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The results of a Zogby poll testing the waters for Clark's potential candidacy were released today:

http://www.draftwesleyclark.com/poll.htm

There was a press conference on C-SPAN as well. The full video is available on the C-SPAN homepage:

http://www.c-span.org

Here's the press release:

DraftWesleyClark.com Releases Zogby Poll: In “Blind Bio” Match-Up, Wesley Clark Tops All Current Democrats, Beats Bush 49% to 40%

(Washington, DC), August 25, 2003- DraftWesleyClark.com, the national campaign to draft former General Wesley Clark for President, today released the results of a Zogby poll commissioned to address the potential of a Clark candidacy. The results were presented as part of an overall report by political analyst and former professor, Chris Kofinis, Ph.D.

“Campaigns are long and numbers can change,” said John Hlinko, co-founder of the effort. “But there’s no doubt that these numbers show that General Wesley Clark would be a competitive candidate, to say the least.”

The poll was commissioned by DraftWesleyClark.com, and conducted by John Zogby, one of the nation’s most prominent and respected pollsters. In an effort to best assess the potential for a Clark candidacy, given that he is not yet a declared candidate, the poll included several “blind bio” questions. For these, subjects polled were given biographical descriptions of the candidates, rather than actual names. All questions and bios were screened and approved by John Zogby for fairness and objectivity.

Among the findings:

· 84.1% of likely Democratic primary voters say it is not too late for a new entrant into the race to win their support;
· 73.5% of all likely voters rate military/national security experience as “very” or “somewhat” important for a presidential candidate;
· Clark comes in first in a blind-bio match-up versus six key Democratic candidates (Dean, Kerry, Edwards, Lieberman, Gephardt, Edwards, and Graham);
· Clark wins 49.4% to 40.2% in a blind-bio match-up versus President Bush among a national poll of likely voters;
· Even when the poll question referred solely to candidate names (no bio information), Clark jumped to 5th place (4.9%) nationally among likely Democratic primary voters – despite his low name recognition, and the fact that he has not spent a dime.

“These Zogby poll results suggest that the race for the Democratic nomination is wide open, and that likely primary voters are definitely open to another candidate entering the race,” said Dr. Kofinis. “Further, the poll results tell us that Clark has the qualities to compete against the elite of the Democratic field, and to challenge and potentially defeat President Bush in 2004.”

See www.DraftWesleyClark.com for full results.

ABOUT THE POLL

The poll was conducted between August 16th and 19th, using 1,019 likely voters chosen nationwide. The margin of error is +/- 3.2% for the overall sample, and +/- 4.1% for the sample of likely Democratic primary voters.

ABOUT DRAFTWESLEYCLARK.COM

Launched in April, 2003, DraftWesleyClark.com has collected tens of thousands of letters urging General Clark to run, raised over $750,000 in pledges, and built a network of volunteer leaders, ready to serve – if General Clark chooses to lead. DraftWesleyClark.com has already been featured on Good Morning America, Meet The Press, CBS Evening News, Crossfire, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, as well as in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire and Newsweek.

DraftWesleyClark.com is the largest effort to draft Wesley Clark for President. It is not affiliated with General Clark (really, honestly, truly). The effort is headquartered in Washington, DC, one block from the White House. For more information, please see www.DraftWesleyClark.com.
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Paid for by DraftWesleyClark.com. Not Authorized by any candidate. Contributions to DraftWesleyClark.com are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes.[/b]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. How about this ticket for 2004 ?

Courtesy of nytimes.com....


Senator Clinton Says No to '04, but Playfulness Hints at Yes
By JIM DWYER


hen the guests descended on the Clinton family home in Chappaqua on Sunday evening, most of them had already heard that the answer to the question was, roughly speaking, no, a thousand times no, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would not make a run for the presidency next year.

By the end of the night, "no" was not quite the word ringing in every ear as the guests — about 150 major campaign donors to the former president or to the senator — left the gathering. During cocktails in the back yard, one group heard former President Bill Clinton say that the national Democratic Party had "two stars": his wife, the junior senator from New York, and a retired general, Wesley K. Clark, who is said to be considering a run for the presidential nomination.

And during the dinner, according to a dozen people who were at the event, they heard Mrs. Clinton say how important their support would be "for my next campaign, whatever that may be." Later, Mr. Clinton, in discussing the presidential field, said, "We might have another candidate or two jumping into the race."

To John Catsimatidis, the chief executive officer of the Gristede's supermarket chain, those remarks shifted his own views of whether Mrs. Clinton had definitively ruled out the presidential race.

"I was sitting next to her last night, and I didn't get the impression that she had pulled the trigger in her mind" for or against a national campaign, Mr. Catsimatidis said. "Some people might have been left with the impression that there's always a possibility. I was."

To others at the party, Mrs. Clinton, in alluding pointedly to an unspecified campaign, was merely having mild fun about a candidacy that not only has never been announced but whose existence has repeatedly been denied.

