A June 8-9 national poll taken by Opinion Dynamcs Corp. for Fox News provides food for thought regarding a Kerry-Dean ticket. Overall, a Kerry-Dean ticket garnered support from 45 percent compared with 44 percent for Bush-Cheney. In the so-called battleground states, Kerry-Dean beat Bush-Cheney 48-42. The poll defines battleground states as: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The old conventional wisdom about a vice presidential candidate concludes that the best pick is the one who can deliver the electoral votes of his or her home state on Election Day. That is what keeps names like retiring Missouri congressman Richard Gephardt and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack in the mix. Neither excites, and one is virtually unknown beyond the corn belt. Dean's constituency is bigger than a single state. It's a movement synonymous with change and excitement.

But excitement from the left scares the middle. The middle is where Kerry thinks he wants to be in an election that has come to be defined as Bush versus not Bush. It's too bad a party has to lose its heart and soul to put a body in the White House.

To start off, Vennochi's conclusion is either pure naivete or complete bullshit, I'm not sure which. Has she really never noticed that given the structure of the non-parliamentary American political system, politicians of both parties must run for President from the middle of the spectrum in order to attract voters enough voters to win? It's not sufficient to excite one's base or satisfy the desires of the "heart and soul" of one's party, because there just aren't enough of them to go around, so one has to appeal to more moderate voters in order to get elected. Does she think it is merely a coincidence that it happens every four years, or some kind of cross-party conspiracy by the establishment figures within each to marginalize outsider groups?

Now, you can appeal to moderate voters in a good way -- recasting one's real, basic policies and beliefs in terms which are more palatable to the middle -- or you can do it in a bad way -- pretending to be a "compassionate conservative" and advocate of a "humble" foreign policy when one really has no intention of doing anything of the sort, but everyone's got to do it, and those who don't do it, or do it badly, will go down in ignominious defeat.

So this Kerry/Dean thing will never happen, and that's a good thing.

Despite the polls (where the differences between Kerry/Edwards and Kerry/Dean fall into the margin of error), I really don't believe that Dean would help the ticket much at all -- in fact, I think he would hurt it. The people he excites are liberals who may begrudge showing support for Kerry right now but will, I believe, ultimately make the right choice and vote for him in November. While Kerry/Dean might take some of the wind out of the sails of the Nader campaign and reduce the potential "Nader effect", I really don't think that non-Nader liberals are a constituency Kerry has to worry much about. "ABBA" has been too widely accepted among progressives as a necessary strategy to get rid of Bush for them to double back and do anything that hurts Kerry's chances of winning, however much people like Vennochi want to sigh about the party's "heart and soul" being lost.

On the other hand, moderates of all stripe are absolutely crucial for Kerry to win, and these are the people that (incorrectly, in my view) are scared of Dean and what he appears (to them) to represent. These are people who are currently polling as "undecided", and conventional wisdom is that undecideds break for the challenger (especially when the incumbent has such lousy approval numbers) -- but a Kerry/Dean ticket would most likely suppress the magntiude of that break and hurt Kerry's chances in the end.

I like Dean, he was my candidate of choice for quite a while, but I don't think this suggestion passes the real-life politics test.

Incidentally, all this sounds a lot like I'm saying that Kerry can take the liberal vote for granted (with the exception of the Nader factor), and, yes, that's precisely what I'm saying. Kerry can, and should, take the liberal vote for granted. I want him to take the liberal vote for granted so that he can spend his time, money and energy on getting the votes of other groups, and not on keeping me satisfied. Allowing Kerry to take the liberal vote for granted is far and away the best thing we can do to defeat Bush, and that's the goal.

Eyes on the prize, folks.

There's plenty of time to "keep Kerry's feet to the fire" once he's been elected. He's not stupid, he's going to know that it was our acquiescence that allowed him the freedom to tune his pitch to others who were vitally necessary for him to get elected, and he's not going to forget that. Unlike Clinton, who gave out the vibe to liberals that he would be more liberalish than he could afford to appear, but turned out not really to be, Kerry is that liberalish, as his record shows, and we should sit back and rely on that and not make him prove his liberal creds to us over and over again, at the expense of potential votes from other quarters.

So, take me for granted, please.

Don't talk to me about the heart and soul of the Democratic party, let's talk instead about the future of this country under four more years of George W. Bush, the devastation he can bring about, and the long-term damage to our relationships with our allies and the rest of the world. THAT'S what this election is about, dammit, not whether liberals (or any other constituent group in the party, for that matter) feel good about themselves.

[Link via MyDD, and my remarks adapted from comments posted there.]