While watching the Iowa candidate debate with the Democrats Abroad in London, my neighbour whispers that it is the candidates with the most practice that are doing the worst. That is her view of course, but many here see this race to challenge Bush as upside-down.
At the beginning, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton were the most heavily discussed candidates - they did not even run. Meanwhile the outside candidate, the choleric former governor of a state not much bigger than Liverpool is overtaking three grave and practised senators, a leading congressman and now a retired general. As a political race it makes a damn good film, but is it going to produce a Bush-beating candidate?
Democrats Abroad have branches all over the world. The most recent to open is the Iraq chapter. Together they count as a state when it comes to picking a candidate. Rachelle Jailer Valladares, the international chair, has observed a surge of interest across the world. The week before, she says, 150 people squeezed in the storeroom of a furniture store in Lake Chapala, in suburban Mexico, for a meeting she addressed. The 80 places available for the London screening were snapped up within 24 hours of being posted on a website.
It is none too hard to work out what is driving this boom in activism. Diane Shaw-Clark, the night’s organiser, reveals that she got involved as anger management therapy. Her husband challenged her to do something about it after yet another breakfast rant against Bush. Anger is the predominant emotion. That is what is motivating people to spend two hours watching a political debate. They are searching, in many cases with some desperation, among the nine candidates for the one who has the best chance of beating Bush. It is a good a place as any to pick up something of the Democratic party pulse.
Rachelle Jailer Valladares is positive that the Bush can be beaten but acknowledges that the only tool for the job is a positive Democratic vision, one that is not yet framed. ‘Slowly there is a vision emerging, slowly, slowly. With nine candidates it takes a while to get one vision. But what there is, is fighting anger.’
Many Democrats are taking their duty of choice so responsibly that they will not comment. Adam Frankel says: ˜I am as yet undecided. I am very impressed with a whole range of them. So I am waiting to see.’ When pushed about which has impressed him more than others he replies, stony faced: ‘I am impressed with Wes Clark, Howard Dean, John Kerry and several others.’
David Durst, on the other hand, exhibits one of the key signs of the Wes Clark supporter: ˜Wes Clark for President!’ T-shirt. Like so many others he is convinced that the Democrats can win, and he is equally convinced that Wes Clark will win the nomination. He dismisses the Dean phenomenon. ˜Howard Dean is way out in the polls at the moment because he is quite far to the left, and the people who get involved two years before the election are those furthest to the edges of the political spectrum.’
˜He attracts the leftwingers,’ Durst explains. ‘The more moderate won’t really get involved until after Christmas, which is two or three weeks before the actual primaries begin to take place. The 50 percent of Democrats that are still undecided are probably going to come down among the more moderate candidates, and the more moderate candidate who is in the lead right now is Wesley Clark. In the general election, he has the appeal for that more moderate ten to fifteen percent of the population that is scared.’
Fear is what the Democrats fear most, so to speak. As Durst puts it:˜The American people are not by nature stupid, they are frightened. When you are frightened you want to feel better, and George Bush is making people feel better.’ Moses Kagan, who comes to another meeting as part of a group of younger Democrats, is less gung-ho about the Democrats’ chances, precisely because of the fear factor: ˜It’s proven over and over again that the administration is cynically willing to use terrorist attacks against the US to further its own agenda.’ He predicts that more terrorism and a culture of fear means more support for Bush, with his current tight grip on patriotism.
However, in the Idaho debate it is pretty clear what Democrat candidates fear the most: Howard Dean. Gephardt and Kerry try a tag-wrestling move on Dean. One after the other they go after him as a heartless conservative. Gephardt calls him ‘a man without compassion’ who cuts funds to the vulnerable. Kerry repeats the accusation, bringing up Dean’s self-description as a ˜balanced budget freak’ to say he is a service cutter. They are trying to rupture the Dean base of idealistic internet activists by telling them their idol is a secret moderate.
Of course, it’s a high risk tactic, because they are pushing him to the right, just as he has to centre himself to appeal to the broader mass of Democrats. Also, the fact of their going after him so viciously, so frequently, confirms his status as the one to beat, the frontrunner.
The highest applause from the Democrats Abroad goes to Al Sharpton’s plea: ‘Nobody fights with Dean more than I do. Nobody fights with Gephardt more than I do. But all of them in their worse night’s sleep is better than George Bush wide awake.’
But what would unity look like, what themes are emerging? Democrats are all against ˜special interests’, unconvinced about NAFTA, unhappy with the war on terror’s progress, and they are for jobs. Surprisingly, they are largely vehemently anti-Saudi, holding it the fount of terror and stressing the need for energy independence. But other than that, rabbits remain firmly in hats.
Ultimately that makes this a white-knuckle ride for the Democrats I spoke to in London. They are quite convinced that they can win. But with a pack of nine candidates fighting each other, each getting 60 seconds to speak on each issue, the race is not distilling into the fight against Bush yet. There is time, but not a lot. And there is a party looking to be led.