The nine Democratic
presidential candidates are off and running, raising money and
stumping for supporters. A couple of them even have a detectable
pulse. So what's with the conventional wisdom?
It says that only three -- U.S. Sens. John Kerry, John Edwards
and Joe Lieberman -- have a shot at getting the nomination. But so
far, the front-runners, in the words of American Idol Judge
Randy Jackson, are ``just all right for me, man.''
• Kerry is the politician you
build from a kit -- immobile hair, heroic war record and ambiguous
ethnic background (kind of Irish, kind of Jewish).
• Edwards is a Bill Clinton
mini-me who a few months ago couldn't say -- on MSNBC's
Hardball -- that Clinton (of the booming economy,
international goodwill and poor taste in girlfriends) was a good
president.
• Lieberman is trying to ride the
Gore train to victory, but his stilted style and constant repetition
of what he did in the '60s makes him seem more like a high school
teacher than a president.
Conventional wisdom also says that some in the pack simply can't
win:
• U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich
reminds me of one of those middle-aged dads who insist on going to
rock concerts with their kids.
• Don't get me started on Sen.
Richard Gephardt. He's about as exciting as warm milk.
• Then there's Sen. Bob Graham,
who -- while much loved in Florida and a potential winner here
(without a recount) -- reminds me of that uncle who silences the
dinner table by saying that the United States should pull out of
Iraq immediately so our troops can invade Asia and then go get
Mexico for what they did to us at the Alamo.
• Conventional wisdom suggests
rooting for former U.S. Sen. Carole Mosely-Braun, the calm,
intelligent, African-American antidote to ''crazy'' Al Sharpton. But
it also calls to be floored by Condi Rice, the expert on Russia who
didn't see the realignment of Russia with Western Europe coming (and
who, as the nation's security chief, said that the government
couldn't have conceived a Sept. 11). Still, Mosely-Braun is the Snow
White to the other eight candidate-dwarves. She's decent and
motherly; maybe someday a handsome front-runner will come along and
make her vice president.
Which brings me to the other underdogs.
• Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who
got off the best line of the early campaign season by saying that
he's representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. The
CW is that the swift completion of the war in Iraq (the invasion
part, not the subduing-people-who-don't-want-us-there part), leaves
him in the margins. I'm not so sure. He was consistent and
unequivocal in opposing the war, unlike Kerry and the other
support-the-war-then-complain-about-it Democrats. This wins him cool
points with people who want a leader with convictions, not Karl
Rovian calculations.
Dean is pragmatic. He's just pro-gun enough for the South, and he
has liberal street cred (Universal healthcare? Done that.
Affirmative action? Don't call it a quota. Gay marriage? That's
''domestic partnerships'' to you, buddy.) Also, even though he comes
from a state that doesn't have two black people to rub together, he
seems to get that he's going to have to confront the R word (race)
in this campaign.
• And then there's Al Sharpton,
the straight-talking, ideologically consistent candidate (and the
one with the best hair). He, like Dean, took the fight to his
waffling fellow Dems on Iraq, and he is the only candidate with a
real shot at getting the hip-hop generation to the polls. Hands
down, he's the best orator -- without sounding like a politician.
And he's the only candidate who has forcefully asserted that he will
fight -- Jackie Chan-style, not gentlemanly, Al Gore-style -- for
the right of every American to vote and have his or her vote
counted. Of course, the conventional wisdom is that he's not a
serious candidate.
joyannreid@hotmail.com
