like Kerry or Gephardt? Who'll be able to get things done if elected?