I don't understand why you go to the trouble to admit that you know about Mike Gravel in Alaska and then fail to list him.  WTF?

tell me why Barack Obama is a viable presidential candidate. What has he ever done to make you think so? Tell me one thing he stands for that would encourage me to vote for him. He's a pretty face. That's all. Get real, people. Jeez.

Okay, I won't complain but Al Gore is at the top of my list from now on until he really, really, really officially drops out.

And Howard Dean for veep.

Gore should be on this list. He's my first choice.

Obama doesn't have the 'experience' yet, but he'd be a great VP choice. And I think he's smart enough to realize that his best shot at the WH is first as VP.

I'm proud to be an American again. The first ittem on the Democrats' first agenda should be to restore tthe writ of habeas corpus to the Constitution. I have been wanting to  impeach and convict Bushh annd Cheney for three years until I remembered that that would give us President Hastert. Now, the thought of President Pelosi has a better ring.

I am filled with hate and vindictiveness and a lust for revenge and can  think of little but death and destruction to those who allowed these bastards to  lead us into this damn war because they were too weak and cowardly to speak out. It might appear  that Hillary's jump to the right was a little premature.  I want hearing, hearings, and more hearngs and I want everyone of these SOBs to be exposed and brought down, prison, disgrace, suicide, any or all will br fine with me. As of today 2,839 Americans have died in Iraq for absolutely no reason except that the neo-cons wanted a war and Bush gave them one.    

I've been waiting till after the 06 election to start arguing about 08, but now we're there. Right now, I'm on the Obama bandwagon. I think charisma and personality win most presidential elections. I think he has both. I think he also has shown enough good sense in his few senate votes and in a career in public interest law and education, that I, at this point, am willing to trust his ability to choose wise advisers and make sound, considered decisions. Yes, he's got limited experience, but so did Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, (and Bush2). Experience doesn't get you elected, and as far as I can tell probably hurts your chances.
Maybe this is how the republicans chose Bush, a charismatic neophyte who seems to share their interests, and maybe we should try to do differently, but from their perspective, that pretty much worked.
My biggest hesitation with Obama is that he's never been through a tough campaign. Will he be able to handle what will inevitably be an awful dirty yearlong sleaze fest? If not, hopefully the primary will make this clear. I think a hard-fought primary will ultimately be good for the nominee, especially in Obama's case.

Also as my bold idea for the day: I think Obama (although this could be done by anyone perhaps) should talk to Al Gore, and right from the start, when he makes his announcement, say that Global warming and the waste and misuse of oil are among the critical issues of our time, and as soon as he's elected he will name Al Gore to a new cabinet level global-warming chieftan with authority over the DOE and the EPA and a staff at state.
I think Gore might jump at that. He could then be a cocampaigner, speaking only about those issues which he's really passionate about and actually speaks well about (I saw him 2 weeks ago about Cal prop 87, he was great). It doesn't hurt that it is a good idea to focus on that issue and that he would be ideal in that position.
And he brings along an awfully useful rolodex.

Feingold would have been at the top of my list too. But for some reason, he gets almost no traction when he goes on camera.

Obama will find out that all his pandering will go to naught like Harold Ford.

Wes Clark gets my vote because he has not faltered one bit on talk shows even when he goes on FOX. THe guy was one of the few who backed Lamont openly. He has faced Bill O Reilly types and not backed down one bit. He does not come across as a rabid lefty but he does not insult the lefties to get ahead. There will be some swiftboating going on with him. So he needs to be prepared for that.

I just think he was rushed into it in 2004. With Wes, you will get a guy who is quick on his feet in public and will not marginalise any one segment.

I'll be looking forward to the data dump from that to run further analysis on.

Will somebody name one person who has worked harder, shown more leadership and competence, and the ability to bring people and power back to the Democratic party  than Howard Dean? He drug this party kicking and sceaming back into a power.  I am more than willing to drag him kicking and screaming into the White House. He is an honest, hard working American who loves his country what better qualifications for a President?  I know he has promised to stay at DNC, but we can draft him, and I hope we do. He has earned our gratidtude & our trust.

