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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kumar who wrote (15914)	11/12/2003 2:57:05 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793698

The Muslim version of Thanksgiving. Safire is giving thanks for the problems the Dems are having Never Love a Stranger By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON — Both power centers of the Democratic establishment — the Kennedy left and the Clinton middle — are frantic at the prospect of losing control of their party to Howard Dean. They fear a McGovernesque debacle that would hand the G.O.P. a super-majority in the Senate. Clintonites were first to take the Dean threat seriously. As reported gleefully in this space (full disclosure: I'm rooting for Dean's candidacy in hopes of the debacle), the Clinton crowd surrounded ex-Gen. Wesley Clark with Clinton managers, spinmeisters, pollsters and fund-raisers and marched him into battle against Dean........ .......Dean has an unexpected development going for him: because his basic pitch has been to deride Iraq's liberation, he is the one Democrat not ensnared in the now-embarrassing denunciation of Bush economic policy. Every Democratic candidate, Dean included but not most loudly, has been hammering at the rising deficit and the loss of new jobs, blaming both on Bush tax cuts. But that ground is crumbling under them; if prosperity continues to make its comeback, their biggest complaint would become Bush's greatest boast. Then Dean would make a bumper sticker out of what we have already begun to hear: "It's the War, Stupid." He would echo the McGovern slogan, "Come home, America," and if the war is going badly in a few months, Dean would blow Clinton and Kennedy and the other old-timers away. But both Democratic power centers are surely considering the other possibility: that Bush is lucky. What if the war on terror begins to succeed by next summer, casualties decline, Saddam is found or Osama is killed? In that case, Bush would campaign on both growing prosperity and impending victory. In that case, the Clinton-Kennedy establishment would be better off maintaining control and losing respectably with Kerry, Clark or even Gephardt than getting buried in a landslide with Dean. And in 2008, as Jeb Bush and Condi Rice fight out their G.O.P. primaries, Hillary will be tanned, rested and ready. REST AT nytimes.com