Tom Harkin is no Michael Dukak

To David Broder, Harkin is "the candidate of Bush's nightmares." Business Week calls him a "populist who is raring to sink a pitchfork into the patrician hide of George Bush." The New York Times reports that the 51-year-old Iowa senator "offers his beleaguered party a potent mix of old-time religion, prairie populism and group therapy."

In what is shaping up to be a race between candidates who want to move the party to the right and candidates who want to return to traditional Democratic values, Harkin speaks out boldly against "walking and talking a little bit more like Republicans." He's referring to Clinton and Tsongas, two GOP accommodators who appeal more to business than to labor and prefer capital gains tax cuts to cuts in defense spending.

Harkin's powerful message--that the Republican leadership of the '80s has indulged the rich while wrecking the lives of common Americans--will appeal to labor groups and minorities, groups who have long suffered at the hands of the GOP. But his real target is middle-class America. If Harkin can continue to dazzle crowds with his fiery irreverence and populism, his explosive rhetoric ("The issue is not jobs. Hell, the slaves had jobs.") should hit home with a lot of Americans who have endured a decade of Reaganomics.

Harkin will urge a return home, criticizing Bush's obsession with foreign policy and his corresponding neglect of domestic affairs. He will argue that the Bush administration's bare domestic agenda should be filled with solutions to crises of health care, drugs, poverty, unemployment and infrastructure.

Harkin's charisma, message and spunk make him a top contender for the Democratic nomination. If he wins the party's nod, he might not beat George Herbert Walker Bush. But he would give him the fight of his life.