Dick Gephardt

Could the voters that sent Dick Gephardt to Washington 14 times ever vote for a Republican? 2010 would be the year to do it, and Ed Martin says he’s the Republican who can win Missouri’s Third Congressional District.

Ottumwa, Iowa

THERE IS NOTHING NEW about Dick Gephardt, but there is something unique. He sounds like William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner and the foremost populist in American political history. Not many genuine populists remain these days. But Gephardt is one. And his appeal to older, unionized, working-class voters differentiates him from the other Democratic presidential candidates seeking votes in Monday's precinct caucuses in Iowa.

South Central Iowa, December 7

THE CAMPAIGN CALENDAR is against you. Already the camera crews and stage-prop crowds are beginning to take over, and the rope lines are going up, and soon enough it'll become pretty much physically impossible to form a personal impression of the Democratic party's likely nominee for president next year. None of the men who still have a realistic hope for that prize will any longer be within reach of even the most determined civilian--certainly not where more-than-momentary, relatively unscripted, and intimate conversational encounters are concerned.

NOT UNTIL SOMETHING like the first of August did conventional Washington opinion finally wake up to the possibility that this mad-as-hell, antiwar Howard Dean fellow might just have a realistic shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. But after that it was off to the races. In no time flat, and based on the very same evidence that had awakened them in the first place, the conventional opinion people started upgrading Dean's candidacy from the realistic to the highly promising and beyond, as if he'd all but sewn things up.

I'M OUTRAGED. I can't believe the president would try to distract attention from his domestic problems by attacking foreign regimes based on suspect intelligence. He should be impeached!

Actually he already was. I'm referring of course to Bill Clinton, who in 1998 bombed terrorist bases in Afghanistan, a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and various sites in Iraq in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky mess.

The evidence that the Sudanese plant was actually making nerve gas for Osama bin Laden--as Clinton claimed--was subsequently discredited. Yet Democrats rushed to his defense.

IT'S NOT OFTEN that you see an American commit hari-kari in public, but that's what John Kerry appears to have done. In one thrill-packed day--April 2--in New Hampshire, he managed to (1) blame George W. Bush for the train wreck in the U.N.

SOMETIME SOON--say, around Spring 2004, when George W. Bush begins spending his money--whoever becomes the Democratic nominee may have second thoughts about his attendance at the NARAL dinner in Washington on January 21, 2003. Or at least he may wish that cameras hadn't been present, for the images that emerged were not helpful.

FINALLY THE DEMOCRATS have found their hot issue: The Confederate heart of George Bush, and of Bill Frist, who by virtue of their membership in the Republican party have indicated their desire to live in a slaveholding past. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi--to name just three prominent Democrats--have delivered themselves of the judgment that Republicans and those who vote for them are all closet racists. The demise of Trent Lott was only a smokescreen to hide this dark secret.

THE IMPORTANT THING about Al Gore's decision not to run for president in 2004--other than the decision itself--is the debate it will unleash inside the Democratic party, both during next year's run-up to the primaries, and in the 2004 primaries themselves. That debate will be about war: war against Iraq, the war on terrorism, indeed war itself as a tool of national security and a path to democratization. And it will be a lively, emotional, instructive, and perhaps even bitter debate, exactly the sort of debate the Democratic party needs.

With Gore gone, Sen.

THE ELECTION NIGHT returns were not even fully revealed before liberals began handing out recriminations. Across the country, Democratic activists and deep-pocket donors were devastated by the failure of party leaders to use the sagging economy to deliver a knockout punch to the Republicans. But it's not as if they didn't try.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the party's three heavyweight 2004 presidential aspirants--Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, and Al Gore--plastered Bush for mishandling the economy and the stock market. At the Democratic economic summit on October 11, Rep.

Tim Russert: Now, you said in The New York Times last week, "Jeb Bush is gone." You want to take those words back?

DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe: Of course not. I'm very excited about what's going on in Florida.

Russert: He's going to lose, guaranteed?

McAuliffe: Yep. That is why the president was down there yesterday for his 13th visit. People in Florida are energized. They've already started the early voting. And if you look at Broward and Dade counties, there are lines already, huge lines, people--record vote coming out in Florida . . .

WELL, I'M HUMBLED. For the past two months me and just about every other pundit under the sun have been saying the same thing: There is no theme to this election, no trend. This nation is divided down the middle.

Wrong. This nation is still closely divided. The Republicans should not read a radical ideological mandate into the results tonight. But there is a trend here. The American people are fundamentally serious.

They know that the most important problem facing the country right now is terrorism and security. They know that George W.