A day before the International Committee of the Red Cross announced it would reduce its presence in Iraq because the country was becoming increasingly dangerous, President Bush said he would run for re-election in 2004 on the theme that "the world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership." While the irony may have been lost on Bush, it was not missed by the nine Democratic presidential candidates, every one of whom would be more than happy to debate the President's claim as the party's nominee. It is a measure of their belief that Bush, who seemed so invincible in March of 2003, will be vulnerable in November of 2004 that they are now attacking one another almost as frequently as they condemn the President's international and domestic policies. The exchanges got so hot in the October 26 debate that after Carol Moseley Braun was told that she and Dennis Kucinich had not been asked any questions in the first round because there were so many dust-ups between the other candidates, the former senator drew laughs by exclaiming that it wasn't fair to neglect the two of them "just because nobody's mad at us."

Most of the potshots are aimed at Howard Dean, who, with one year to go before the election, has positioned himself as the candidate who most wants to get in the ring with Bush. Dean's opposition to the war in Iraq won the once-obscure candidate the attention of Democratic activists, but it is his unrelenting assault on the President, his aides and their policies that has won him front-runner status as the start of the caucus and primary season approaches. But Dean's still got a ways to go before he locks the nomination up, and his opponents are busy trying to trip him up with charges that he is either an unelectable liberal or a closet conservative. Wesley Clark and Dick Gephardt are emerging as the candidates best positioned to threaten Dean. While Clark still gets the headlines, the distinct dynamics of the 2004 race could end up making it a Gephardt-Dean race.

Unlike 1992, when Democrats went looking for a candidate with the right style to take on the first George Bush, the 2004 contest is not shaping up as what former Clinton aide Dick Morris calls an "image primary." Rather, the fast-and-furious competition that will begin in mid-January appears set to be an "activist primary," in which voters are looking for a candidate who mirrors their fierce disdain for Bush and their faith that only a Democratic Party that clearly distinguishes itself from the GOP will have a chance to energize the base that is needed to win. Despite his hapless start as a candidate, Clark might win an image primary. His debate performances are less than stellar, but he is getting sounder on the stump, especially when he bangs Bush's management of the war and says Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton should "redeploy to Houston." He's still running strongly in national polls, but those polls won't decide the nomination race; it will play out state by state on battlefields for which the general's training has not prepared him.

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