The Current Field of Democratic Candidates for President

MODERATOR: Good morning, and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. Today we'll take a look at the current field of Democratic candidates for President, and we have a distinguished panel of experts to offer their analysis.

Unfortunately, Professor Harris has taken ill, but we are delighted to welcome back David Epstein, professor of political science at Columbia University in his stead. We're also pleased to welcome back Jonathan Nagler, professor of political science at New York University.

Both of these gentlemen previously joined us for a look at the results of last November's midterm elections, and they are experts in electoral politics, campaigns, and voter behavior. Each will offer some opening remarks and then take your questions.

Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us, and the floor is yours.

DR. EPSTEIN: Let me just first of all say a few words about the process of electing a president as we do it in the U.S. and how that's going to play into the specific candidates in Democratic field.
As most of you know, in the U.S. system we have a series of primaries before the conventions in the summer of the election year, and then the election. In the primaries, of course, it's completely raising your own money. The general election after the conventions is federally funded, but it's all up to you to raise your own money for the primaries.

And the amount of money raised has grown every time. It will be even higher this time, I can assure you, than it ever has been before. And so the first thing the candidates are all going to do this year is raise a lot of money.

The second thing is that the primary schedule, again, as most of you know, is becoming more and more front loaded, but it actually used to be that there was a long drawn out primary season. Some people win early but then others would win later -- of course, a long time ago you didn't even have to run in primaries to get the nomination, but that hasn't been true since the early ‘70s -- so the states that had late primaries like California, bigger states like that, could still play a role in the process.

As some states start moving earlier and earlier, other states move earlier, and now California wants to move itself earlier. And so every time around things get decided closer to the front of the primary season, which means less emphasis is on how well you do in early primaries to build momentum for later primaries and more, you know, you have to do well immediately or that's it.

That of course puts even more emphasis on raising money because you have to be ready to go at day one. So people say things are moving as -- maybe the eventual result of this trend will be to have national primaries. You'll just have all the states go on one day at one time, so -- that would place an ultimate emphasis on the amount of money candidates have to spend because you have to run a national election essentially for a primary. So if we want to go to that, we're going to have to think of other ways to fund that or give candidates free air time, because there's no way you can have every single person who declares themselves, say, a Democratic candidate for president to get federally funded enough to run in a national primary.

So that's a dilemma which we're not anywhere near solving. But that makes the U.S. elections far more expensive than most other elections in the world even before we get to the general part, even the primary part of our elections tends to be very, very expensive.

One of the results of that is that this time around reelections are starting right after the midterm elections. Usually it would be more the summer of 2007 or even late 2007 when candidates would actually announce that they're running and get things geared up. And now here it is January, February, right after the midterms, and already it's kickoff to the presidential election season which is bringing us all here today. And what would have been though ridiculously early in previous years is now right around when things are getting started up.

So this year we'll have two primaries. We'll have the money primary and the press primary. The money primary is all about fundraising. It's about getting good people on staff, traveling a lot, raising a lot of money, and the press primary, well, that's you. All right. The candidates are going to be working hard all year to get favorable publicity, to have you all write that they know what they're talking about in terms of policy, that they have the background and experience to actually do the job, to cover the strategy, the horse race, whatever there is. That's started off already, as a number of you, I assume, will be in Springfield on Saturday for the announcement.

So candidates are already off and running, jockeying for position. But already unless something dramatic and drastic happens, I think there's only three real contenders for the Democratic nomination: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Among those three, you would have to call Hillary the frontrunner, and I think she'll remain so until proven otherwise. But you can spin plausible scenarios by which any of those three actually ends up capturing the nomination.

Those others running of course, Vilsack, the governor of Iowa, although he's not expected to even win that state, Dodd, Biden, we can talk about any of those if you like, but in terms of those who have a serious chance of winning, the field is really narrowed to those three at the moment.

So going through those one by one, Hillary Clinton is surprisingly finding herself in the role of the establishment candidate. Two years ago, the idea of a woman running for president was so shocking and so novel, and the idea that it could be Hillary was so exciting to so many on the left, that to find herself as the establishment candidate now is certainly kind of a turn of events. She's yesterday's news in a way of speaking.

But like I said, she's still the frontrunner. She has a lot of money. She's going to raise a whole lot more. She has experience. It's funny that being First Lady is now counted as experience in national office, but it means that she has traveled to many foreign lands, she's met with lots of foreign leaders. She had exposure to the way the foreign policy machinery works. And so of all the candidates, she's probably least vulnerable on the question of, can she handle international issues, although she's never held a post that's dealt directly with international issues before.

She has a certain star power around her that comes from having been in the spotlight for so long. She certainly knows how to handle herself, and she's used to the attention. She has -- if nothing else, she's been through the national spotlight for so many years that it's hard to imagine they'll be any more surprises about her.

Edwards is more or less the same way. Obama is new, so we don't know.

