The Clark Effect: General Wes jumps in the race and immediately vaults over the pack. Obviously, this says more about the Democrats than about Clark himself. Sullivan links to Clark's web site, where the "Issues" page is, tellingly, under construction. He doesn't support the war, but he would have voted for it. Or maybe not. But that's okay, since he no doubt supports traditional Democratic positions, right? Howard Fineman reports:

Last January, at a conference in Switzerland, he happened to chat with two prominent Republicans, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Marc Holtzman, now president of the University of Denver. “I would have been a Republican,” Clark told them, “if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls.”

Fact is, nobody knows where Clark stands on anything. So why are so many Democrats ready to throw their support to an unknown quantity so quickly? Sure, they want to beat Bush. But USA Today's latest poll shows all of the major Dem candidates within the margin of error when placed head to head against Bush. (Interestingly, it also shows that the "most hated man in America," John Ashcroft, has a negative rating among Americans of (a steady) 31%. Hillary is at 40%, her lowest rating since last year. America, it seems, knows its real enemies.) If any of the front runners has roughly the same chance of winning, what's the reason for further contesting the primary?