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It is not likely to be carried through, but worth noting none the less, that Sam Nunn has opened the door for 2008:
"It's a possibility, not a probability," said [former Georgia Democratic Senator Sam] Nunn, now the head of a nonprofit organization out to reduce the threat posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry. "My own thinking is, it may be a time for the country to say, 'Timeout. The two-party system has served us well, historically, but it's not serving us now.'"
The 68-year-old former senator, still considered one of the foremost experts on national security, confirmed that he's discussed a presidential run as part of several conversations with Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor.
More important, Nunn said he's been in touch with Unity '08, a group with a goal of fielding a bipartisan or independent ticket for president. Initial talks began with Hamilton Jordan, a co-founder of Unity '08 and former chief of staff to President Jimmy Carter.
Sam Nunn has been flirting with running for President since the mid-1980's, and this just strikes me as a long overdue convulsion continuing that trend. A friend of mine who worked for Nunn when he was in the Senate told me once that Nunn wanted to be President, but didn't want to have to run for President. Hard to imagine that has changed now, especially as an Independent candidate who would have no chance whatsoever of winning. It is also a sign of the more progressive times in the Democratic Party that Nunn, like other key figures in the DLC, are openly flirting with Unity08 and Bloomberg, when they were founded in the 1980's to try and force a southern conservative, like Sam Nunn, as the Democratic presidential nominee:
The DLC was founded in 1985 by Al From and other Democrats after Ronald Reagan's re-election. The organization started as a group of forty-three elected officials, and two staffers, Al From and Will Marshall. Their original focus was on influencing internal Democratic politics so as to secure the 1988 presidential nomination for a Southern conservative such as Sam Nunn or Chuck Robb, both of whom were early DLC supporters. However, when the DLC's pet project, the Super Tuesday primary, turned out to be a boon for Reverend Jesse Jackson, a vocal critic of the DLC, the group began to shift toward attempting to influence the public debate.
From, like Nunn, now apparently considers both winning Democratic the primary a lost cause, and also considers Clinton too far left to be tolerable. First:
According to Michael Steinhardt, chairman of PPI's Board of Trustees until he resigned at the end of 1995, the Third Way Project was to be 'a new approach to separate ourselves from the Democratic Party.' He explained [to author Baer] that the DLC began to take on a more bipartisan focus, which appealed to a number of contributors, including Steinhardt himself, who advocated the formation of a third party and went so far as to meet with Bill Bradley to try to persuade him to run for President in 1996."
Second:
Sources told CBS 2 Bloomberg brought three deputy mayors with him, and proceeded to talk through every angle of a presidential run. By the end, the group had zeroed in on his running as an independent in 2008. And, the sources said, he seemed intrigued.
The dinner was held at the home of Michael Steinhardt, a legendary Wall Street hedge fund manager and a Bloomberg friend. He brought along Al From, head of the Democratic Leadership Council, which played a part in Bill Clinton's rise to power in 1992.
Third
:
Whatever efforts the DLC has made to make the Democratic Party more conservative, they have generally failed. Self-identified liberals now make up a higher percentage of self-identified Democrats than they did at any time in the past, and so the Sam Nunn's and Al From's of the world have refocused their efforts from trying to elect a conservative southern Democrat, to flirting with independent candidacies. If Nunn did run, it would probably be bad for the Democratic nominee. However, I just don't see a Nunn run happening, considering his twenty-year flirtation with the idea that he never followed through on before. Why actually pull the trigger now, when you are 68, have a much lower profile, and a much lower chance of winning? Mostly, this seems worthy of note because it demonstrates once again how the ideological locus of the Democratic Party has shifted over the past twenty years. Whether we want to believe it or not, and while there are boviously still hurdles to overcome, it is safe to argue that progressives and liberals are gaining ground in the party. Of course, we need to keep pushing further.
At MyDD, Jonathan Signer has more on this.
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