But she is a known quantity. People know what her stands are on most issues. They know her personal style and characteristics, and she is used to carrying herself as if she is going to be the candidate. And so she comes with all those advantages.

Now in New York State, she's been senator here for six years, and she'll be senator for at least a couple more. And the big knock against Hillary at the outset was that there were so many people who were against Hillary; Hillary haters, as it was called, that this was going to be a major impediment to her getting the nomination; she was just too polarizing. And I think that argument fails on a couple counts.

First of all, we're a polarized country right now. It isn't -- whoever the nominee is, by the time we get to the election, there will be polarization. And the usual story with American politics is there's 40 percent who always vote for Republican, 40 percent are always for Democrats, and so there's 20 percent in the middle. That's who you're talking about. These days, it's probably more like 45, 45, and 10, right? Things are hardened to the extent that there is only relatively few independents. But that's who Hillary would have to win over.

Think how close the last two elections were. She just has to win over a couple percent of independents to win an election. She doesn't have to reach deep into the South or in solid Republican territory to win. If she does as well as the Democrats did in these midterm elections, she'll blow everyone out of the water. So it isn't like people who are hard and fast set against Hillary are the ones who will decide the election.

And second of all, if you look at her history, just of being elected to the Senate in New York, originally in 2000, she won handily, but she won a minority of the counties within New York State. New York has 62 counties and she won far less than a majority. Now of course, New York City has five counties unto itself and she won all of those, and that's a big reason why she got elected. But then she worked hard during her time as a senator, and this time around in 2006 she won 58 out of the 62 counties, which means she won a lot of counties in rural upstate New York that are Republican funding communities, which means a lot of people who, in 2000, said they would never vote for Hillary just voted for Hillary.

And so given time, she's proven the ability to be able to talk kind of bread-and-butter issues with a lot of voters and win a lot of them over. Now she did not have a great candidate in this election, and she did spend a lot of money to get there, but the fact is that it goes to show that with enough persuasion and enough exposure, a lot of people who ahead of time you might think would never be Hillary voters just voted for her. So I think that all speaks well to her possibility of running nationally.

On the other hand, like I said, she's now, in a way, yesterday's news. For the Democrats, Obama is of course the most exciting candidate in the Democratic field. And in Washington you hear stories of people on Hillary's campaign staff or Hillary's supporters sneaking off to secret meetings to meet Obama, to have parties or meetings about supporting Obama. So even those who have kind of formally aligned with her are excited about this new prospect.

And Obama has -- he's a great speaker. He's charismatic. He can appeal to a broad swath of Americans. I think if he gets down to it, his vote will certainly not be limited to the African-American vote. He'll do very well there. He'll do very well across the board.

The question for him is experience. And so his big job this year is going to be convincing a lot of you, a lot of reporters and the American people eventually that despite the fact that three years ago he was a state senator from Illinois, he has enough policy knowledge and wherewithal to actually do the job. If he proves that, he certainly has more appeal to the left part of the Democratic Party than Hillary does; and so -- he's been more anti-war than she has, for instance, and so, especially in the primary season, he could do well.

And finally Edwards, coming into the season, you might think he would be the frontrunner; he was our last vice presidential candidate. The problem is that he did not do especially well as a VP candidate. He didn't do the attack dog job that VP candidates are supposed to do, defending the ticket against the other side. And you recently see reports that said, oh, he's going to take a harder line this time around; he's more combative. Well, that may be true; that is what he has to do.

He is going to do very well in Iowa. He's been campaigning there for a long time. People there see him as a populist, not a southerner but more of a populist. And he's a very good speaker. Those of you who heard snippets from his speech the other week, he does a very good job appealing to the grassroots of the Democratic Party. So in a way he and Obama are kind of fighting for the far left soul of the party.

But you can see him doing well. The thing is money. We're going to get quarterly reports coming out about campaign finance, how much money each of the candidates are raising, and if he's third first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, he may drop out at the end of the year. Unless he can really get going in terms of fundraising -- he's had enough time to get going; if he doesn't catch a spark, he may fade before the first primaries.

DR. NAGLER: So let me just add a couple of things to what David said.

One of the things you'll notice is that we sort of reinvent the wheel every four years when it comes to our primary elections. You know, we have a constitution that specifies when the general presidential election will be, but the primaries change all the time. And they are so fluid at this point that California is currently deciding whether or not to move their primaries, so what we tell you about the primary schedule now could change in a month. It could become much further front loaded. Maybe it makes our election interesting; maybe it doesn't.

One important point about the money, because we'll spend a lot of time talking about it and the press will spend a lot of time writing about it. It's important to realize that you can spend a lot of money and get no votes, and it's been done a bunch of times in U.S. primaries. So there are old examples like John Connolly and recent examples from previous elections, but you can spend a lot of money and not get any votes.

