Today is Jan. 7, 2003, a little early, one would guess, to start thinking about the November 2004 election. Well, Democrats don't seem to think so. In case you've missed it, the entire Democratic Party has announced its intention to run for the right to challenge President Bush next year. Perhaps I am exaggerating just a tad, but last week's announcements by North Carolina Senator John Edwards and former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt increased the official number of candidates to four. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry both announced their candidacies late last year. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman are both expected to announce before the end of the month. Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, Florida Senator Bob Graham and retired General Wesley Clark as well as political activist Al Sharpton are all seriously considering runs.
Enough with the names already. Who is going to win the nomination? More importantly, will the winner even have a prayer of beating President Bush in the general election? As a great Jedi Master once said, "Difficult to see. Always in motion the future is." Our own New Hampshire primary is over a year away and so many things can and will happen between now and then. The candidates are announcing early so they can get a head start raising money and gathering name and face recognition. President Bush is going to raise an extraordinary sum of money for his reelection and the eventual Democratic nominee will have to raise a sum at least in the same order of magnitude to have a chance of competing.
After witnessing the Republicans' performance in the 2002 elections, it might seem easy to assume that Bush is a sure thing for reelection. Despite presiding over a sluggish economy and a pending war with Iraq, the president was popular enough to propel Republican candidates to victory in unprecedented fashion. It is not clear, however, whether or not voters will support Bush should the economy continue to struggle, even if we win a war against Iraq. The Democratic nominee will have to hammer Bush on our domestic problems but he will also need to put forward an alternative plan to keep our country safe. The American people will not elect someone who has nothing to say about national security. With a multifaceted political attack, any one of several Democrats could mount a serious challenge.
Comparing the contenders is difficult because most of their differences lie not in their politics but in their style and personality. Each candidate will spend most of the primary campaign attempting to distinguish himself from his opponents.The strongest candidates in the current field are Kerry, Edwards and Lieberman. John Kerry is the most liberal of the three and is likely to win support from the greatest number of his colleagues. His war experience and knowledge of the issues make him the strongest foil to Bush should foreign policy continue to dominate the political landscape. John Edwards, on the other hand, probably has the most to lose from a campaign dominated by national security issues. He is bright and charismatic but his inexperience hurts him in these serious and dangerous times. Joe Lieberman is the best-known candidate, but ironically he may be too much of a war hawk to win over the Democratic primary voters, who are considerably more liberal than the general population.
With so many candidates in the race, geography will play a key role in determining the nominee. As many as five candidates from the Northeast could end up in this race, making it unlikely that anyone will be able to dominate the delegate-heavy New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Both Gephardt and Daschle come from Great Plains states, which have relatively few delegates. The South appears to be John Edwards' to lose. As a self-made man from a poor family, Edwards brings to the table a folksiness and a connection with Southern and rural voters that the other candidates will be scrambling to capture.
All of this leads to my bold prediction. Even if he sweeps the South, John Edwards will need to have strong showings if not outright victories in other areas of the country. With an early start, a fresh face, and the powerful trial lawyer lobby behind him, he will be able to do just that. Despite just four years of experience (the same as George W. Bush had when he decided to run in 1999) Edwards appears to be an increasingly polished candidate and a quick study on the issues. He has several new ideas for domestic policies that should appeal to his target base, who he calls "regular people." His success will depend largely on the continued absence of further major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and the amount of support he is able to gather from the party elite. Should our previous President, another Southerner, decide to endorse his run as is being rumored, John Edwards could be smiling come convention time.
