As Pre-Primary Season Closes, Questions Cling to Dean's Gains
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 28, 2003; Page A01
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean stands on the brink of a remarkable achievement in American politics, having transformed himself from rank obscurity to clear favorite for his party's presidential nomination. But rarely has a front-runner begun an election year with as many questions swirling around him as the man who rewrote the rules in presidential politics the past 12 months.
After a year of intensive campaigning, tireless fundraising, constant travel and endless debates, Dean and his eight rivals face a battery of primaries and caucuses unlike anything Democrats have seen in the past: a 60-day series of tests that not only will produce a challenger to President Bush, but also answer what kind of party the Democrats will be in 2004 and beyond.
Dean has prospered in the season known as the invisible primary, when fundraising totals, organizational and institutional support and polls substitute for the decisions of voters. His campaign, particularly in contrast to others, has money and energy, built on his opposition to the Iraq war and his challenge to party leaders in Washington. He has growing support within the party, symbolized by the endorsement Dean received from former vice president Al Gore.
But he has closed the year with some statements and assertions that have come under criticism or turned out not to be true. They range from suggesting that his late brother was a member of the military to apparent criticism of the politics of the Clinton years, to a reference to party centrists as Republicans, to remarks about Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that brought rebukes from his rivals. Dean also acknowledged that he will need an experienced running mate to fill in for his lack of national security experience.
That record has brought an escalation in attacks from opponents and intensified doubts about him in some parts of the party. Once the field of candidates narrows after the first few contests, Dean is likely to face the most severe test of his candidacy. "It's clear we'll get hammered for 40 days and 40 nights," said Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager. "Everybody's hammering. We've got to keep doing what we've been doing."
Trippi said the Dean campaign remains focused on winning the Democratic nomination. But as Dean goes about trying to do that, say other Democrats, he must confront doubts about his electability against Bush, his readiness to serve as president and his capacity to unite and lead the Democratic Party.
"Dean faces one significant challenge, to go to the next level of his candidacy," said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist who was a senior adviser in Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign. "He has not yet achieved the level of admission to what I call that small circle of people in the United States that voters perceive as qualified to be president. That is an enormous hurdle. . . . He has, at every stage of his campaign, when he has faced a hurdle, has found a way to move to that next level, but they get steeper."
The questions surrounding Dean's candidacy include his experience and temperament, whether he has political appeal beyond the core of party activists, whether he can win votes in the South, his ability to handle tough scrutiny and whether he can bring together Democrats after what is turning into a tough battle with his rivals.
Joe Lockhart, who was White House press secretary in the Clinton administration and who has been critical of Dean, said, "I think it's important for the party as a whole that the process raises the right questions and the candidates give the right answers. The last place you want to be is in the post-nomination [period] when you haven't fielded the best candidate. My point all along is not that he's not the best candidate, but that for whatever reason, it doesn't feel like we've resolved all this."
Democrats nervous about Dean worry that he cannot defeat Bush, but working in Dean's favor so far is the inability of his rivals to demonstrate they have significantly more appeal against the president. The question for his rivals is whether any can ignite the voters enough to damage Dean and put together the support and resources to beat him.
"Our primary voters are dialed into electability like I've never seen before, and it is the argument against Dean," said a strategist working for another candidate. "But what the other candidates lack is a piece of evidence they can lay on the table to say, this is why I get the electability card over Dean. If somebody could come up with that, that could make a big difference in this race."
Trippi argued that, of all the candidates, Dean is best positioned to go against Bush, in large part on the strength of the fundraising base he has built. By the end of the year, Dean will have raised in the neighborhood of $40 million, most of it from small donations, Trippi said.
Having opted out of the public financing system in the primaries, Dean can continue to raise millions more if he becomes the nominee, to spend against a president who plans to raise and spend about $170 million before the national convention this summer. "We believe we're building the only campaign that can compete with Bush," Trippi said.
Up to now, Dean has benefited from a divided field. As he has surged, his rivals have struggled for attention and money. The compressed primary-caucus calendar, designed by Democratic Party leaders to deliver an early nominee to leave plenty of time for the Democrats to prepare for the November general election, gives Dean an advantage, considering his superior financial resources.
