Is Dean too patrician?
OK, so the unlikely Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, is now the Democrats' front-runner, at least in the money primary. He raised more money-almost $7m-in the last quarter than any of the better-known contenders, and over $2m of that came from the internet, which gives him the useful extra label of a high-tech pioneer. And his line "I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party" might have been recycled from Minnesota's late Senator Paul Wellstone, but it still goes down well with the party activists who provide the crucial foot soldiers in primaries. Dean, the most anti-war of the Dems, has the buzz behind him and that useful whiff of insurgency against the Washington-based party grandees. But coming from a long patrician line of New England gentry, mainly merchant bankers, he is vulnerable to the populist card that his rivals are playing hard.
Take Senator John Edwards, last year's hot property for the nomination. His stump speech stresses: "I come from a working family where my dad worked in a mill all his life, and I was the first to go to college and spent my whole life fighting for the same people I grew up with." Just in case you didn't get the point, this multimillionaire trial lawyer asked the California State Democratic convention "In America, do we still believe that the son of a mill worker can go toe to toe with the son of a president? I do."
Not to be outdone, Al Gore's running mate in the last election, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, told the New Democrat Network in June: "I come to this cause of fighting poverty as someone who has lived the American dream. You see, my father worked his way from the back of a bakery truck to the counter of his own store. He and my mother provided for me and my sisters and sent us all to college. Their hard work put our family into the great American middle class." Their real target is Dean, and they are out to paint him as the Democratic version of George W Bush. As well as sharing that upper-class New England heritage, both Bush and Dean went to Yale; Bush graduated in 1968 and Dean in 1971. Both were famed as beer-guzzling party boys heading for alcoholism. And then they both swore off the demon drink. Could 2004 be the teetotallers' election?
Running against Russert
Probably not. Dean may do well with the party activists in the Iowa caucuses, and his New England neighbours should give him a decent showing in the New Hampshire primary. But in blue-collar Michigan and the south, Dean will have trouble with his decision to sign into Vermont law the bill giving gay couples equal rights. Dean is also having trouble with the increasingly important "Russert primary"-the new vogue phrase for the importance of the Sunday morning Meet The Press television show hosted by Tim Russert. It carries the kind of weight in US political circles that the Beeb's Today programme claims. John Edwards's candidacy has never really recovered from an early battering from Russert, a tough former police reporter who hails from the gritty city of Buffalo in northern New York state. Edwards was awarded the same "deer-caught-in-headlights" label that sank former vice-president Dan Quayle. The White House takes Russert's show so seriously that one aide, Adam Levine, has been handpicked by Karl Rove to play the role of Russert on the rehearsals that are now obligatory for any administration heavyweight appearing on the show. Just like Russert, who has a team of researchers to mine every known previous statement of his guests in order to ambush them, Levine plays his role hard. Vice-president Dick Cheney reckons Levine is tougher than Russert. Howard Dean got his start as a guest on the Russert show last year, making the anti-war case, and thought he owned the franchise. In June, when Dean was invited back again as the man to beat, Russert went for the groin. He let Dean make the case against the war and against the "quagmire" of occupation, and after a couple of general questions on the US military, Russert casually asked how many troops there were in the US army. Dean waffled. Russert zeroed in. "Nearly 3m," said Dean. The real figure is 1.2m. We'll be seeing a lot of that film clip next year.
Hillary: first lady for life
Hillary ain't running, reckoning that 2008 is her time. Her friends say the only possible contingency that could bring her into the fray is a brokered convention, in which the Democrats have such a tangled set of primary battles that nobody gets to August next year with a clear majority of delegates. This is most unlikely, and nobody relishes the prospect of discreet deals in the traditional smoke-filled rooms. The Democrats last went through such tussles in the 1920s, and lost. But at least the first-lady-for-life (as some Senate colleagues call her) has finally admitted to one career failure. Sharp-eyed readers of her mammoth and self-regarding tome have noted one telling passage in the chapter when she is deciding whether or not to follow Bill to Arkansas back in 1974. She reveals that she had sat both the Arkansas and the Washington DC bar exams. She passed Arkansas, but failed DC and thus "followed my heart to Arkansas."
