Medea Benjamin, Green Party leader

There's a certain part of me that thinks, of course George Bush is going to win this next election. They've got control of the media, they've got their one candidate whereas we're all fighting about our candidates, we've got our Green Party dilemma -- do we run, don't we run. They've got the money, they've got the power and they've got the fear factor. And there's another part of me that says that this administration is so bad, and this economy is so bad, that they're not going to be able to keep distracting us with either a foreign war or an orange alert. That at some point the truth of how they're bankrupting our government and our economy has got to get through.

So yes, he's beatable, and we've got to find ways between the Greens and the Democrats and the 38 percent of the population that doesn't identify with either the Democrats or the Republicans. The Democrats and the Greens need to be talking to each other. There are a lot of people who are furious with the Democratic Party and they're not acknowledging that. We've got to come together to defeat him.

One of the things the peace movement is doing is bringing the global community together to say no to the Bush agenda, and try to show Americans how much the Bush administration is creating hate for Americans around the world and making us less safe. That if we had a president who believed in multilateralism and nonviolent ways of solving conflict that this would make us safer at home. The Bush administration is not good for American safety or prosperity.

Pollster and political consultant Pat Caddell, who advised Jimmy Carter's insurgent 1976 presidential campaign

I believe that beating Bush is far more possible than I believed it possible Jimmy Carter could be elected in 1976. Because ultimately the country doesn't support what he's doing. He's very popular personally, he's got high leadership marks and he'll probably keep them. But this administration is out of whack with the rest of the country, and he's vulnerable on the question: Where does he want to go? The real problem is the Democrats just seem hopeless right now. The Democratic Party has abandoned the issue that would blow the race sky high: The corporate scandals, the second gilded age we've lived through. But the party's been sold lock, stock and barrel to the same corporate interests -- they own the Republicans but they rent out the Democrats. Do you know that 8 percent of people who were in retirement have had to go back and work? Their 401Ks were plundered. Those college education funds some states allowed? Gone. But Democrats only seem to understand all this stuff as a class issue. It wasn't a class issue to Teddy Roosevelt -- it was about stealing. It wasn't about rich people and poor people. But when you're bought, you're bought. The Democrats' largest area of fundraising is from Wall Street. Bill Clinton sold the party to business. And at least the country knows what Bush is: He's a hell of a gambler. He and Karl Rove have learned the one thing that matters: Presidential politics always rewards audacity.

Still, Bush's real problem -- and I saw this with Carter in the hostage situation -- is that he's so absorbed with foreign policy that he has no time for domestic policy, except maybe to give a speech. I don't know why everyone says Rove's a genius -- I mean, this country was split down the middle in 2000, and now you're going to destroy your suburban base on the environment? These people are open about wanting deficits to destroy the government. This is an ideological attack on an American ideal of community that goes back to John Winthrop and his "city on the hill" speech on the Arabella in 1630. They're assaulting fundamental American values. So yes, you can beat George Bush, but it's going to be on matters of large questions and big ideas, and the Democrats are all about this or that program.

The problem is that since 1984, the Democrats have pressed to be an insider-controlled party. The front-loading of the system was to make sure nobody else got control of the party. But the grass roots of the party is in revolt. This is a classic situation for an insurgent, anti-establishment candidacy. That's what Howard Dean's supposed to be. I don't know enough. John Edwards says he's that, but he's not. If Jimmy Carter had just retired as Georgia governor this year, I would get on the plane and talk him into running, and he would spook this race. Carter was running an anti-establishment, anti-Washington, anti-corruption campaign. That's how a peanut farmer from the South became president, when the South had not had a serious presidential candidate in years. Everyone says, "Oh he was a Southerner, and that means we need a Southerner.' That wasn't what it was about. Looking back, it's astounding. But it's partly because of who's writing the history. The Democratic Leadership Council wrote the history -- and really, they're all lobbyists. This party is in thrall to people who don't know anything except how to make money.

Thursday: San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway and author Steven Brill say Bush is beatable -- but Brown insists the media's been "pimped."

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