Democrat hopefuls gang up on Dean

Eight Democratic presidential contenders have strongly disputed that Howard Dean is the party’s best chance for beating President George Bush, or that former Vice President Al Gore’s endorsement of the front-runner will seal the nomination.

“This race is not over,” declared Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts as the candidates gathered in Durham, New Hampshire, for the first-in-the-nation primary state for the year’s eighth and final debate.

The first votes will be cast in Iowa’s January 19 caucuses and New Hampshire’s January 27 primary.

One after another, the field turned on Dean, who holds a double-digit lead in New Hampshire polls, and Gore in an effort to take the lustre off the newly minted endorsement.

They appealed to the independent streak of voters, and suggested the endorsement smacked of old-style party machine politics.

Joe Lieberman, Gore’s spurned 2000 running mate, asserted that “my chances have actually increased today”. The Connecticut senator said people had stopped him in the airport to express outrage over Gore’s backing of Dean.

For his part, Dean told the others: “Attack me. Don’t attack Al Gore. I don’t think he deserves to be attacked by anybody up here.”

Clearly Gore’s endorsement overshadowed the debate. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes but conceded to Republican Bush after a tumultuous 36-day recount in Florida and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote against him.

The endorsement of Bill Clinton’s No 2 was a coveted prize for the Democratic hopefuls.

The response to Gore’s stunning decision was precipitated when one of the debate’s moderators, ABC’s Ted Koppel, opened the debate by inviting the field of nine candidates to “raise your hand if you believe that Governor Dean can beat George Bush”.

Only one, Dean, raised his hand.

In endorsing Dean earlier in the day at campaign stops in New York and Iowa, Gore urged Democrats to unite behind the front-runner and said: “We don’t have the luxury of fighting among ourselves.”

That touched off an avalanche of criticism from Dean’s rivals.

Al Sharpton said Gore’s tactics smacked of “bossism,” and added: “We’re not going to have any big name come in now and tell us the field should be limited ... No Democrat should shut us up today.”

Senator John Edwards said: “We’re not going to have a coronation.”

And Republican Dick Gephardt declared: “I’m sure all of us think we have the best chance to beat George Bush.”

But, he said, he stood a better chance than the others in the battleground states of the Midwest that would likely decide the election.

Democratic strategists said Gore’s endorsement had an immediate impact, if only by giving Dean’s rivals something to complain about other than Dean’s policies and campaign mistakes.