--in IOWA??? Honey, Iowa is FLAT. Prairie flat. Cornbelt flat. I think you've got it mixed up with Idaho. You know, the one with the potatoes, near Montana. Idaho has crisp mountain air; Iowa has hogs.

Your coastal ignorance of the heartland is showing. Do your homework, Mr. Shapiro.

Your article has an Iowa dateline. What's going on? Were you really there? In mountainous Iowa?

ROFLMA - Iowa's flat, like a, I dunno, shit I usually say "As flat as Iowa."

Other than that, I hope Warner goes for it. I'm a Virginian and he's done a good job with my state.

Even self-absorbed coastal hipsters know that Iowa is pancake flat, hence the irony of the statement. Are you the kind of person whose friends always have to take 20 minutes to explain the joke and then it's not funny anymore?

If the cameras were switched off, would he exist..? "We have to find a way out of Iraq" -- ok, how about the way we came? Load the surviving grunts and gruntlets onto airplanes and get the fuck out of Iraq... how hard is that? No "finding a way" necessary.

Oh, and what about Hillary? "That bitch can fuck off and die" OH SHIT GOV WARNER THE MICROPHONES WERE ON!!! OH NO!!!

He sounds as fake as his teeth look...

*Thirty minutes later, on the off-chance that someone in the audience believed that he is in Iowa for its crisp mountain air, Warner concluded, "The rest of the country is watching Iowa ... It all starts right here."*

Gosh! Who woulda thunk it? Author needs to learn to use a little smiley face :) so we know he's joking.

As an Iowan for over 30 years and one who attends the Caucuses, I will be keeping an eye on Warner. I am not committed on anyone, at present.

Hillary. I'm sorry, but no way in hell. She is flat out unelectable as President. She would be much more effective staying in the Senate and setting her sights on becoming Majority Leader. It will be possible. Maybe not this year, but soon.

As to the Caucuses, I will be there. I will be trying to to keep the nutjob ideologues from spoiling our chances. Yes, you former Deanie Babies, I am talking about you and your ilk. Stop trying to be so noble and idealistic that you end up coming off like a bunch of gaaadam socialists and hurting any chance for real change.

Remember what George W. Bush said in 2000 about how he had been a Republican governor with a Democratic legislature and he'd accomplished this, that and the other, and the Molly Ivinses of the world pointed out to us that the Democrats he was working with weren't recognizable as Democrats to anyone outside Texas, and the governor didn't have too much power anyway?

Well, Governor Warner did all the things W. claimed to have done, as a real Democrat in an authentically Republican state. And he did it quietly, sharing credit, and through hard work and a firm grasp of policy.

Unfortunately, of course, the Democratic nomination process is more of a contest in political purity, about position papers about things that are never going to happen, rather than a test of who is best able to run the country. This is more of a shame now, in these parlous times, when we've learned the last five years how terrible it is to have a man woefully unprepared to face an uncertain future. The key is not to mouth that you want to repeal Taft-Hartley, which ain't gonna happen, but how you will operate in a country increasingly divided and polarized. Read Mark's comments about 9/11, and the way he simply went ahead and gave Virginia (which, after all, had been attacked on 9/11) many of the recommendations of the 9/11 report without waiting for Washington to get its act together. That's governing, man.

When Mark says he's not decided about running, take him at his word. This is a man who never practiced law for a single day after a Harvard education. He's knows how to take the road not taken. I would like to think, though, that if he decides not to run it will be the country's loss far more than his or his family's.

This is the guy that should be the nominee. Period. If anyone thinks that Clinton or Kerry can attract the undecideds and disaffected Republicans more than Warner, they do not have a sense of reality.

Was anyone else irritated by the contentlessness of this article? The author seems to have no interest in the substance of Warner's views. Salon: please dump him.

Learn some geography people - Iowa is not flat - it is rolling hills between the bluffs of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Now, Nebraska, that's flat.

Warner, if elected, would be to America what Blair is to Britain: a political changling who will tack to the right if elected to co-opt all of the conservative's issues, while still holding onto a Democratic base by throwing us scraps. No thanks.

GW Bush was one of these candidates out of the corporate world, whose "executive experience" would supposedly make him a new and better kind of president. Look where that got us. Given the conduct of the corporate world over these last 5 years, I don't see how anyone could "sell" executive experience as leading to some kind of improved public servant.

That's not to say that someone from this kind of a background couldn't be a great public servant...Ned Lamont for example. I see in Ned Lamont authenticity and passion. Mark Warner is no Ned Lamont.

Russ Feingold is the candidate to go with in 2008. I'll take someone who demonstrably has courage of convictions tested in political battle over "executive experience" any day of the week.

Why do democrats insist on constructing their approach to winning elections around what appeals to the disaffected republicans. Warner will be President Bush lite.

And as far as the gay community is concerned he will do nothing for them. He has presided over passage of the nations most hateful and restrictive anti-gay rights bill.

Democrats should be distinguishing themselves from Republicans on the politics of bigotry, not embracing it to win elections.