Mark Warner, for me at least. I'm real excited about General Clark though. I know I'll get flamed for it though. Clark and Obama are our most electable options out of this bunch.

McCain and Guiliani revamp their campaign strategies. I think they're popular but they know they're on the losing side of the Iraq argument. They can't stay lock-step with Bush and hope for a chance in 2008.

I'm looking forward to the blogs kicking the shit out of the DLC'ers now that '08 has begun.

Rasmussen is polling Al Gore. Why aren't you?  I still can't get over that. It's so weird -- it's like the Netroots are in denial about this.

You need to add Mike Gravel. He's a Democrat, a former Senator, and a declared candidate.

for sake of consistency.

he has announced his candidacy as a democrat here.

I'm not going to bother with this...

Except for Clark, Feingold and Edwards I would not have any of these AssClowns pick up what my dog leaves on the lawn.

Biden? Sheesh...

Obama is Joey the Liarmann's butt-boy and a ReThug shill. Uh-uh...

Say...

I thought 'people powered politics' was about who we wanted not whatever ego-swollen solons put themselves forward as 'candidates'....

Please don't bother with sort of bullshit in the future.

Seriously.

...or rather the run-off type voting.

I'd rather waste my vote on weak candidates when it doesn't count.

Spitzer/Clark in '08.

'nuff said.

hey guys it's official now, we got our 5th pickup in the tx lege.  fighting dem juan garcia has beat gene seaman!  w00t!

also, my 3rd choice counted in this straw poll.  =(

Extremely un-scientific observation, but Evan Bayh went from no votes back when there were about 300 total, to the top person in the first round, and as I hit refresh, only his are going up.

I believe we have ballot box stuffers!  :)

It's a meaningless poll if it does not include Al Gore.

Is the Bayh campaign employing people to freep mydd?  

I just looked and Bayh won the first round with 25% of the vote.

Bayh?  Has he ever polled above 3% in any previous polls?

Is this poll being freeped? Evan Bayh is coming out #1- which is pretty implausible.

FDR all the way.  

I thought freeping this poll was the domain of Clark supporters?  Who does Bayh think he is?

;)

What evidence is there that there was poll-stuffing?

Bayh's folks did not stuff the polls.

Bayh supporters posted the link in the facebook groups, my blog, Americans for Bayh blog, the yahoo group, myspace.

The facebook group alone is up to almost 2,000 members.

I voted once and once only.  I ranked the other candidates too.

I don't think you should exclude Sen. Bayh just because supporters came over to vote from myspace and facebook.

Also, Bayh's facebook profile has over 6,000 supporters.

Can I vote for Bobby Kennedy?  He really did deserve a chance.

My first choice is Evan Bayh.  My second choice is Al Gore.  Since my third choice (Joe Biden) is the only option on your poll.  I am not participating.  Also, I am not a part of an organized effort to wreck your survey.

I am a Feingold fan, but I fear that a twice divorced, presently single Presidential candidate might not wow the moralistic masses...what do you all think?

To me the most interesting result of the poll so far is not the eventual winner or even final two.  It's that there's a clear set of four candidates with very similar levels of support (Feingold, Edwards, Obama, Clark), and then a huge gap down to "everyone else".  

For Feingold and Clark, I can point to rather specific things they've done that run counter to received CW and more to our liking, clearly willing to piss some people off in the process.  (The same can be said of the unincluded Gore.) Edwards at least brings credibility as a former VP nominee.  Rhetorically, I like Obama as much as the next guy;  but really, why has his stock gone up so high so fast?  Purely on the rhetoric?