"She clearly laughed after that — she was totally making a joke," said Lisa Perry, one of many guests who contacted The New York Times at the request of Mrs. Clinton's staff to douse whatever heat may have risen from the senator's words. "She was playing with the notion that everyone thinks she may."

Any other interpretation, say Senator Clinton and her aides, was a matter of wishful listening among eager political supporters. While they did not deny the remarks attributed to either of the Clintons, they said that these were casual comments, made about the need to raise funds for Mrs. Clinton's race for the Senate in 2006 — not about a run for president next year.

In a telephone interview, Mrs. Clinton said the entire focus of the evening was how to marshal forces against the as-yet unformed and anonymous opposition she will face when her Senate term expires in 2006.

"I try to be careful — but being careful was misunderstood, or misheard," she said.

Asked if it was impossible that she would run for president next year, she laughed. Asked again, she laughed again, then responded: "I have said I am not running. If I knew another foreign language, I'd say it in that. I'm saying, `I'm not going to do it.' "

One close ally of Mrs. Clinton, who asked not to be named, said that the people who took note of the remarks by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clinton "were not hallucinating. In the climate of heightened interest in a candidacy, they know they need to be extra, extremely careful with their language. Still, you don't engage a possible presidential run with a casual remark at a dinner."

A Web site run by Mrs. Clinton's staff, FriendsofHillary.com, regularly includes e-mail messages urging her to run for president. The messages are selected and posted publicly by her staff.

When these received attention in the press last month, Mrs. Clinton promptly told The Associated Press, "I am absolutely ruling it out." Even so, the Hillary-for-president e-mail messages appeared on the campaign Web site yesterday.

Mrs. Clinton said she had been busy raising funds for Democrats around the country and needed to get money together to protect herself from the onslaught promised by the Republicans after the 2004 elections. For Sunday's dinner, the Clintons invited people who had raised $100,000 or more for the senator during the last year.

I wanted to do something to thank them," she said. "It was a thank you dinner but also about what I was going to have to do about raising campaign money for myself. That was not an announcement for a campaign. It was raising money for a future that will be announced at some point down the road."

The guests arrived at 6 p.m. in a long line of luxury cars and limousines that were parked by valets. The donors wandered through the family home, decorated with pictures from Mr. Clinton's years in office.

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As dinner was served in a backyard tent, speakers, mostly alumni from the Clinton White House, spoke about what they saw as the failures of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Ann F. Lewis, a former White House counselor who served in Mrs. Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000, talked about polls that she said showed an erosion in Mr. Bush's support, particularly among women.

These are the same people, Ms. Lewis pointed out, who have waited for hours at bookstores to shake Mrs. Clinton's hand and buy a signed copy of her recently published memoir.

The thrust of her remarks at the party was Mrs. Clinton's potency among Democrats. "What I was trying to walk through — she is the most popular, credible leader among that group of voters most important to the Democratic party," Ms. Lewis said yesterday. She said she had not talked about any national polls that put Mrs. Clinton against President Bush because "it was not useful."

The event was not a fund-raiser, one aide said, but a form of "donor maintenance" — the cosseting of important supporters. "I was not making an announcement that I was running for re-election," Mrs. Clinton said. "I didn't want to announce at a private dinner. I was asking my supporters to begin raising money."

She acknowledged that the possibility of a presidential run was raised by a number of people at the party, and elsewhere. "It's very flattering. I have a lot of supporters who continue to urge me to consider this," she said. "I keep saying no. That's the same today as it has been."

The reason, she said, is that she enjoys her job as a senator, and feels it comes with a great deal of responsibility. She said she intended to work hard for a Democratic presidential candidate. And if it turns out that she would be the strongest candidate in the field? Again, Mrs. Clinton laughed. "I don't see that happening," she said.

The remarks by Mr. Clinton about another "candidate or two" getting into the presidential race were explained in an e-mail message sent by his spokesman, Jim Kennedy, who referred to the constitutional amendment that limits presidents to two terms in office. "He meant Wesley Clark, and temporarily forgot about the 22nd Amendment," Mr. Kennedy wrote.

I want Clark for President, not VP. I've heard the rumors that he will run with Dean, but I'm not in favor of it. I think Dean is too far left to attract moderates. Clark is almost too good to be true. I will volunteer for his campaign if he runs.

Did anyone catch him on Bill Maher Friday night? I was hoping to post a transcript, but it's not up on billmaher.com. Bill pulled out the Bush in a flight suit doll in front of Clark. That was funny. Clark was very PI in his response to the doll, but you know he had to be disgusted, amused, or both by W's grandstanding on the aircraft carrier.

Patrick M wrote:I think Dean is too far left to attract moderates.

I'd almost say the opposite. While his rhetoric is certainly very anti-Bush, his politics aren't nearly as far left as most people assume.

Whatever his stance, I honestly don't think it matters all that much. Charisma means a lot more than policy to most people. They may not admit it, but it's true. I won't forget how many people told me they didn't vote for Gore because he was boring.

Patrick M wrote:I want Clark for President, not VP. I've heard the rumors that he will run with Dean, but I'm not in favor of it. I think Dean is too far left to attract moderates. Clark is almost too good to be true. I will volunteer for his campaign if he runs.