The first major contests occur in the next 30 days, with Iowa's precinct caucuses on Jan. 19 and the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 27. One week after that, on Feb. 3, seven states will hold contests -- South Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Missouri, North Dakota and Delaware -- followed four days later by contests in Michigan and Washington. By the end of February, states such as Virginia and Wisconsin will have held their events, leading up to a potentially climactic March 2 round that includes California, New York and Ohio.
"He's in a very strong position," a strategist working a rival candidate said of Dean. "He's probably going to be the nominee, in all honesty. But there are scenarios where others can win."
No front-runner has won the nomination in the modern era without a stumble and then a real fight and the expectation is that, once the field narrows to a two or three candidates, Dean will face a more formidable test of his skills.
"There's still a lot before Dean clinches the deal, and still the potential for him to stumble and fall," said William Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University. "He's clearly put himself in a very strong position to win, and I'd further say that a good performance in the year before [the primaries] is necessary to win it."
Dean's goal is to win Iowa and New Hampshire and then draw on his money to wage an across-the-board battle while his rivals have to pick and choose their fights. He is in very good shape in New Hampshire. In Iowa, the race is more competitive, with Dean battling Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) for first place. Dean holds a narrow lead, according to private polling done for several campaigns.
Bill Carrick, one of Gephardt's advisers, said all the other candidates should be rooting for Gephardt to stop Dean in Iowa. "Every one of them needs us to win," he said. "We have to win Iowa. For better or worse this is Dean-Gephardt right now for the other candidates."
Other candidates draw different plans for becoming the finalist against Dean. For Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the key is a strong finish in Iowa, which means either second or a close third. For Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), it is a good finish in Iowa, a surprisingly strong finish in New Hampshire and victory in South Carolina.
For retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who is not competing in Iowa, it is to slip past Kerry in New Hampshire for second and win a series of contests on Feb. 3. For Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the scenario is much the same -- breaking through in New Hampshire and heading into more conservative southern and southwestern states on Feb. 3.
The other candidates -- Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio), former senator Carol Moseley Braun ( Ill.) and Al Sharpton -- stand as potential spoilers, given little hope of winning the nomination. Sharpton, in particular, could be a factor in the competition for African American voters in South Carolina.
Although doubts about Dean have been loudest here, there is general agreement that the party establishment is not capable of mounting a stop-Dean movement. "What establishment?" one Democrat said sarcastically. "The only thing that could have an impact is if Bill Clinton came out and said, I don't appreciate a repudiation of my administration. The only people capable of doing it [a stop-Dean movement] are the unions, and they're pretty well split."
Dean's rivals offer alternatives, from Gephardt's union-based, old-Democrat appeal to Lieberman's desire to recreate Clinton's old New Democrat model to Kerry's and Clark's appeal on national security experience to Edwards's economic populism and optimism. But the divisions among Democrats heading into the election year appear to be less ideological than in some years. Instead the Dean candidacy symbolizes the split between party activists and party leaders.
"Democratic Party activists, whatever their ideological perspective, have a view that their leaders have been completely ineffective in combating President Bush," one Democratic strategist said. "The leaders have a view that either they're doing the best they can or that more clever centrism is better or they need someone with a military background at the head of the party."
Al From, who heads the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, credited Dean with running a successful campaign but questioned whether he can effectively lead the party as nominee. "We need to lay out a reason to replace Bush," From said. "We can't just depend on the fact that the activists in our party are angry at him and like Dean. There aren't enough of them."
But another centrist leader, Simon B. Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network, said party leaders here should recognize what Dean has done. "The Washington party is a failed party, and Dean's criticism of the Washington party is incredibly accurate," he said. "We're completely out of power and heading for permanent minority status if we don't start modernizing the party. Dean has been a modernizer and innovator, and should be embraced for it. Instead he's being attacked for doing it differently."
Those fault lines will animate the coming 60-day battle for the nomination. With the race as it now stands, the issue facing Democrats is whether anybody can stop Dean but Dean himself.
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