Show Time!
Believe it or not, presidential wannabes are at it already
Besides, John McCain skipped Iowa in 2000, practically lived in New Hampshire, and whomped George W. Bush there by 19 percentage points. Bill Bradley slugged it out with Gore in Iowa, squandered time and money, lost the caucuses by 28 percentage points, and then went on to lose New Hampshire by 4 percentage points. If Bradley had skipped Iowa and spent all his time in New Hampshire, might he have beaten Gore there and seriously damaged him? We don't know. But Bradley probably asks himself that a lot.
"A bunch of candidates will skip Iowa this time," predicts Anita Dunn, who has done some consulting for Daschle's PAC this cycle. "Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, they should all skip Iowa. Gore and Gephardt have locked up most of the Iowa support already."
Gore may also have a near lock on some other support: African-Americans, the most loyal voters Democrats have. If Gore doesn't run, however, who gets those votes? Brazile names so many possibilities--including Gephardt, Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, Daschle, Roy Barnes (the governor of Georgia), and Al Sharpton--that it could be a real scramble. The candidates are already showing their deep concern and generosity. When Brazile needed money to help the Texas Senate campaign of Ron Kirk, who is black, she knew just where to go. "I called up the presidential campaigns [i.e., the PACs of the potential presidential candidates]," she said. "Lieberman, Daschle, Gephardt, Edwards, I think they all gave. And they are not giving out of the goodness of their hearts."
But even with black votes, Brazile says, Gore has two liabilities: the "viability" issue--if he couldn't beat Bush in 2000, how is he going to do it in 2004?--and the loss of his home state of Tennessee, which cost him the White House. "It's an albatross around his neck," Brazile says. "And he will have trouble assembling a staff and raising money. The donors have the biggest egos in politics; they want to be courted and other candidates are getting to them."
Gore backers scoff. They say that there is always new money to be found and that there is no shortage of political staffers in the world, though they admit that a deeply committed, deeply loyal staff, the kind that formed around Clinton or even Bradley, has never formed around Gore. And if the other candidates had forgotten why they disliked Gore, he reminded them at the recent Florida Democratic state conference in Orlando.
Whipped up. The candidates were supposed to walk out and give speeches. But Gore assembled a "whip" operation to hand out professionally printed signs (no other candidate had signs) and stickers (no other candidate had stickers) and to arrange for throbbing music to be played when he entered. (No other candidates had planned on music, throbbing or otherwise.) Though all this roused the crowd and wowed the press, the other candidates thought this represented Gore at his worst: overly striving, overly competitive, the man who has landed more blows on fellow Democrats like Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson, and Bill Bradley than he ever landed on George W. Bush.
advertisement
