My take on the McCain for Veep thing

I look at it as something that is being put out there for no other reason than to demonstrate, yeah, Democrats are willing to work with the opposition and nothing more.

There is no way whatsoever McCain will be the Veep nominee. He could end up with a cabinet post and there is plenty of precedence for that, but opposing party members as Veep and Pres has not happened in well over a century, nor will it happen again.

This is politics, folks. Live with it. McCain has been outspoken in his opposition to many Bush policies and is a perfect target for this sort of conjecture on the Democratic side. It shows the mushy middle that the Democrats do more than just say "we're uniters, not dividers". It shows them the Democrats actually work with the opposition in order to have progress.

Now if we could only take that gosh awful "Neo-Con" label and change tit to what they really are. These people are not Conservatives like McCain. They are REGRESSIVES as opposed to Progressives.

BTW, I'm headed for a train and may not be back on tonight. If you all have fun with this thread, enjoy. If it immediately drops off the front page, oh well.

I have no reason to doubt it was a serious thought as well. The thought was that McCain would attract so many Republicans and independents that it would create a landslide for Kerry and the Dems would get back the House and Senate, too. Might have worked.

I know Kerry likes and respects McCain -- I do too, even though I don't support most of his policies. He has taken stands on some good issues, including campaign finance reform.

He might win the election with him, but we would hate having McCain around policy-wise and so would the rest of the party. It's just a cult of personality, I think, and Kerry uses that bipartisan appeal to make hay with moderates.

breaks the tie against choice. Then the president veteos it. Makes no sense.

It's all for appearances and positioning. Kerry has over 90% of the Democratic party on board. This is a way to imply that he's reaching out to disaffected Republicans.

I won't get worried until McCain announces that he would like to be Kerry's vp.

This is all my opinion and nothing more, but this idea has gotten too much attention - and even after McCain has said that he supports the Chimp's reselection, the talk continues. No amount of good "willing to work with the other side" PR will make up for the damage already done: no matter who Kerry picks now, that person will look like a second choice to all the fence-sitters who are already saying "look, they can't even find someone in their own party."

I'm very serious and very sad to say this: I'm less confident in Kerry's chances than I used to be, and this McCain thing has done tons to punch holes in my confidence. No matter which way you slice it, with the media giving McCain more attention than Kerry, is it any wonder that Kerry isn't doing better against the Shrub than he is? With Iraq going how it is (and the fact that we're there in the first place), Kerry should be 20 points up, and he isn't. Worse still, when Kerry finally picks someone, there will be no boost (as there usually is when a VP candidate is selected, even if for only a week) because the papers will still be running "how Kerry failed to get his #1 choice" stories. This idea sucked from the beginning and it sucks now - again, just my opinion.

My apologies to anyone who disagrees - my tone is simply indicative of the panic I feel when even thinking of four more years of what we have now. The last thing we need is to even float the idea that we're willing to invite the other side to our table when the other side put us in this hole to begin with.

that the rightwing has been working overtime to keep divided.

Dean is the Democratic McCain, in many ways. They were both straight talking, tough, little pitbulls that aren't afraid to stir up the ire of their party establishment.

Can you imagine how they feel in the Whitehouse every time McCain giggles and blushes when Tweety et al ask McCain if he would consider being Kerry's VP?

on edit clarify