Help Wanted At DNC

Dotty Lynch Handicaps The Race To Head The Democratic Party

(CBS)  Dotty Lynch is the Senior Political Editor for CBS News. E-mail your questions and comments to Political Points

---

WANTED: Very blue Democratic Party desperately seeking leader. Must not be Howard Dean or anyone else who has an issue agenda or plans to run for president in 2008. Must be acceptable to all potential candidates for 2008, as well as John Kerry and Bill Clinton. (Al Gore doesn’t matter.) Women, blacks and Hispanics (as long as they are not too liberal) given strong consideration. Must be able to raise gobs of money (big and small), but must not be just a fundraiser. Must be available to outshine Ken Mehlman and any other Republican on cable 24/7. Red-staters especially desirable as long as they can gin up the base. Blue-staters who look red also acceptable.

For more information applicants should come to Democratic National Committee meeting in Orlando in December where eager party leaders will be in the mood to buy.

This week two of the leading figures promoted for chair of the DNC, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman indicated they did not want the job. Vilsack, a Kerry ally from a just barely red state, failed the "may want to run in 2008" test, and his availability for 24/7 cable duty is limited since he has a day job in Des Moines with a not very friendly legislature. His hometown guru, Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen, let him know this in print last week.

Herman seems to think her day job needs some tending as well.

So Democrats went back to the drawing board.

McAuliffe/Clinton/Kennedy ally Harold Ickes is said to be "hunkering down," a position Harold watchers take as a sign that he wants the job. While Ickes knows the DNC and has friends in high places, he has a lot of enemies in those places as well. His temperament may have mellowed as he turns 65, but a recent article in the New York Observer recalled his legendary acid tongue. He once told his ally Bella Abzug that he’d mash her into Broadway and he "famously bit a fellow staffer on the shin in a brawl during Herman Badillo's 1973 Mayoral campaign." Now that’s a qualification not usually on the standard checklist.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Jean Shaheen is being talked about again. She would be the first woman actually elected chair (George McGovern’s Jean Westwood was basically appointed by the nominee) and is from the only red state which turned blue in 2004. Two attractive African-American Democrats, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and 2002 Democratic Texas Senate candidate Ron Kirk, are also in the mix but neither have been major national figures. Leo Hindrey, former chair of AT&T broadband is being pushed by former Sen. Bob Kerrey, who says he is a unifier, a successful New York City businessman who understands the "Republican areas of the country." Sounds like great treasurer material to me.

Which leaves Howard Dean. Would Dean really be so bad for the Democrats? He has energy, a track record of energizing the base of the party, a position on the Iraq war with is not as "nuanced" as the other party leaders, which makes him a credible opponent of the Bush administration on an important issue. But while many say he’s not as liberal as he’s been portrayed, the leader of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party has difficulty convincing the other wing and the rest of the carcass that he’s one of them.

The leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party is huge and the person or team who fill this job could have a lot a sway over the future. Criticism over the Kerry campaign’s lack of a "narrative" in its micro-targeted campaign has Democrats struggling to come up with a big message and messenger, as well as a technical apparatus and a money machine.

This is a time of generational change. Congressional leaders Gephardt and Daschle are gone, the Clinton years are fading and the Democrats are squarely a minority party. Someone who steps up to the plate in the next few months has the opportunity to have a major impact, as well as a lot of face time on cable.