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 If Clark is Schwarzenegger, who is Huffington?
By John Mercurio
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- So, who will play the role of Arianna Huffington in today's Democratic presidential debate? With nothing to lose, plenty of "Crossfire" under her belt and apparently lots of coffee in her veins, Huffington led a feisty, finger-pointing, four-candidate charge against Arnold Schwarzenegger during last night's debate in Sacramento. But while recall watchers chew over Arnold's debate debut, '04 Dems in New York are busy deciding how best to navigate their first face-off with front-runner-for-now Wesley Clark. Our first question: Will anyone pull an Arianna? Just eight days into Clark's campaign, his nine Democratic rivals already have loads of ammunition: His rookie-style answers on Iraq, which Dean is sure to address. His acknowledgment that he voted for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and didn't consider himself a Democrat until 1992, which John Kerry finds disturbing. And his $100 billion economic and homeland security proposal, which other candidates say mimics parts of their own plans. Fortunately the format allows for 30-second rebuttals, which is just a fancy word for food fight. Or so we hope. Publicly, Clark's rivals played it cool yesterday. "We're doing the same thing we've always done, [Clark] doesn't change anything," Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi told the Grind. "It's probably more likely to be a non-event, like most of them have been." "It's not useful to go out there and bash other people," another Democratic aide said. "What's that done for Joe Lieberman? Not much." Dem aides also downplayed Clark's polling surge. One aide theorized that the general's lead is comprised mostly of "apolitical" (read: fickle) voters who happened to catch TV coverage of Clark's announcement last week between live-shots of Isabel. "I'm not saying luck doesn't count, but he was just lucky," one aide said. Said another Clark rival: "The onus is on Clark. It isn't on any of us to push or to test him. Clark needs to measure up to the bar that he himself has set, or that the media has set for him." The two-hour debate will be held in the theater at Pace University's Schimmel Center for the Arts in New York's financial district. It has a start time of 4 p.m. EDT and will be broadcast live on CNBC. It's to be rebroadcast in its entirety on MSNBC at 9:00 p.m. Debate detailsNBC News' Brian Williams, just back from Isabel duty in Virginia Beach, will moderate. The three panelists are: Gloria Borger of U.S. News & World Report, Ron Insana of CNBC and Gerald Seib, Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. The panelists will be seated at a desk, backs to the audience, facing the candidates. The live audience behind the panel will be dimly lit. The two-hour debate will consist of four 22-minute sections and three commercial breaks. Each section will focus on one general topic related to the economy, which will be launched with questions from the moderator, followed by questions from the panel. Each candidate will have one minute to respond. Standing in an arc, left to right (from a TV viewer's perspective) will be Bob Graham, Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley Braun and Dennis Kucinich. Unobtrusive risers of varying heights will be provided to shorter candidates who request them. The candidates will not deliver opening or closing statements. Directly following the debate, all nine (oops, 10) candidates will head for the Sheraton Towers Hotel for the Democratic National Committee's second presidential dinner, a big-ticket fund-raiser expected to generate $2 million from about 500 donors. Comedian-author Al Franken, who headlines tonight's dinner, told the Grind yesterday that he personally likes three candidates: Dean, Kerry and Dick Gephardt. He said he doesn't know enough yet about Clark. "Except that he's really smart, he's a Democrat, and he's half-Jewish," something Franken says Clark told him in Kosovo.
Franken said he plans to open his remarks with this zinger: "When the president during the campaign said he was against nation building, I didn't realize he meant our nation." But seriously, folks, the reception starts at 6 p.m. EDT, dinner is served at 7 p.m. We're told salads will arrive on donors' tables at 7:10 p.m., plates will be cleared at 7:25 p.m. (Hey, it's on the official DNC schedule. Check for yourself.) Each candidates is expected to speak for about three minutes, starting at 8 p.m. And about that other debateFallout from the free-for-all debate in Sacramento last night was starting to trickle in Thursday morning. Sources said Republican Bill Simon was pleased with Schwarzenegger's performance and could endorse his former rival as early as today. (He might even join Arnold at a town-hall meeting at 3 p.m. EDT in Los Angeles). Darrell Issa and Peter Ueberroth aren't far behind, sources say.
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