[Nate tha\\\' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
Whoever runs for the democrat nomination should realize that any repub nominee, especially McCain or Giuliani, is not going to defend Bush's record totally, so will have to be able to matchup against whatever platform that repub uses. Also, someone like Obama or Hillary is coming from a home state almost assured of going democrat regardless of who the candidate is, so that is kind of a negative unless they have a VP from a swing or southern state. If I were a democrat, I would be wanting Evan Bayh to be the candidate.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have to disagree here. Presidential elections are more about personality than policy. People vote for the candidate whom they find more intelligent, trustworthy, dynamic, attractive, and whatever other adjective you want to use. I'll present this without offering any sort of proof, although it's worth noting that the swing in the popular vote in presidential elections is much larger from cycle to cycle than the swing in congressional elections, which suggests that voters are doing more than simply going with their partisan allegiances.

I don't think a party does very well for itself by nominating a "focus group candidate". I define a "focus group candidate" as someone who is triangulated to offend the fewest people, rather than someone who inspires/motivates the most people to vote for him. I think this label applies pretty clearly to Bayh and Edwards on the Dem side, and probably Huckabee and Romney on the Republican side. These guys make great vice presedential nominees. They don't make any kind of presdential nominees, because they're almost invariably selected out in the primary process.

That leaves open the question of just which Democrat would have the best prospects in the general election. My guess is that Gore would be a couple of percentage points better than Obama, and Obama would be a couple of percentage points better than Clinton, and Clinton would be a couple of percentage points better than Edwards. But I don't think there's anything resembling the situation you have on the Republican side, where the party's chance to control the White House would drop precipitously if McCain is not the nominee.