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Clark is not in the DLC.....and as Tom Rinaldo posted in an earlier thread, there are just some cold hard facts....that I would take note of if I were you.....
"....some cold hard facts. Wesley Clark started his campaign for President at least a full year after all of his major rivals were already up and running, and in some cases he was two years or more behind in organizing. That simple fact doesn't sufficiently capture the handicap Clark faced however, you have to factor in that there was essentially zero time left for Clark to "catch up". The string of Democratic Candidate debates had already started without him by the time Clark entered the race.
Clark's national name recognition was quite low prior to his entry into the race. This was no "Hillary Clinton" type scenario available for Clark. That is to say, he was no one's 600 pound gorilla at that stage in his early political career, he had no mass reservoir of grass roots support in the party or public to tap into. Typically a candidate entering the Presidential race late needs that type of instant support huge base to have any chance of winning.
All career politicians over the course of their career develop a core group of political aids and consultants who they have walked through the fires with, aids who know the candidates thoughts almost like their own, aids who have developed radiating webs of political contacts to harvest on behalf of their candidate. Career politicians also have a wealth of essentially pre packaged position papers and policy priorities worked up by themselves and their aids in the course of running for and holding prior political offices. They don't all have to be prepared from scratch. Wesley Clark did not have a political inner circle of seasoned pros who had worked with him before to organize his campaign around. He had to build his campaign late, pulling together people he often hardly knew, who were left from a pool of talent that largely had been drained from people having made prior early commitments to other candidates.
Remember even a seasoned professional politician like John Kerry had to totally shake up his own campaign team three times. Campaigns, and the teams that run them, rarely naturally jell the instant they are assembled and launched. They shake down over time, and the best time for any of them to to shake down this time were the relatively sleepy months of late 2002 and early 2003 when the national media wasn't leaning over their shoulders waiting to pounce on any hint of weakness. Clark wasn't allowed that opportunity due to his late entry.
Then of course there is the true fact that Clark was inexperienced at running a political campaign. Not inexperienced at politics, or leadership, but at public electoral campaigns. It took Clark about 4 months to master the language of sound bites, his natural tendency was to attempt to give full answers to the questions asked of him. By the time Kerry was running against Bush however Clark was already one of the Kerry Campaigns key media spokespersons, so once again Wesley Clark has shown how incredibly fast a learner he is.
As to the negative spin given Clark's campaign, let's start with the media. While the general public may not understand i,t most here at DU believe that corporate media is no friend to the Democratic Party. Clark supporters believe that Wesley Clark represented the greatest single threat to George Bush being reelected. Specifically as a candidate to oppose bush, but beyond that as an expert voice who could shred the bogus national security rational that Bush/Cheney were pushing to both cover their failures and to posture as war time leaders. There was a seemingly coordinated effort made to discredit and marginalize Clark by the media, especially electronic media. Some Clark supporters have documented patterns of media coverage that support this thesis. At one point there was a running tally of how many days Judy Woodruff would go on "Inside Politics" without mentioning Clark's name. This was before the NH Primary. I think she may have hit 20 days, does anyone remember exactly? There was also the famous Fox News ambush of Clark at the debate they hosted immediately before the NH vote. Clark was asked twice why he had been supportive of republicans in the past and also why he would not denounce Michael Moore for pointing to Bush's record of non service in the Texas National Guard. Then they ended the debate early, cutting away from the continuing proceedings, and went to right wing talking heads who each took turns tearing into Clark.
AS to the die hard opponents of Clark, you can find some of their attack lines above this in this thread. They have a routine tendency to gloss over any facts that do not fit into their hatchet jobs on him.
Edwards supporters that I noted above were engaged in a partisan political battle to buff up their man as the best VP candidate possible to compliment Kerry. I don't doubt their sincerity in that, and they saw Clark as a possible VP rival. One of the key arguments being used for Edwards was that he was the "people's choice" for VP based in large part on his performance in the primaries. The Edwards strategy, as expressed by Edwards first while running for President during the early primaries, was to cut out the rest of the field and make it come down to a two man race between Edwards and Kerry. Clark was a big complicating factor to that strategy because while he was still in the race Clark came in first or second in as many primaries as Edwards did (as well as edging out Edwards for third in New Hampshire which was dominated by New England favorite sons). Clark made a very different call than Edwards did after it became apparent to him that he would not win the nomination. Clark closed ranks behind Kerry. Edwards prolonged the campaign by another month and numerous other primaries, getting great personal exposure but no more victories under his belt. But by so doing he cemented a public perception that he and Kerry were the Democrats strongest two candidates. I don't take away form Edward's performance, however I object to what I saw as an effort made by others to minimize Clark's performance.
As to the controversy about Clark being a centrist ploy to defeat Dean, some centrists initially backed Clark for exactly that reason. One could say they feared Dean because they honestly believed he would make a poor candidate, or one can say they feared Dean because he threatened and challenged their power base within the Party. Or both. Clark definitely had real grass roots support as evidenced by the Draft Clark movement and Clark's continuing active core of activists, but some established centrist backing was probably essential to Clark having any chance of overcoming the late entry related handicaps I outlined above. I've written more extensively on this elsewhere, but in short my position is Clark never entered the race because he wanted to stop Dean, he entered the race because he wanted to defeat Bush, and Clark was concerned that Dean could not do so due to his, in Clark's view, insufficient national security credentials for the coming election as Clark foresaw it. Clark got some establishment Democratic backing but they never "loved" or trusted him as one of their own. Soon as Kerry regained some footing they deserted Clark for Kerry in a relative heart beat.
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