Democrats Now Can Turn Focus to the Future

The Democratic Party and those vying to lead it back into the White House have all probably gained as a result of Al Gore’s decision to step aside in 2004, most analysts agree.

His withdrawal, they said, will banish the ghosts of the last disputed election and offer Democrats a chance to focus on the future, which comes as a huge relief to many in the party.

While hard-core partisans continue to question the legitimacy of President Bush’s election, “as of today, most Americans, and particularly swing voters, believe the 2000 election is over and don’t want it re-fought,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster in Washington.

Regardless of what issues Gore and Bush wrestled over -- if, in fact, there had been a rematch in 2004 -- “inevitably there’d be a sense among the public the race was just a rehash of a decision people thought they’d already made,” said Mellman, who is close to several possible presidential contestants but so far remains neutral in the budding contest.

Voters, Mellman added, “want to make a new decision, a fresh decision.”

With Gore taking his leave, one of several new, comparatively fresh Democratic faces now will have a chance to emerge over the next 12 months. Had the former vice president run, he undoubtedly would have controlled the agenda, much of the dialogue and the pacing of the race.

“If Gore had remained in the field, the entire race would have been seen through the prism of Gore,” said Chris Lehane, a key Gore strategist in the 2000 campaign. “A presidential nominating process is a marathon. With Gore in, he would have begun that marathon with a decent start, which may not have been insurmountable but would have been a challenge for everyone to overcome. Now everyone starts in the same place.”

It was just more than two years ago that Gore won the popular vote in one of the nation’s closest, most bitterly fought presidential elections. He lost the White House when the U.S. Supreme Court awarded Florida’s disputed electoral votes to Bush.

Some Gore partisans felt he deserved a rematch, given the cliff-hanging outcome in 2000. But to others, he increasingly seemed like a candidate whose time had passed, especially in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

“Things have just changed so dramatically that the nature of the debate has to be different from the last election,” said Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Iowa and a front-row observer of the event that will formally launch the 2004 contest, the Iowa caucuses.

“National security will be more prominent than it was. We’re now running deficits, rather than surpluses. Our Medicare and Social Security problems will be of even larger concern than they have been, just because the retirement of the baby boomers will be four years closer,” Squire continued. “We need to talk about all these things in a different way, and it would have been hard for Gore to do that.”

The former vice president said as much himself in the “60 Minutes” interview on CBS in which he revealed his long-awaited decision. “I think a campaign that would have been a rematch between myself and President Bush would inevitably involve a focus on the past that would, in some measure, distract from the focus on the future that I think all campaigns have to be about,” Gore said.

With the former vice president gone from the field, the Democratic contest now promises to be the most competitive since 1992, when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton emerged from a scrum of candidates who were little known and, save for Clinton, now mostly forgotten.

In contrast, the lineup of Democrats jockeying for the 2004 nomination lists several with impressive pedigrees, including the party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman; the outgoing Democratic leader in the House, Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, and the current favorite of many insiders, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Each benefits from Gore’s withdrawal, in ways both tangible and intangible. In fact, every one of the roughly half a dozen potential candidates running or thinking of running woke up in better shape today than they were in on Sunday.

Clearly the biggest beneficiary is Lieberman. He said for months that he would not run if Gore did -- all the while laying the groundwork for a 2004 bid. He declined comment Sunday concerning Gore’s decision, but his entry into the contest is now considered a certainty.

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean entered the contest months ago, and Kerry recently formed an exploratory committee as the first step toward his official entry. Gephardt is expected to declare his candidacy sometime next month, and New York-based political activist the Rev. Al Sharpton has said he plans to run. Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut also are weighing White House bids.

Other names will likely bubble up over the next few weeks and months -- like that of former NATO commander Wesley K. Clark -- as gossip and speculation inevitably fill the sudden vacuum. “It’s part of the natural rhythm: One big name comes off the board and people look around for another to fill it,” Lehane said. “Everyone is always looking for the perfect candidate, as if there is such a thing.”

Gauging the nascent Democratic field at this stage -- more than a year before the first ballots are cast -- is necessarily a speculative endeavor. But with Gore removed from consideration, a rough hierarchy has emerged, consisting of Lieberman, Kerry and Gephardt.

Lieberman enjoys residual name recognition from his well-regarded vice presidential run. But many believe that, as leader of the party’s moderate-to-conservative wing, he is too far out of step with the left-leaning Democrats who dominate the party’s intramural contests.

Gephardt is also widely known, having been a national figure since he ran for president in 1988. But to some in the party, that makes him a bit shopworn.

Kerry had emerged in the last few weeks as the leading alternative to Gore, thanks to the odd alchemy of insider chatter and favorable press coverage that substitutes for the lack of more solid measurements at this early stage of the race. The timing is fortuitous; with the midterm elections over, now is when the party’s best fund-raisers and savviest strategists begin choosing up sides.

The danger for Kerry, as one party strategist put it, is “his head is now very much above the trench. He becomes the No. 1 target for other people running, for the press, for the Bush White House and the rest of the Republican attack apparatus.”

In a statement released Sunday, Kerry said he respected the “difficult and personal decision” that Gore made and welcomed his pledge to help fight to unseat Bush and uphold “the principles we share.”

The nature of that fight will become far more clear over roughly the next year. Public opinion polling over the last several decades has shown that a president’s vulnerability -- or lack thereof -- becomes clear at roughly the three-quarter mark of his presidency.

“The Democrats look to have a solid field at this point,” said Ed Sarpolus, a nonpartisan pollster in the perennial battleground state of Michigan. “But we really won’t know whether it’s strong enough to take on Bush for quite a while.”

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Possible challengers to President Bush

Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday he will not run for president in 2004. He likely would have been the Democratic Party’s early front-runner. His withdrawal clears the way for other Democrats hoping to unseat Bush.

* Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota: Interested in running; says he’ll anounce plans after the holidays.

* Vermont Gov. Howard Dean: Running for the Democratic nomination.

* Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt: Interested in running.

* Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry: Has formed an exploratory committee; says he will announce a decision after the new year.

* Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman: Interested in running; previously has said he would not seek Democratic nomination if Gore decided to run.

* North Carolina Sen. John Edwards: Has sent strong signals that he is likely to run; will announce plans after the first of the year.

* The Rev. Al Sharpton: The New York-based activist has talked of running for president.

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Source: Associated Press