"Chasing Bubba" (article about Mark Warner...and 2008)

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=11175

Gov. Mark Warner convinced NASCAR dads and rural Republicans to give him a shot in 2001. Now, he may be the Democrats’ best hope to win back the White House in 2008.
by Scott Bass
October 12, 2005

<snip>

During his run for governor in 2001, Warner’s courtship of Southwest Virginia has become the stuff of legend. It’s a story that’s been told before, but only recently has it come into full context. With the Democrats hungry for a winner — and the Republicans growing weaker every day as Bush struggles in the wake of Katrina and in Iraq amid a national gas crisis — Warner is quickly gaining national clout. What started this summer as mild flirting (it was first reported in mid-June that Warner had tapped Monica Dixon, once top adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, to lead his presidential toe-dipping) has blossomed into full-fledged speculation, aided in no small part by Warner himself.

“In the beginning, I wondered whether it could be taken seriously nationally,” says Larry J. Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia, “and that question has been answered in the affirmative.”

Warner is currently one of three moderate candidates with a realistic shot at winning the Democratic nomination, Sabato says. The landscape can obviously change over the next three years, but Sabato can already hear the party’s drumbeat for a centrist candidate if the Democrat’s current front-runner, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, a figure reviled in Bubba country, makes a run for the White House.

“It’s easy to see him win the nomination,” Sabato says, especially when you focus on Warner’s reputation as financial turnaround specialist through the lens of the national economy. “The door is open. Will he walk through that door? Will the American people welcome him through the door? No one knows. It’s way too early.”

[venable]

1. If a handsome young southerner

gets the nomination, it must be Edwards.

The gravitas lack which is incorrectly applied to Edwards, would be all over Warner like white on rice.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

2. Welcome to DU, venable.

[Awsi Dooger]

3. I'm a huge Edwards supporter

But the electoral difference is considerable. Edwards can't win his home state and therefore the 2008 map is identical to 2000 and 2004, Democrats desperately trying to capture an unlikely state like Florida or Ohio. Warner would have a realistic shot at his home turf of Virginia, which would change everything and flop the margin of error advantage to our side, not the GOP's.

[silverstateD]

4. This is the kind of guy we need

Likable southern democrats play well in the mid west and in the south west as well as florida and ohio. this is one who looks the best right now. i think someone like him is our only chance

[spooky3]

5. He doesn't have Edwards' charm or looks but

unlike the current squatter in the White House, Mark Warner is a REAL businessman who has been successful on the basis of his own abilities and efforts (and probably some luck). His appeal is based on how hard he worked at shaking hands in every square inch of Virginia and how competent he is at running the state government.