Thinking ahead

The Washington Times reports on the successful fund raising efforts of outgoing Virginia Governor and presidential hopeful Mark Warner. In passing, the Times notes this statment by Kos: “Forget Hillary. Warner will be the candidate to beat.” But then, Kos was convinced that the Democrats would nominate Dean in 2004 and, if I’m not mistaken, continued to hold that belief for some time after the debacle in Iowa.

There’s an interesting potential dynamic here. Warner, it seems to me, can contemplate being “the candidate to beat” only if the left-wing of the party supports him over Hillary and those to the left of her. But the left-wing of the party is likely to support Warner only if he adopts solidly leftist positions. At that point he becomes (a) vulnerable to a Dean-like fate and (b) quite beatable in the general election, if he gets that far.

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