Brian Schweitzer for president?

I'm pretty sure I'll still be voting Green in the 2016 general election, but I am interested in seeing, and promoting, alternatives to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries.

And, former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer would be an alternative indeed, as he showed in Iowa when indirectly calling out Clinton for her Iraq War vote.

Schweitzer's not perfect. I see him as fairly soft on environmental issues, especially anything connected to the carbon industry, for one thing. And, it's not just Big Carbon; his pro-hunter stance moves into anti-environmental territory. That said, his coal gasification ideas were part and parcel with supporting alternative energy, so that's not all bad.

But, he does have his plus points.

He's from the growing West, the place that's become more purply in Nevada and Colorado. (Well, it was semi-purply years ago there, and has always been that way in New Mexico.)

He was a governor, which in relatively recent years, has been a good pathway to the presidency, especially since he chaired the Democratic Governors' Association.

He does appear to have a fairly good outside-the-Beltway stance on some issues.

He supports, at least at the state level, single-payer health care.

And, he's not totally in the pockets of the hard-rock mining industry.

At a minimum, Clinton would underestimate him with almost the same degree of peril she underestimated Barack Obama.

Add in that the mainstream media didn't like his Iowa speech because it sounded too folksy and the Iraq War callout was allegedly outdated, and, were I to vote in a Democratic primary, that right there would be an additional reason to pull the lever for him. 

More details here, in a follow-up post, on both his greatness and his flaws.

So, "Go, Brian, Go."

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Meanwhile, per P. Diddie's comment, gimme a couple of days. I'll whip out a blog post of who some of the "worse than Hillary" Democratic candidates could be.