Matthew Yglesias is unconvinced that Gephardt would have a neutral impact on the Kerry campaign. And while I agree with Yglesias that Gephardt's stance on trade (defending specific, existing jobs and ignoring new ones not as easily identifiable) would be all bad, bad, bad for economic and foreign policy, I'm not sure that overall Gephardt would be all bad.
He would bring a solid, workmanlike approach to campaigning that would sort of fit in with Kerry's apparent low-risk approach to this race.
But as I noted about the Canadian Conservative party you can never say "good campaigner, poor results" more than once without starting to sound stupid.
Gephardt has demonstrated zero ability to win significant anything outside (1) his St. Louis congressional district, and (2) the position of minority leader in the Democratic caucus.
Winning Iowa in 1988 means nothing now.
To be sure, the Democrats seem to have a relatively poor slate of candidates to pick from this year, and that's a long-term problem.
In the absence of anyone with a sustained track record in winning votes you have to go on something else. Edwards seemed to win a fair share of independent votes in the open primaries which is a good indicator that he is a better campaigner than Gephardt.
In any case, as Josh Marshall noted the other day, all this energy spent debating the merits and demerits of Gephardt and Edwards may well be wasted. We haven't had a widely foreseen VP pick since Reagan picked Bush in 1980!
Posted by robe0419 at July 5, 2004 5:13 PM