Howard Dean's Democratic Solution

The Party Chairman, the Internet candidate of 2004 who flamed out in Iowa with a primal scream, has appointed himself to mediate who the candidate will be this year if the voters can't decide between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by the end of summer.

"I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April," Dean told an interviewer before Tuesday's results were in. "But if we don’t, then we’re going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement. Because I don’t think we can afford to have a brokered convention.”

A few weeks ago, Dean was saying about the campaigns, "The truth is, it's not that ferocious yet, and I hope it doesn't get ferocious, and I obviously have some responsibility to make sure it doesn't...I don't want it to get personal, and we have a protocol for what to do if it does."

A protocol? Is washing mouths out with soap involved?

Let's see if we have this straight: After Clinton and Obama have spent umpteen millions and a year criss-crossing the country, if the voters can't make up their minds in time for an orderly convention in late August, Uncle Howard will get them together and do what? Toss a coin?

Never mind that the original purpose of conventions was to pick a candidate not put on a TV special for the party, it takes a special kind of hubris for Dean to suggest that he will get the candidates together and "make some kind of arrangement."

At least, in the bad old days of smoke-filled rooms, it took a gaggle of party bosses to anoint the nominee. Has Dean decided to streamline the process down to just one?

The Jewish Question

With Martin Luther King in the crosshairs, could Jews be far behind? Now identity politics (read hatred and division) is catching up with the Chosen People who are always a target of choice when blood is in the air.

First there is an attempt by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to link Barack Obama to his church's year-old award to Louis Farrakhan, conveniently overlooking the fact that the anti-Semite firebrand of yore is dying of cancer and professing "enlightenment," while still denouncing the kind of interracial marriage that spawned Obama as "unnatural."

Obama issued a statement distancing himself from Farrakhan that satisfied Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, who joined other Jewish leaders in signing an open letter denouncing “hateful e-mails” directed at Obama.

Now here comes Politico with a thumb-sucking, fact-free piece headed "Jewish voters lean toward Hillary," asserting that, after years of courting it, she is "well positioned to win the Jewish vote in Nevada’s Jan. 19 caucuses and in the Jewish centers of New York, New Jersey and California on Feb. 5."

While quoting Rothman as saying about Obama, “Like many other segments of the American community, Jewish Americans see him as a unifying figure with the intellect and skill to make change,” Politico nevertheless finds enough supporters among politicians to conclude that Clinton has won "the trust of the hawkish leadership of New York’s Jewish community."

As someone who can be Googled to reveal decades-old listings as a member of the Jewish media conspiracy against America, perhaps I may be forgiven for wanting to barf at this kind of "journalism."

Joe Lieberman and Jewish Neo-Cons to the contrary, the Protocols of Zion people will have to look elsewhere for group guilt in today's politics. Those whose parents and grandparents came to this country to escape the Holocaust are not lining up to support Bush's war in the Mideast or to choose between Clinton and Obama as the best person to end it.

Enough already.

None of the Above

After the longest shopping season in history, Americans are not ready to buy. The oscillating poll numbers seem to reflect not changing enthusiasms but unease over their choices in both parties.

As Clinton and Giuliani slide, Obama and Huckabee gain traction, Edwards and McCain come back from oblivion, and Mitt Romney keeps barely running in place, voters are vacillating in the face of campaigns that stress opponents' weaknesses and gaffes rather than their own visions for the future.

It's noteworthy that the front runners are being overtaken by doubts about their character and temperament and that Obama and Huckabee have both benefited by being newer faces in their fields.

As residents of Iowa and New Hampshire get ready to make their choices, the most excitement is being generated by "none of the above."

Front Runners Hear Footsteps

Weeks before primary voting in The Election That Looked Like It Would Never Come, front runners in both parties are losing some of their luster.

Yesterday's indictment of Bernard Kerik may finally slow down Giuliani's broken-field running toward the Republican nomination. He won't swivel-hip away as effortlessly from the corruption of his post-9/11 business partner as he has from abortion, gun control, gay rights and multiple marriages. Conservatives, burned by so many crooks in Congress, may balk at iffy integrity in the White House.

In Iowa, Rudy's woes give new hope to Mitt and his money, Fred Thompson's sleepy stumping, John ("I was right about Iraq") McCain, and there could a perfect storm brewing for Mike Huckabee, moving up in the polls and fund-raising, who's getting praise from Bush's former favorite speech writer and is about to reel in his first Religious Right whale, James Dobson.

To the left, Barack Obama has finally found his campaign voice, competitive if not combative, and Hillary Clinton's national lead is narrowing. New Hampshire polls next week will show a closer race and in Iowa, it's a tight three-way with John Edwards, who could now claim residence there, not far behind.

Signs of Clinton concern abound: being caught planting questions, setting up still another web site to counter attacks, the former President trying to deflect blame for the 1993 health fiasco away from his First Lady.

His emergence was prompted by Obama's needle that "part of the record she’s running on is having worked on health care" while also suggesting "that somehow she doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it didn’t work.”

Not exactly brass knuckles, but Obama is beginning to blend the politics of hope with some nimble in-fighting, pointing out that "to say there are no disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have hasn’t been paying attention.”

Voters are beginning to pay attention. Stay tuned.