For most people, trying to follow the early scramble for a presidential nomination is like watching the first five minutes of an NBA game–nothing to get excited about because all the action comes late in the fourth quarter anyway. Although eight men and a woman have been in the Democratic scrum since last spring–with a 10th candidate ninth man set expected to enter the action this week–a recent poll says two out of three Americans cannot name a single one of them.
This borders on the bizarre, considering that all the players are well-profiled in the news media and their debates nationally televised. Some are not exactly obscure figures: Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut got more than half the popular vote running for vice president three years ago; he’s leading in some national polls based on that name recognition. Rep. Richard Dick Gephardt of Missouri has been in the public eye for decades as the leader of House Democrats and ran for president in 1988. Still, two-thirds of the folks surveyedcan’t even summon up their names without prompting–let alone the names of Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton or Bob Graham.
Nevertheless, a surprising front-runner has emerged, while some early favorites have failed to meet expectations–and at this stage of the game, we pundits measure by expectations. Even though the first primary election is more than four months away, political handicappers often make correct calls this early, and their guess just may turn out to be your next president.
Back in the fall of 1991, the Democratic field lining up for a shot against a still-popular President George H.W. Bush was almost as wide and even less exciting than the present crew. But long before a single vote was cast in New Hampshire or the caucus met in Iowa, media pundits named an obscure governor of Arkansas with a reputation for womanizing as the front-runner. If anyone recollected him at all, Bill Clinton was the guy who gave the longest, most boring speech imaginable at the previous Democratic convention. But front-run he did.
The 9 hopefuls
It thus behooves us to take a careful look at this nonet right now, thinking of this–if we can switch sports metaphors–as the morning line.
Despite the highest recognition, Lieberman is expected to fade because he represents the conservative wing of the Democratic Party and primaries tend to attract the more liberal, activist element (published material has been deleted from this sentence). He was among the strongest Democratic supporters of the Iraq war and President Bush’s economic programs. It’s possible he can win some state primaries, but he is unlikely to go all the way.
Gephardt is still in the running, though he flunked the expectations test. He has failed thus far to get the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, deemed to be his strongest base of support, and fell to second in the early Iowa polls. Because Iowa neighbors Missouri, he is best-known there–he carried the state in 1988 but had nowhere to go afterward. It seems he has nowhere else to go now, though if he ever manages to cobble together the labor endorsement, he could be around for a bit because he is well-tied to party professionals.
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina brought to the race the profile of past winners: a young, good-looking Southerner with deep pockets and a progressive populist message. He is a trial lawyer who made a mint representing “regular folks” against big interests. He defeated an incumbent Republican five years ago and hoped to make similar waves in the presidential arena. Unfortunately, perhaps because he still seems a bit too young and inexperienced, he has made only ripples. But he says he is in for the duration and won’t go back to seek his Senate seat.
The earlier front-runner and favorite of party pros, John Kerry, is the liberal senator from Massachusetts who served in Vietnam and then publicly turned against that war, becoming the first Vietnam protester to win high office. Though his four-term Senate record is tops on all the issues important to the Democratic base, he voted to authorize the war in Iraq, perhaps misjudging the intensity of the issue in that base. He is also plagued by the perception that he is somewhere between aloof and arrogant, but he has taken cosmetic steps to correct that impression. He’ll be around for a while, but he’s hard-pressed to find the comeback trail.
At the top of the second tier of candidates is Florida’s Graham. A vigorous, seasoned public official from that all-important Southern state, he has developed some of the feistier critiques of the Bush administration and is a frequent presence on national television. His image, however, is of a regional candidate, leading many to believe he is really running for the vice presidency. Even here he has a problem: He compulsively records every minute of his day in little pocket notebooks. Every minute, every day. Imagine what Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart et al will do with that!
Former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun has the smallest and poorest campaign of all. Burdened by the record of eccentric behavior that caused her defeat after a single term as the first black woman to sit in the Senate, she was asked for months why she’s running. She says it’s to give the race a female contender. Though she won the backing of a couple of important women’s organizations, they, too, know she’s going nowhere at all–and they’ll drop her in a heartbeat in the unlikely event that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York changes her mind and decides to run.
Also going nowhere is Al Sharpton, a controversial and often divisive black leader from New York who was an also-ran in several elections there. He has come up with some of the best lines of the campaign but thus far has failed to mobilize his potential base. He could be a factor in some Southern primaries, but what he’s really running for is the presidency of black America. He’s unlikely to fare as well nationally as did the incumbent, Jesse Jackson.
Kucinich is an Ohio congressman and the former contentious “boy mayor” of Cleveland. He and Graham were the only legislators to vote against the war. Though he shares the strongest left-progressive, anti-Bush program with Sharpton, he has simply failed to capture that activist wing of the party–largely because his anti-war thunder was stolen by Howard Dean.
The front-runner–for now
Dean was an obscure figure on the horizon a year ago, wandering a solitary path modeled after Jimmy Carter’s 1976 effort. A physician and former governor of Vermont–perhaps the most left-leaning state–he is a politically mixed bag who has raised taxes, been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and signed a bill legalizing domestic partnerships. Early on he launched a harsh critique of Bush’s tax cuts–which many Democratic legislators supported. He vigorously opposed the Iraq war, tapping into the discontent of the Democratic base.
Those positions–which the other top candidates shunned–and a brilliant campaign involving Internet communication, meet-up groups and fundraising, rapidly propelled him to the top, though they haven’t connected with minorities.
He is the only candidate to draw serious crowds across the country while developing a huge fundraising base. One sure sign of a candidate’s viability is raising millions in small contributions, as he has done. Today he leads Kerry in New Hampshire and Gephardt in Iowa by wide margins. He is running even with Edwards in South Carolina, seen as the break-point state, and climbing past Lieberman in some national polls. He is the man to beat–but only Lieberman dares attack him for fear of alienating his ardent supporters.
The main arguments against him question his ultimate electability: Will civil unions become a third rail? Is he soft on defense or too liberal, despite his more conservative record on many issues? Primary voters, however, do not tend to act strategically. Thus, hopes of stopping his momentum are based on his taking a self-destructive fall–not impossible, given his sometimes volatile demeanor.
If, however, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark–supreme allied commander of NATO during the Bosnian campaign–enters the race this week as expected, the dynamic can change. Clark offers a perfect profile and potentially the strongest Democrat persona. He’s a Southerner but progressive on all the litmus-test issues from abortion rights to gun control and opposes Bush’s tax cuts. Here comes a heroic four-star general who opposed the Iraq war and skillfully presented his views as a regular television commentator. He bridges the Democrats’ greatest vulnerability gap: the perception that they are weak on defense.
If he runs, the media frenzy will catapult him to the top tier. Then it’s a matter of staying power because he will rapidly have to build a national organization–but he could become the favorite of party professionals with organizations seeking an alternative to Dean.
That’s the Clark scenario. But even if it fails to materialize, he is the odds-on choice to become the vice presidential candidate–the choice of every one of the current, still largely anonymous, contenders.
