Add Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin to those thinking more than twice about running for president in 2008 and deciding against it. After traveling through 17 states where he maintains that he found encouragement, he will complete his 1,000th “listening session'’ this afternoon at Racine City Hall, but beforre he does so he will hold a “media availability'’ to explain his decision not to run.

In part, the thought of serving in a Democratic-run Senate after many years in the minority, where he says that often the most he could do was fight against “bad ideas,'’ seems more appealing to Feingold now than waging a presidential campaign “without,'’ he admits, “having a very strong desire to run.'’

“While I’ve certainly enjoyed the repeated comments or buttons saying, “Run Russ Run”, or “Russ in ‘08′”, I often felt that if a piece of Wisconsin swiss cheese had taken the same positions I’ve taken, it would have elicited the same standing ovations,'’ Feingold writes today. “This is because the hunger for progressive change we feel is obviously not about me but about the desire for a genuinely different Democratic Party that is ready to begin to reverse the 25 years of growing extremism we have endured.'’

With Feingold out of the running, 2008 is shaping up to be a battle of the Centrists in which the happy idiots of the DLC will suddenly have to brandish their non-principlse against each other. Clinton, Vilsack, Richardson, Biden (recipient of the DLC Harry Truman Award), and Baye–the “What’s Populism” Caucus–are the vanilla warriors of liberal blandness, champions of hawkish defense and little else. I couldn’t be more unimpressed with any of their politics because they stand for so little.

Chances are, given the “vote for a winner” mentality of the primaries, one of these plain oatmeal candidates will be our party’s nominee for president in 2008. This is especially true if no one is challenging them to talk about progressive issues, as Feingold was primed to do. Wes Clarke might be a good counter balance, and John Edwards certainly has his priorities straight, but it is clear that the overwhelming balance of the 2008 debate will be centered on the center. This is more than a problem for us wacky liberal bloggers who actually believe in progressivism, it’s a problem for the general election, too.

Look at what Feingold said about how Americans just voted for progressive change and listen to pundits who concede that even the most conservative newly-elected Democrats are economic progressives. The Party won last week because Democrats, Independents, and some Republicans want to reinstate fairness into our governing principles. Unlike 2004, this election wasn’t about whether Democrats love Jesus or oppose man-on-dog sex, it was about representation, fairness, and pocketbook solutions. The DLC does not represent the party that won on Tuesday, so why should it represent the party in 2008? We need to draft a credible counterbalance to reveal the hollowness of the DLC and get voters of all affiliations excited about voting Democratic in 2008. Feingold is gone, Edwards is a long shot, and Clarke is merely interesting to me at the moment. Brian Schweitzer is very appealing to me. Granted, he’s a DLCer, too, but his politics are easily distinguishable from his colleagues’. The crowd that is running needs an opponent.


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