It's hard to get votes without money, but the access to money is much different now. One of the things that 2004 and 2006 demonstrated was that if you're a candidate you can go online and all of a sudden a lot of money shows up. And so that's going to change the game a little bit in terms of the emphasis on building up a giant war chest early because money is available to come in as the game is played.

Let me talk a little bit about the candidates.

Obviously a big question about Obama is, okay, are American voters willing to vote for a black candidate? We know in lots of states they're willing to vote for Hispanic candidates. Hispanic candidates do very well in lots of statewide races. There are probably some states in the U.S. where it's really, really hard for a black candidate to win the majority of the votes and other states where it's not as hard.

What makes Obama's job easier is when we get to the general election, he doesn't have to win 50 states. He has to win 270 electoral votes, and we know which states he has to win. And most of us think it's probably easier for a black candidate to win in New York than it is in Georgia. So he's got an easier job than you might think, but it remains to be seen how that with play out.

David emphasized the progress that Hillary Clinton had made, and I think he -- you can't emphasize enough the point he made about how well she ran last time in New York. She ran -- in the 2006 election, Hillary Clinton was running statewide in New York and Eliot Spitzer was running statewide. Spitzer is incredibly popular. He was going to win that election in a runaway from well before the election started. She only ran two points behind him. If that was really -- if you would have thought that would happen six months or a year before that election -- no one would have thought that could happen. She just ran incredibly strongly in New York State.

And again, maybe that won't translate to Georgia, but she has the same situation that Obama has. She doesn't have to win 50 states. She has to win a majority of the electoral votes. She has to -- people in New York obviously accept her. She's got to do the same thing in California and some of the big states.

I want to mention at least two other candidates. Bill Richardson is the governor of New Mexico, and were Obama not on the scene, Richardson would be the sort of other ethnically different candidate. He's a Hispanic candidate, and he's quite credible. This guy is the governor of a state. He's held important foreign policy positions. He's been in the Clinton administration.

When he announced, he got almost no news. If you were watching the Sunday morning shows, he was there. In another year, this would have been big news, and he's a very credible candidate. He's not exactly the most exciting compared to what you might think of as the top three, but looking down the road, he's a guy who could stay in there. No one thinks he's going to be the leading money raiser, so he doesn't have to leave if he's not raising as much as everyone else is.

So one of the great things we all get to do is try to guess who will -- not just who will win but who will be the vice presidential candidates. And Richardson, sort of -- he looks awfully feasible there.

Joe Biden's candidacy is interesting. He's someone who's actually sort of running on foreign policy experience and a position. You know, he claims he's got an idea about Iraq. And I think that's the important thing to talk about with these candidates is they are actually going to have to establish some positions on issues.

Edwards has clearly done that. He's clearly said he's to the left of Hillary on the war. He says it was a big mistake. And he's tried to stake out a big position on poverty. And he's trying to talk about two Americas. So on foreign policy and domestic policy he's clearly got a position staked out.

I think that's going to be a challenge for Obama. He's sort of said, okay, the war was a bad idea. He's clearly to the left of Clinton on the war, but where he is on any other policy issue on the U.S. you would have a tough time finding out at the moment. And he's going to have to fix that. He's going to have to find out where he stands to run within this field of candidates.

Clinton's big problem with the Democratic primaries is simply going to be the war. The war is not going to go away in the next year, and she has had a position that is very unpopular with lots of people, and that's a position that doesn't say, gee, this war is -- she's not as far to the left as lots of voters are on the war.

And I think the interesting thing in the Democratic primary is going to be how does all this play out. This could be very damaging to any of the Democratic candidates if the whole Democratic primary is about trouncing each other on their position on the war.

And let me sort of leave it at that because I think David covered everything else that we should talk about, and I'm sure you have questions.

MODERATOR: Thank you both. We're happy to take your questions. If you could, just give your name and your affiliation.

QUESTION: Hi. What do you think a possibility of Hillary and Obama?

DR. EPSTEIN: As President, VP?

QUESTION: Yes.

DR. EPSTEIN: That's been talked about as the dream ticket for a lot of people. I'd worry about it.

I would still think you need a white guy somewhere on the ticket to win an election, not necessarily in the top spot, but -- so Edwards may be VP candidate again, possibly. Richardson is an interesting idea. But what it comes down to is VP candidates don't usually make much of a difference at all. It's really the top of the ticket that matters.

DR. NAGLER: I mean I would give an answer similar to David's. I think there's some number of voters out there who are not going to vote for a woman. There's some number of voters out there who are not going to vote for a black candidate in America. If you have a Clinton and Obama ticket, how many voters did you just eliminate?

So I'd be a little surprised if that's where they end up.

QUESTION: This issue of female being the head of the military forces and all that, you didn't really talk about it. Is that really faded away? The rest of the world is talking like she is the first female and America is not ready; do you think this has changed?