Did anyone catch him on Bill Maher Friday night? I was hoping to post a transcript, but it's not up on billmaher.com. Bill pulled out the Bush in a flight suit doll in front of Clark. That was funny. Clark was very PI in his response to the doll, but you know he had to be disgusted, amused, or both by W's grandstanding on the aircraft carrier.

Just reading the Op Ed pieces of the last few days, since Bush's announcement for more money and "help" from the UN, that aircraft carrier incident was brought up EVERY TIME. It's going to haunt him !

lukpac wrote:

Patrick M wrote:I think Dean is too far left to attract moderates.

I'd almost say the opposite. While his rhetoric is certainly very anti-Bush, his politics aren't nearly as far left as most people assume.

What about this?

"...In Vermont, you know, politics is much farther to the left. A Vermont centrist is an American liberal right now."

-Dean, 8/21/03

Also, I think banning free trade with countries who don't meet our labor and environmental standards is a fairly radical position.

mikenycLI wrote:Just reading the Op Ed pieces of the last few days, since Bush's announcement for more money and "help" from the UN, that aircraft carrier incident was brought up EVERY TIME. It's going to haunt him !

I agree. It's gotta peeve the White House that such an gigantic, expensive, obviously painstakingly planned photo-op has turned into political kryptonite.

Ryan

Well, he appears to support the war on drugs, and does not support legalizing drugs. He doesn't support gun control on a national level. His support for the death penalty seems to be growing.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2084735/

While I'm not saying I wouldn't vote for him, talk is cheap.

Clark to launch 2004 presidential bid Wednesday

Tuesday, September 16, 2003 Posted: 1:32 PM EDT (1732 GMT)

(CNN) -- Former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark will announce his presidential candidacy Wednesday, becoming the 10th Democrat to seek to unseat President Bush in 2004, sources close to the retired general told CNN.

Clark told reporters Tuesday to expect "a marked change" in the Democratic field but would not confirm his decision to run.

However, he said the country is "hungry for dialogue and looking for leadership."

He is expected to launch his candidacy in Little Rock with an announcement at noon (1 p.m. ET) Wednesday, and has assembled a team of campaign operatives that include veterans of the campaigns of former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

An outspoken critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Clark said the country "is in significant difficulty, both at home and abroad."

"I think it needs strong leadership and visionary leadership to take it forward," Clark said after meeting with Democratic officials in his hometown of Little Rock. "So that's what's drawn me to this prospective point right here."

Though other Democratic candidates have had a months-long head start in terms of organization and fund-raising, Clark dismissed concerns that it was too late for him to enter the presidential race.

The 58-year-old Clark is a West Point graduate, Rhodes Scholar and former CNN military analyst who led U.S. and allied forces in the 1999 air war in Kosovo.

He retired from the Army in 2000 after a 34-year career that included combat in Vietnam and leading the military negotiations in the peace talks that ended the war in Bosnia in 1995.

"I've got a broad background of leadership experience -- executive leadership, diplomatic leadership and political leadership -- and I think that's what the American people are looking for at this time," he said.

Clark became NATO's supreme commander in 1997, but reportedly clashed with Pentagon officials during the Kosovo campaign and was relieved of command after the war. Clinton, a fellow Arkansan, said last week that Clark would "serve our country well."

Clark convened a meeting of his political advisers and friends Tuesday in Little Rock to discuss his decision. Among those in attendance were George Bruno, a former Democratic Party chairman in the early primary state of New Hampshire, and former Clinton White House spokesman Mark Fabiani.

In previous interviews, he has said he considered President Bush's tax cuts inefficient and unwise and would consider suspending or rescinding them if elected president.

He said years in the Army had persuaded him to support affirmative action "in principle," although he suggested its benefits could be cut at a certain income level. And he said he would reconsider the Clinton administration's "don't-ask, don't-tell" policy on gays in the armed services, saying he considered it ineffective.

So, Ryan, does this mean I can put up a Clark yard sign at your place?

You've gotta find me first.

Seriously, let me talk to the better half and see. I actually live right at the entrance to a brand-new Ball Homes development, so I've got a neato location...

Ryan

Rspaight wrote:Seriously, let me talk to the better half and see. I actually live right at the entrance to a brand-new Ball Homes development, so I've got a neato location...

I imagine the Clark signs are all hypothetical at this point. I do plan on volunteering for the effort, though.

To give you some idea of where my political leanings stand with respect to the rest of my family, check out this op-ed by my cousin in our local paper. He is, BTW, the co-county coordinator for the "Fletcher for Guvnah" movement:

Yipe. I'll bet Thanksgiving dinner is a barrel of laughs.

I dunno, I like what I've heard about Clark so far. Fiscally conservative (but appalled at the Bush tax cuts), socially moderate, and, compared to the current crew of chuckleheads, a certified foreign policy genius.

As always, the question comes down to whether he can win. I think he's the guy who can beat Bush. Period. And I can't say I believe that about any of the current nine Democrats.

Ryan