[JaredL]

Firstly, the primaries are too far away for this "Dems don't have a chance if X is elected" or "Reps don't have a chance against anyone" talk, much less for the general election.

Other than the time thing, another big point is that once the primaries are over the election will shift dramatically. Say Hillary and Rudy are the candidates. At that point I think Hillary will be very strongly campaigning on a "look at all the ways that Rudy is as bad or worse than George W. Bush." If (this is a big if) the democrat runs a reasonable campaign they will tie the republican nominee as closely to George Bush as possible. The Republicans are making this pretty easy by going to their base and cranking up the war talk.

On the other side, I would expect whichever democrat is nominated to get the weak on terror, embolden our enemies type stuff. I don't think that will work too well but I also thought the Bush campaign in 2004 was fairly transparent and wouldn't work then either.

That's where I think Hillary will do better than a lot of people expect. IMO Bush won in 2004 because Kerry's campaign was really weak. If he would have gone after the Swiftboat vets and their [censored] immediately and knocked it out before it got steam then he would have been better off. Similarly, he could have attacked Bush a lot better. I don't think Hillary will make those mistakes given her campaigning experience with Bill. I would hope that it would be the same for Edwards if he got in there due to his experience running as the VP but it's hard to say. For Obama who knows. He would be great on that stuff in the debates I think but who knows on the other stuff.