The American Spectator

Washington Prowler

p> ENOUGH ALREADY br> Staffers in other Democratic presidential campaigns say they can hear the rattling death gasps being emitted by the camp of Sen. Joe Lieberman , even if the Lieberman folks can't hear them themselves. /p>

"Their campaign is done," says a rival campaigner for the Howie Dean candidacy. "The polls say it, the media says it. They should just get out of the way."

Surprising sentiment, but perhaps revelatory of the political neophytism on the Dean team. After all, a Lieberman exit doesn't really help Dean at all, and possibly helps others who could use the three or four point increase in the polls a Lieberman absence creates for them.

"You're not going to see many of our people jumping to Dean or to Gephardt," says a Lieberman volunteer in New Hampshire. "Maybe Edwards gets some, maybe Kerry, if they think they are backing a winner. But not Dean."

Lieberman has been the moderate voice of reason on foreign affairs issues, while Dean, after all, is the man who pandered to the Arab community in Detroit recently, and has all but said he'd let Israel stand alone against its enemies in the region.

Lieberman staffers don't see their man jumping ship just yet, if only because he does view himself as a voice that has to be heard. "If only to try to influence the debate, I think he stays in the race for a period of time," says the Lieberman volunteer. "But I can't see him staying beyond South Carolina if things keep going the way they are."

Actually, if things keep going the way they are, Lieberman won't have to worry about South Carolina at all. Lieberman is buried in the polls in Iowa and in New Hampshire, where he is running third or fourth, depending on which poll you look at. The numbers aren't looking any better anywhere else.

p> BEANS TOWN br> As mentioned by the Prowler last week, there continue to be grumblings inside the Democratic National Committee about the sputtering planning for the party's national convention in Boston.

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