The nine Democratic presidential candidates will take part in the first debate this Saturday in South Carolina, an early primary state. Luckily for those of us who have nothing better to do, the debate will be broadcast live on ABC in other early primary states including New Hampshire. With well over a year to go before the Democrats even select their candidate, the following is a breakdown of what the top five candidates have to do both to win the primary and to beat President Bush next November.
Senator John Kerry became the frontrunner in the race after Al Gore announced late last year that he would not run. Senator Kerry is a polished candidate with a personal fortune to draw from should he fail to raise money fast enough to compete with President Bush. Kerry does not, however, possess an especially warm and engaging personality, and he may struggle with image problems the same way Gore did in 2000. His position on the war has also been difficult to pin down. Kerry voted for the Iraq War resolution but later spoke out against the Bush administration's heavy-handed diplomacy. Kerry needs to play up his foreign policy credentials and military experience and develop a more folksy campaign style to compliment his policy expertise.
Senator John Edwards' strengths and weakness are virtually the opposite of Kerry's. Edwards is a charismatic southerner who performs much better one on one and in small meetings than he does in front of large audiences. This is obviously something he will need to improve should he wish to make a serious run at the White House. Ironically, Edwards may be the Democrat with the best chance of taking down the president but his fairly hawkish stance on the war may alienate important primary voters in key states. He has to package himself as more than just the token southern candidate if he has any chance of scooping up delegates in New York, California and the other big states.
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean is the only one out of the five leading candidates who came out strongly against the war, and it is still unclear how this will affect his candidacy. Rank-and-file Democrats were adamantly opposed to the war on average; so even though the war has been successful, Dean's dovish rhetoric may not hurt him in the primary. In the general election, however, he risks appearing weak on foreign policy next to President Bush, especially if we discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or a concrete connection to Al-Qaeda.
Dean needs to raise enough money in the primaries to compete nationally and not just in the Northeast, and he will have to play up his conservative credentials on issues like gun rights and budgetary spending to win moderate voters.
Former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt is Mr. Big Labor. He has been busy in the early days of the campaign courting every union endorsement in the Midwest, meaning his entire campaign hinges on a win in Iowa. If he loses there, his candidacy is not likely to make it to New Hampshire. Having that "must-win" label placed on you in such an early primary state is an enormous hindrance to a campaign, so Gephardt will have to scramble to ensure a victory not only in Iowa but in other states with large numbers of union workers. Gephardt has started by being the first candidate to announce a major policy platform with his near-universal health insurance package. No doubt he expects this generous plan to help him with blue collar workers, but the last universal health care package, announced by the Clinton administration in 1993, went down in flames, helping the Republicans take the House and Senate in 1994. A massive new social program may play well in the primaries but its cost will be tough to defend in the general election.
Last but not least we have Senator Joe Lieberman, Al Gore's former Vice Presidential nominee. Lieberman's 2000 run has given him far better name recognition than most of his opponents, but this advantage will only get him so far. Much like Gephardt in Iowa, Lieberman faces a potential must-win campaign in New Hampshire. He is by far the most hawkish out of the five candidates and the most strongly pro-Israel. It will be difficult for Lieberman to give Democrats a reason to vote for him, because at least on the foreign policy front his policy preferences are virtually identical to Bush's.
There are whispers that Lieberman has already written off the Iowa caucus in favor of spending more time in New Hampshire, like John McCain did in the 2000 Republican race. Lieberman must unveil some domestic policies that will put him back in the good graces of the party rank-and-file or he could be the first of the major candidates to pull out.
I intentionally left out Senator Bob Graham, who could potentially be a contender but whose campaign is still too new to really say much about. Representative Dennis Kucinich, Former Senator Carolyn Moseley Braun and the esteemed Reverend Al Sharpton are marginal candidates who could impact the debate and the delegate distribution, but they have no chance of winning the nomination. Saturday's debate should be a fun one to watch. The race is still young enough for the candidates to struggle with their messages as they attempt to distinguish themselves from the pack. As for a winner, in the first debate my money is on Sharpton.