DR. EPSTEIN: No. In fact, I think that's why she's taken the position on the war that she has. She's looking forward to a race against John McCain, and she is understanding, I think, quite correctly, that if it came down to that he would be very tough on her as he has more foreign policy experience, and the implication would be that she's too weak to be tough when the need be in the war, not in this war, but in other foreign policy ventures.

So I think she's been consciously hewing to the middle ground there to the detriment of her primary constituency. I think there are a lot of Democrats who are not happy that she not only voted for the war. We could talk about it; the war vote is a separate thing. But even after the war vote, being more supportive of our presence there or being more worried about what does withdrawal mean, so I think that was definitely kind of an anti-McCain tack to the center on that.

QUESTION: Hi. I wonder if you could talk about the role of the new technologies in this campaign because many Democrat candidates like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, they are using internet and their websites to make campaign. Could you talk about it, please?

DR. NAGLER: Yes. There are at least two things that happen. One is just the money raising, that this can be an incredibly effective way to raise money from people. And then two, there's a way to transmit information and it goes in both directions. Websites can be ways that candidates can receive information from people; you can go to a candidate's website and send them information. But it's also a way for candidates to announce their positions, and it's where people can get information about them.

And it's -- compared to 10 years ago, it's incredibly easy for voters to be well informed now. Now most voters still won't bother to be, but if you want to be, you can find out anything you want to know about a candidate. And so the candidates get -- they get to get around you. They can decide what their agenda is rather than it being decided by what the press chooses to run on TV, for the set of voters who care, and that might be the set of voters who's likely to give money.
So it's a tremendous access to raising money. It's a tremendous way to get a message out to passionate voters. And by that -- and that definitely includes the people who show up at Iowa caucuses and certainly more so primary voters and general election voters.

DR. EPSTEIN: We're also seeing -- a couple of the pitfalls is that a lot of campaigns not only have websites with information where you can donate, get information, and leave comments; they also have web logs or blogs associated with them. And I'm sure a lot of you heard about how two -- John Edwards just fired two of his bloggers because they had made some comments that were then attacked by the right wing bloggers and he felt that he then had to let them go.

So all of a sudden there's more people who are in a way carrying your voice. There's more people speaking that, in a way, on behalf of you as a candidate, and you have to be careful that they're not saying things that are later going to get attached to you, that you're going to have to distance yourself from. And so with all this information zooming in and out, the money is always great, the attention is always great, but you have to make sure you don't lose control of the message.

And that's something Hillary, for instance, is fanatically worried about, staying on message, keeping control. And the anarchy of the internet sometimes threatens to explode that.

QUESTION: Andy Bettag, Fuji Television. This is more of a general election question, but we've become accustomed to seeing the red state, blue state map over the past couple of election cycles. And I'm wondering, first of all, are we expecting the same thing. Also, how much will it matter which Democratic candidate is running as far as that goes? And do we expect any fallout from Katrina as far as the Gulf states are concerned switching red to blue?

DR. NAGLER: Yes. I think we will see the same red, blue story. Keep your -- you only need two colors, though. And I think whichever Democratic candidate runs, they're going to be running for the exact same set of states. It's going to be they're going to want all the states that Kerry won, plus Ohio, Florida. That's the Democratic strategy.

The only thing that changes a little bit maybe is what happens in the southwest because the demographics of the southwest are changing very quickly in the United States. As far as Katrina goes, I think it may seem like a bit of a paradox, but there's still -- despite the fact that everyone thinks that, okay, the Bush administration or the Republican administration, they did really, really badly there.

But if you're local, you might also think that the mayor did really, really badly; you might also think that the senator or the governor did really, really badly. So I think in some sense I don't know actually how much Katrina will actually impact the voting in the presidential election. Although everyone in the rest of the country I think sort of downgraded their view of the Republicans because of it, but if you were local, you saw all the other officials.

DR. EPSTEIN: Right. It's just not anything really dramatic that's going to happen to New Orleans between now and the election. It's a slow rebuilding process. A lot of the neighborhoods are just never going to come back. And so I think whatever the story is, we've seen it. The Republicans have taken their hit and people aren't going to update much between now and then.

QUESTION: So you think Louisiana will go Republican?

DR. EPSTEIN: I guess most likely --

QUESTION: You had mentioned that there was definitely a reason people will stay or drop out of a race. I'm wondering which candidates, other than Hillary Clinton and Obama, that you think are going to have staying power and actually going to be able to last throughout the season, the primary season?

DR. NAGLER: Throughout the primary season all the way to the Convention?

QUESTION: Well, no, just through -- you know, because you said that someone like Edwards might drop out before the primaries even happened. So I'm wondering is it just going to be Hillary Clinton and Obama in the Iowa caucus or if there are going to be other candidates that actually last.

DR. EPSTEIN: Well, no. I agree with Jonathan that there are some candidates -- in a way, the less serious candidates will be able to hang around, keep their names on the ballots and wait and see if one of the frontrunners explodes and somehow they're the only ones left around.

