Joy Reid goes below the belt, Jane Sanders responds

[karynnj]

95. I think it would be harder to be too much bigger than either of those

In 2004, Kennedy endorsed Kerry before Iowa and spent a huge amount of time campaigning with him. I agree that once Kerry pulled off an upset victory in Iowa, he was well positioned to win NH. I agree that the Gephardt/Dean war destroyed both of them, but one thing I was told by a Democrat who worked in Iowa that year - the unusual thing about Kerry's support was that while it took a long time to build up - once people chose him they stayed with him.

Kennedy did two things for Kerry in Iowa - one was that people came out to see Teddy and the second was that Kennedy had long been able to get Kerry to laugh and not be 100% serious. Not only that, Kennedy did a great job making the case for Kerry who he then knew for 3 decades. However, Iowa being Iowa, the one most responsible for his Iowa win was Kerry himself. He was very good speaking to people one to one. In addition, it did not hurt that in the last week he was joined by the man he saved in Vietnam and that Kerry had little warning that he was coming.

Incidentally, the media made a big deal of the Harkin and the Gore endorsements. I've seen the CSPAN videos of Kennedy and Kerry and they clearly were having a great time campaigning and that has to help. As to the Dean scream, it may be the most overrated thing ever. The story that night would have been that frontrunner Dean came in far behind both Kerry and Edwards - getting 18% to Kerry's 38%! In fact, if anything, the Dean scream - played ad nauseum - meant that they had less time for the story of Kerry winning.

As to 2008, I think that Obama needed several things to win his unlikely victory in the primaries. He needed Clinton to make mistakes and run a mediocre campaign, he needed the endorsements of Durbin, Kerry and Kennedy to bring in some who thought him too inexperienced, and he needed to run a fantastic, near perfect campaign. Just to win by a nose!

As to 2020, my thinking is that I think Sanders ran in 2016 to get his ideas out ... which he did. I would bet that he was stunned he did anywhere as good as he did. More than most politicians, I think he is driven by issues and the desire to move things in the right direction. I have NOTHING to base this on, but I suspect that if he thought one of the candidates had the potential to be an excellent candidate and who shared his goals, he might see his role as having shifted the party to allow that leader to lead.

I like your list - and one thing to notice is that there are many likely possibilities. It is too early to think of who will be the right person for the time and where the country is now. I do like the latest set of Tom Seyer's ads on taxes and the tone he has used in all of them.

I suspect that Biden will not run. His numbers (as with Sanders) are inflated as they have more name recognition. Biden was a very good vice president, but I think one think people will consider if that he was not given the traditional opportunity to be the frontrunner as President. In addition, he ran twice on his own and he really gained little traction either time. He's a smart guy and has an excellent resume, but he will be 77 years old.