Clinton, Obama and Edwards should compete – in praising each other. And then let it be.

That’s what I would like to see. The fact is, many of us like all three of them a whole lot. Some think they don’t like Hillary, but much of that comes from a zeitgeist osmosis in a nasty media environment. They will when they see her in action and realize that, besides being extremely capable, in most respects her heart really is in the right place. And she still leads the polls, so the idea that she "can't be elected" is silly propaganda circulated by people who fear her candidacy. Obama may be a genuine phenomenon that comes around only a half-century or so – I’ve never, ever seen opponents get paralyzed by admiration for his candidacy as they did for him in his 2004 Senate race. It seemed like even conservative Republicans -- real conservatives with integrity, not the rabid right-wingers -- immediately said, “There goes the first black President, and he’s one Democrat I will vote for.” Meanwhile, Edwards is rising fast as he articulates a pure liberal philosophy that puts him in good stead within the party – while the class act and genuine strength dealing with the real pain of Elizabeth’s cancer wipes away the “frivolous Breck girl” nonsense.

So I would like to see each of them forget about trying to forcefully differentiate themselves from each other, but rather, remind the primary voters that, above all, ordinary Americans desperately need the Democratic Party to overcome the damage caused by right-wing extremists controlling the Republican Party for so long. And remind them, too, that they have an extraordinary choice of capable candidates, each with relative strengths, and that each of them is just laying himself or herself out there to be considered as the best candidate overall. Let us just see them in action, in the high school gyms and the county barbecue, on Letterman and Leno. And then, just let it be.

It’s going to be hard to do – politicians are like professional athletes. Competition is in the soul. It just goes with the territory. Their staffs will have the same tendency, including an instinct to demonize the immediate opponent no matter how similar the philosophies. Yes, you don't want them to get soft for the finals, but they can take care of that by competing at ripping the Republican Party to shreds. There is no question in my mind: if they can pull it off, the sky’s the limit in 2008.