So Biden may stay in, Dodd, you know. There will be other names on the ballot. But I think in terms of who's actually getting the votes, it's going to be a two or three candidate race from early on.

To be clear, I don't think Edwards is going to drop out before Iowa, right, for the caucuses. Although I've seen polls having Hillary up in Iowa now. And if it's November, December, and he's trailing badly in Iowa and doesn't have money, then he may well give it up rather than go through the embarrassment of actually losing.

As I was saying before, don't forget that there's this chicken dinner in Iowa in December that used to be like a couple of people getting around and kind of talking about the candidates. There was never anything before, and then in 2000, the Republicans had the same thing where they had a crowded field. And this December chicken dinner, that knocked Libby Dole out of the race because she didn't -- not enough people bought a rubber chicken and voted for her.

And so I think people will start dropping out near the end of the -- people who had been running campaigns will start dropping out near the end of the year even before we get to any actual votes.

DR. NAGLER: I think it's important to understand the dynamic of this. Essentially the look of this is, this is a winner-take-all election, and only one candidate will get the presidential slot. Now the odd thing is someone will get the VP slot, but ignore that for a second.

In any sort of -- if you got a winner-take-all election like this, anybody who is not either first or second has a really, really hard time convincing contributors to give them money. You know, if you're sitting there in December and you can donate to a candidate in Iowa, and you actually believe the polls and you see that John Edwards is running really, really badly all of a sudden, you might think twice. And the same for Barack Obama.

I think one thing we should probably caution you on is, boy, it's really early; the polls could move a whole lot between now and then. So bear in mind that there's a long way to go here. But there's a real dynamic to why the field gets down to two, and that's that if you're not one or two it's really hard to raise the money to keep going.

DR. EPSTEIN: Plus, if you're one of the people running, hoping to be on the VP slot, if you're really running hard in primaries that means you're attacking the frontrunners, which means they'll think twice about putting you on the ticket when you've been kind of toe to toe with them. So that's another reason to drop out.

QUESTION: Thank you.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Mercedes Gallego from the Spanish newspaper El Correo. I believe last elections in Iowa listed -- John Kerry was listed third. Do you expect another -- do you think it's possible that another flip like this could happen in this election? And also, in Zogby polls, Hillary is down both in Iowa and New Hampshire, if I'm correct. I think in Iowa John Edwards is ahead and in New Hampshire it's Obama; do you think Hillary can take those two fields if they actually happen like that?

DR. EPSTEIN: Well, in Iowa, Edwards had been -- he's been in Iowa for the last two years. Essentially right after the last election, he took up residence there. And so he had been the frontrunner there for a long time, and that's why these -- I had heard recent polls giving Hillary on top -- were rather surprising to me.

As for New Hampshire, you know, New Hampshire voters pride themselves on kind of being independent, on going for non-traditional candidates. Obama certainly has a lot of spark there now.

There's a long way to go, so could Hillary not take first in either of those and keep going? Yes, by all means. She has enough money. She has enough organization nationwide. Yes, nothing is going to knock her out early on. There might be surprising shows in strength that might make it a real horse race.

On the other hand, could you see Obama doing badly in both of those and more or less getting knocked out? Possibly.

But New Hampshire being near New York, Hillary would be expected to do well, because that's what Kerry could do; he could not do well in Iowa but then do well in New Hampshire, northeastern state.

DR. NAGLER: One of the things that would keep Hillary in it is that she has so much money and so much organization that even if she did badly in Iowa and even in New Hampshire, there would still be this tremendous operation on the ground, she would still have her core supporters, so she's not going to disappear.

It would be an incredible boost to whoever did well there, but one of the things you have to remember about Iowa that everybody always remembers the day after and is surprised -- it's not a primary; it's a caucus. The voters actually have to show up and sit around and raise their hands and get their votes counted, and so surprises happen. And so you can do badly in Iowa and sort of write it off that, okay, this isn't that many voters, and move on.

QUESTION: And the possibility of a flip like Kerry, nobody expecting him to win? No?

DR. NAGLER: Again, it's easy to be surprised in caucuses, so you know, I don't think either of us would say that in 10 months from now we can guarantee there won't be a surprise. We can't say that.

QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Wen Chen and I'm with Beijing Review. Could you talk about those candidates stands on United States policy to China in terms of U.S. trade deficit with China, and how does that matter in their running for the presidency? Thank you.

DR. NAGLER: I think it's a really interesting question because it's not an issue that's come up yet, but obviously it will. And it's going to be, I think, an issue where -- it will be interesting to see if these candidates distinguish themselves from one another.

And I don't think the issue is sort of trade with China, per se. I think the question is going to simply be is there a distinction between these candidates on how open they are to free trade. There's clearly a push within some members of the Democratic Party who want less free trade. Clinton has not gone anywhere near that group yet, I don't think. Obama, I don't think we know where he is yet. The one who's going to be feel the most pressure is Edwards because he wants to run a very populist message. So to the extent that any of these candidates will feel pressure to say anything that sounds like it's not completely free trade, Edwards is the one who will feel the pressure, but I don't know where he'll go on that.

