Labor Day – One Year Out
As we look to the final year of this eternal presidential election, the Crystal Ball gets right down to it. The Democratic field has already sorted itself out, and while that field will almost certainly reconstitute itself in various permutations between now and the determination of the nomination in February or March 2004, this is the order of likely Democratic nominees-to-be as of Labor Day 2003: Howard Dean Tie: Richard Gephardt/John Kerry Joe Lieberman John Edwards Bob Graham Dennis Kucinich Carol Moseley Braun Al Sharpton When the story of the 2004 campaign is written, Howard Dean will be the phenomenon, even if he does not get the nomination – much as John McCain was the best story of the 2000 campaign for president. Dean has come from nowhere, much as Jimmy Carter did in 1976 and Bill Clinton did (to a lesser degree) in 1992. The electricity surrounding Dean is now so intense that it will take major breaks for another candidate to snatch the prize from the Vermont governor. This is not to say that it cannot be done. Dean is devilishly divisive, with his supporters seeing him as the second coming of Josiah Bartlet, and to his critics