During an interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Aug. 13, 2006, Feingold said that McCain would defeat him.  The transcript is posted at http://www.progressivepatriotsfund.com/v ideo/transcripts/feingold-on-this-week.h tml.  I understand the video is available at ABC.  If you're considering backing Feingold, you should see it. Here's Feingold's amazing self-labeling as a loser:

". . . GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You're also looking forward to the elections in 2008. And I want to get - go to something you said about our next guest Senator John McCain. You were talking to Playboy magazine earlier this year. I see that smile on your face, and this is what you said about McCain. You said, 'It may be that the Republicans will have such a desire to win again that they would actually accept a straight shooter. The general public would support him, and he would win easily."

Now, here's what I don't get. You're against the war in Iraq. You believe that the country agrees with you. John McCain wants more troops in Iraq yet you think he would win a general election easily. How do you square all that?

SENATOR RUSS FEINGOLD: Well, I'm going to retract every good thing I've ever said about John McCain right now. I've just - I've done way too much. You know, I love John McCain. He's a great guy. The fact is we do disagree on Iraq, but I think that on the overall fight against terrorism and that that's the number one priority there's a lot of agreement. John and I have been to Baghdad together twice and talked about this at length so obviously I'm going to be supporting a Democrat for president of the United States, but I have a very high regard for John McCain, and this is just an area of disagreement. We agree tremendously on reform and worked together well and I'm proud to serve with him in the Senate.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you still think he would win easily even if you're the Democratic candidate?

SENATOR RUSS FEINGOLD: Oh, I think he'd beat me, but - you know, in terms of overall I think John would be a very strong candidate, but let's see what happens.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Feingold, thanks very much."

= = = I can't understand how anybody who wants the Dems to win back the White House could consider voting for somebody who keeps saying the GOP frontrunner would beat him.

After the above Feingold interview, a cooly confident McCain came on. He did not reciprocate Feingold's gushing.

There is no chance whatsoever that America is ever going to elect a president who identifies himself as a loser -- even after he's been given a chance to take it back. It's mindblowing that Feingold is apparently going ahead with his "exploration" of running in 2008.

What does it say about the Democratic Party that  somebody who's recently said on national TV that he'd lose to one of the GOP frontrunners continues to be included in the discussion of who's going to be nominated?

I have perl, Java and C implementations of IRV and other rankings/ratings ballot counting methods. This source could be integrated into MyDD and tie voting to registered users, like the existing polls here do (Scoop records that you voted and what the vote was separately with no way of back-connecting them).

Alternately, a stand-alone site I built, BetterPolls.com, does at least require an image recognition check to slow down ballot stuffers. And on occasion I have post-processed results by hand to filter out obvious stuffers.

I ranked a none-of-these high up (maybe 5 or 6) as a nod to Al Gore.

I think Gore might be considering it as much as some of those you included.  Id like to see 2 polls, one with EVERYBODY, one with the likley candidates.

This is very neat. Hope you can try this again later with some kind of anti-stuffing mechanism (is there some way to rig it so that only logged in mydd users can vote?).

I do find the way that round 9 shows up:

Russ Feingold      
     750      (25.3%)

Wesley Clark       
     733      (24.8%)       

John Edwards       
     752      (25.4%)       

Barack Obama       
     724      (24.5%)

So we have a very nearly even split between those four, assuming they are the only candidates. Interesting.

Of course, one thing is that this poll doesn't really represent the "mainstream", just MyDD, right? A Russ Feingold presidency would make me happy but I kind of have to question whether Russ Feingold could score nearly that high among something closer to the general populace.

Wes Clark in 2008 because he's the ONLY top flight Dem that can effectively compete and win in ALL 50 states !

No other Dem can do so as effectively....and WIN !

I can't believe that Edwards won the first straw poll. There has got to be a better candidate then that. He wasn't even good as a VP candidate.....

I think there are a bunch of us looking for someone to rise up and grab our hearts AND our minds and take us on a ride all the way to the White House. Maybe Vilsak (sp?) is that guy. I don't know enough about him. Dean was that guy for me in 2004. I had never heard of him before that election and I am certainly glad that I met him now.

Please everybody let us know if you have found that special candidate. I will quit my job and come work for them starting tomorrow if I can find the right person.

Thank you.