QUESTION: Jean-Louis Turlin in Le Figaro, the French paper. What are the chances of ending up with the race that New Yorkers were deprived of in 2000?

DR. EPSTEIN: I've said that a number of times actually. That would have been the race of the century, the millennium, I guess, back then. Oh, I think it's not at all unlikely we'll see Hillary against Giuliani.

While that's kind of going over to the Republican side of things, there's a lot of polls showing Giuliani ahead of McCain. I think they're probably the two frontrunners in that field. And you could certainly spin out a story where Giuliani becomes the Republican candidate.

So that would be -- in a way it would be good for Hillary, because then it kind of localizes -- two New York politicians. Giuliani has some 9/11 connection, but not the kind of foreign policy experience that McCain does. I think she'd probably be more comfortable with that match up than against McCain right. But that would be quite a fight.

DR. NAGLER: I think we're a bit off topic, but I think Giuliani is going to have a tough time in the Republican primaries because right now the only thing people know about him is September 11th. Anything they have to find out has to make them like him less, not more. So I don't see him doing that well in Republican primaries as things move along.

QUESTION: Amy with TV Asahi again. Gore has announced that he is not running for President. Is there any situation that you foresee that he actually will jump into the race, and what kind of effect will it have on the candidates that are already in the race.

DR. NAGLER: Yes, I can see a couple of situations where he could get in. One is he could get in fairly late if -- you know, of the candidates running, they've got to sort of get the votes, but it could be that the way the primaries go, no candidate looks like they're doing really well. And what that will be interpreted as by everyone who writes it up is, well, no candidate is well liked, as opposed to, gee, everyone loves all the candidates and can't decide between them.

And Gore would then look like, gee, a very plausible alternative. And that would involve sort of getting in later. And it's tough because the primary schedule keeps getting shorter; more delegates are gone. But if nobody is going to get a majority of the delegates, that's okay.

The field is getting really crowded now. If Obama weren't there, there would be more room for him to come in as he's not Hillary. But right now, if Obama is sitting there with 20 percent of the Democratic primary vote nationwide, it's tough to see Gore entering there because there's not that much room.

DR. EPSTEIN: Yes, it's this phenomenon that once you've been in the limelight it's hard to leave it. And so I think he spins out scenarios whereby he could get in. I doubt that it will really happen.

And my own opinion is that he ran the worst campaign in modern electoral history if not ever, so -- I always said about Jimmy Carter that he was a man meant to be an ex-president, that he was not necessarily a great President, but he's been a wonderful ex-president. I think Al Gore is a great ex-vice president.

DR. NAGLER: And we'll both state with certainty that he won't be Clinton's VP candidate.

QUESTION: Could you explain and talk about the black vote? The New York Times wrote that maybe Barack Obama is not enough black for the black vote. Can you tell us if you agree with that? And what is the importance of the black vote in this election?

DR. EPSTEIN: There's the primaries and there's the general. So I think there's absolutely no question that in the general election Barack Obama would take the black vote. I think any intimation otherwise is a little far field. For the primaries, it will be a very interesting dynamic.

As you know, the old time, traditional civil rights leaders have not rushed to embrace Obama. He doesn't look like them. He doesn't come from the same background, the same history, the same experiences. In a way, they see him as an upstart who's just arrived on the scene without paying his dues the way they did. So there's a bit of standoffishness there.

And Hillary on the other hand, Bill Clinton was loved by black voters across the country. And so I think in the primaries there will be a war between those two for the soul of the black vote, which will be important in a number of primaries in a number of places, you know, in the New York primary, for instance.

So it is very much up in the air. I would not say that either of them will dominate the vote there. And the establishment of black political leaders will also be divided.

DR. NAGLER: Yes. I mean the black vote is going to be interesting because -- bear in mind that two of the states where it's biggest would be New York and Illinois. We know Clinton is going to win New York, and we know Obama is going to win Illinois. In the primary, we know that they'll both dominate those states, so in some sense that makes the black vote a little less important.

But it will be interesting to see how it goes, how much of it Obama gets. He's not going to get all of it, and he's not going to get just a tiny bit of it. So the question is how much of it does he get.

QUESTION: Japanese news, Kyodo News. My question is on an African-American candidate. So in the essential election there have been several black candidates, such -- Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. So what kind of differences do you see between Barack Obama and such candidates?

DR. NAGLER: Neither of them was president of the Harvard Law Review. I think Obama is clearly a different candidate in terms of background, and I think that's the simplest way to put. The biggest difference is that he doesn't come from the same background that Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did, and that sort of makes him a different candidate. He is more a candidate of -- you know, demographically, he looks more like lots of other candidates than Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did.

