Just my take at the moment.
The candidates are well known at this point. We have a sincere, driven, experienced, and, ultimately, reasonable reform candidate in Howard Dean. This man is not likely to win, as the media and the party elite have in essence "ganged up" on him.
We have John Kerry, who never had a position on any issue he did'nt switch at least 50 times. He has voted, ultimately, to support the most worrisome portions of the Bush agenda. This man is the consumate hyper-rich, elite, insider who is pursuing the candidacy out of personal ambition. He is a current front-runner, as the media and party elite both appear to have annointed him.
We have John Edwards, a duplicitous dark horse who denounces special interests while standing alone in refusing to identify the special interests funding his campaign. He appears separated from the most intense grassroots Democratic activists, having supported, like Kerry, the most worrisome portions of the Bush agenda. He is doing surprisingly well in the primary, having no real reason to run except, similar to Kerry, ambition.
My feeling is that the Democratic Party is looking at defeat in the 2004 general presidential election, and probably in associated 2004 elections as well. The party's performance over the last 3 years has been a grand parade of appeasement, capitulation, and political cowardice. It has not managed to stand for anything. The party also appears to be divorcing itself from the portion of its liberal base that has most publicly outspoken in opposing Bush on all fronts. The Kerry campaign is already gearing up to run a "military" campaign in which Kerry focus on a national security message. The end result will be defeat, as a group of pseudo-liberal wafflers and connivers, probably under John Kerry, who stand for nothing except ambition, attempt to present themselves to the public as Bush Lite.