> Fred Thompson must be the luckiest guy in American politics ...
Hardly.
Dark horses tend to poll well, particularly when people
are disenchanted with the front runners under the lights.
The positioning often changes dramatically when the
dark horse catches the pack.
> Wesley Clark was very popular as well when he
> first announced, until people found out he had
> a big bag of nothing.
Exactly.
> ... waits for months before announcing ...
JFK waited until January.
Getting in too soon is actually kind of stupid, unless
it’s purely to raise funding. You run out of things to
keep people interested.
FT’s fortunes now depend on what happens next, and
not how he got here.
Why do people keep bringing this total irrelevancy up? That was nearly 50 freeking years ago. the political machines of 1960 have NOTHING to do with how campaigns are today. LBJ announced the week before JFK's convention, and still kept Kennedy from going into the convention with a majority.