You don't see lots of candidates who were preachers or reverends. Obama is not either. Again, this guy is a lawyer. He happens to be a black lawyer, but he's a lawyer, and that's a lot different. His profile looks a lot more like -- he looks like all the white candidates. He happens to be black, but he looks like all the white candidates.

Jesse Jackson didn't look like all the white candidates because if you look at his experience and what he did work-wise, forget about the color of his skin; he simply had a different background in terms of past experience.

DR. EPSTEIN: But to a large extent, it's an empirical matter: To whom do they appeal? And Sharpton, when he ran, never had much of the attention of Democratic voters, let alone nationwide voters. Jesse Jackson back in ‘88, maybe a little bit more, but never established himself as the great black hope, if you want, of the large white majority in the Democratic Party, the way Obama has.

And so the other thing is, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton came to the race to make history. In the background, you know what their positions were and all that, and to some extent people are riding on -- they want to see, and he'll have to end up being something which will disappoint some and excite others. So he has that newness about him, something that they did not have at this comparable state of the election cycle, and something he'll have to work out.

QUESTION: Yes, I have another question. Last week there were a couple of stories in the news about Americans not ready to elect a candidate who is fat, and then they were talking Obama smoking, the only candidate. Are those just like entertaining side stories in media that try to fill time or do you think there really are issues like this in America?

DR. EPSTEIN: Obama is giving up smoking. He's quitting, so -- the smoker thing might get you.

DR. NAGLER: It might gain some votes, too. I don't think the election will come down to that.

DR. EPSTEIN: The thing is that we're so early now. It's already 20 months ahead of time. So by the time we get to the election, we're going to be sick of whatever the two candidates are. We're going to know so much about them. And to a degree of course, that plays well for Hillary, but it plays well for Obama because of their novelty as a woman or a black candidate will, in a way, have been kind of washed out. And we'll have been over it so many times, we'll be kind of sick of hearing about that aspect, and we'll be talking about the regular stuff, their background, their history, their positions, and it will look more like a normal election because we'll have -- a lot of the newness issues won't be as new anymore.

QUESTION: Nevena Mandadjieva, Bulgarian News Agency. Do you think there is such a thing as feminist votes or anything like that in comparison to the black-wide vote? Do you think, for instance, how, among other things, how are going to vote the black women? And could Hillary consolidate the women to vote for her or it's just not going to happen? Could you comment on that?

DR. EPSTEIN: I think it's a good question. There's a little bit of back and forth about this. The Hillary strategists, for instance, certainly should not be banking on grabbing the women's vote, on having a dramatic increase in pro-Hillary women's vote. I think there will be a little, a percentage point or two.

But there are relatively few issues in which we see a gender gap in U.S. politics, where men and women vote differently. One of them is on war and peace issues, actually, and so in so far as she'll be more to the left on the war than the Republican candidates, she'll get some there as I think any Democratic candidate would.

But women are very prickly about -- most of them -- about the idea that they'll vote for a woman just because she's a woman and not because she's qualified. I think there are a lot of people who are excited about a woman's candidacy and will be attracted to her, but in the end I don't think she should count on that. I don't think she will count on sweeping the women's vote as a way to win office. She'll have to do very well among men as well.

DR. NAGLER: Yes, my guess is it might be worth maybe one or two points more than David thinks. But bear in mind, if she were getting all the women's vote, we'd see it in the exit polls, and she'd be over 50 percent in all these polls.

And we've had lots of women candidates in the U.S. at the state level. And when we look at the gender gap, we don't see that they do that much better among women. So I think in the U.S. pretty much we don't see a large block of women voters that just sort of vote to the woman candidate relative to the way men voters are going.

QUESTION: Thank you. Is the war the issue of this campaign?

DR. EPSTEIN: It will be an issue, but we don't know what the conversation will be at election time. We're having one conversation today, which is about troop surge, how many troops we should be committing. It's going to evolve over time. And so who knows what's going to happen in November of 2008.

Will we still be, like we are today, policing the country, trying to quell sectarian violence? You know, will it look like it does today? To me, that seems rather unlikely. But if Bush doesn't budge in the next 18 months, and the Democrats don't find a way to cut off funding, then maybe.
Or will the U.S. have pulled back and we'll be in the sectarian violence stage where things are really bloody? Or will we be a little bit past that and things are settling down? It will be one of the most important issues, but what it looks like is still a big question mark.

And so candidates -- we're all worried about now how they're positioning themselves because how did they vote on the war originally and what do they say now about troop surges. That will almost certainly be irrelevant. Maybe the war vote will still be, but the specific stances on where we are and to what degree that's -- right now, we're at a pretty partisan moment where midterms elections were run, to a large, extent, over the war, and people want us to withdraw a little, so there's a real partisan difference.

Will there still be that big a difference? These differences don't tend to last long in foreign policy issues. And so I don't want to be out there saying what the conversation will be in 16, 18, 20 months time. I don't think we can tell.

DR. NAGLER: It's very hard to imagine that the war won't be a huge issue certainly in January and February of 2008. It's -- certainly a lot could change between now and then, but the idea that Bush will sort of change his mind and say, okay, let's get out, seems unlikely.

So I think on the one hand, the war will be a huge issue. But then the question is, well, will the candidates differentiate themselves on it. If all three candidates are saying the same thing, the war is the big issue, everyone cares about it, but you can't choose between the candidates if they all tell you they'll do exactly the same thing.

So I think it's going to depend where are we exactly in the war, what are the options on the table. And if there are different options where people can say one candidate says stay, another candidate says go, yes, I think it will be a giant factor in the vote. But I don't think the options will look that clean, and it's going to be harder for people choose between the candidates on it.

QUESTION: Hi. Jacquelien Nienhuis for Dutch Algemeen Dagblad. I was wondering whether you see Mr. Bill Clinton as an obstacle or an asset to Hillary Clinton?

DR. EPSTEIN: Well, I'll tell you -- the world is -- advice. And so his advice, lending manpower, campaign staff, and all that, is invaluable. When you see them share the stage, there's a problem that she has, that anyone does, of paling by comparison. He is such, still, a dynamic speaker, incredible political talent that -- it's hard for them to be together and see Hillary as the star of the two.

He's been President for eight years. I mean that's -- there's something -- there's an aura about you that you don't give up. So it will be interesting to see. I would guess he would play a very, very big behind-the-scenes role in the election, publicly busy himself with other projects, and lend his support, and be on the road in some key places and key times. But he can't be out there too much or he might tend to overshadow.

DR. NAGLER: I think he's going to be a big asset because he is simply such a good campaigner. And I think they won't campaign together just because of that, but I think he will do a lot of campaigning for her, particularly should she get the nomination in the general election, when the timing of things are different and you can make perfectly good use of having two people you can fly all over the country to do events.

QUESTION: Vassiliy Arkanov, NTV Russian Television. It's been said a lot about the role of Karl Rove in strategizing Republican vote. I wonder if there is any person like that who is working for Democrats?

DR. NAGLER: Well, there are many people strategizing for the Democrats. And I'm sure if the Democrats win the election whoever is advising the winning candidate will get lots of coverage in the media as being a brilliant political strategist.

DR. EPSTEIN: The key about Rove is that not only was he a campaign manager, but he came into the White House. And we have to remember that isn't normally the way things work.

That isn't what Clinton did. After he won in ‘92, Jim Carville, who was his campaign manager, he said, thank you very much, now go on and run someone else's campaign. The fact that Rove became a policy advisor, too, certainly colored a lot of what this administration is about. And so I don't necessarily see the Democrats having a Rovean analogy as somebody who's strategizing for the whole party, both in presidential campaigns and beyond. I think that probably will not come to term.

QUESTION: Hi. I'm Diederik Van Hoogstraten of the Dutch news magazine Elsevier. You've talked a lot about process and less about the issues so far. Besides Iraq, can you talk a little bit about whether it's abortion or gay marriage or job security or outsourcing or Social Security, health insurance, and issues that might actually play a big role in the primaries for candidates to differentiate themselves from each other?

DR. NAGLER: This is an area where I think Edwards has done the most to distinguish himself in that he has sort of clearly staked out a position, in some sense, on the traditional left, of being very progressive on economic issues. And he's actually willing to push a populist message.

I think where Clinton is going to fall back ultimately, ironically, is going to be on healthcare and what she was identified with when she was in the White House.

It's not at all clear to me where Obama will end up on this, and I think that's sort of a really big question over the next few months. He has to be something other than Barack Obama. He has to be a candidate who has some positions identified on some issues.

But I think it's going to be the usual thing in American domestic politics of jobs and economic security. And healthcare just remains this issue in America that doesn't go away. And I think that will still be there.

And the one we haven't talked about is immigration. I don't think that will actually get fought out in the Democratic primary, though. In the general election it could become an issue.

DR. EPSTEIN: I tend to agree. I think health care, free trade/globalization. I think those will be very much big themes as we go along.

And it's interesting what Jonathan says, the idea that Hillary talking about health care, six, eight years ago it would have been a very touchy subject because of the failed reforms of ‘93, ‘94. But of course, in the meantime, she can say that she's been vindicated, that what they tried to do at the time was to find a rational way to control healthcare costs because if you don't do it that way, then the health care and HMOs would do it themselves and people will be limited just by not being able to get coverage or by having very limited coverage. And of course that's kind of come to pass.

And so the fact that they made a bold perhaps not completely wise attempt, not sold maybe the best way, the fact that they tried to do it early on I don't think hurts her that much in being able to talk about the issue this time around. But you can't be elected President and not have something strong to say about health care.

MODERATOR: I think we have time for one more question if not any concluding remarks that our panelists might like to make.

DR. EPSTEIN: I think let's go with the caution that it's really early and a lot can happen.