I have long believed that political junkies were mutant sports fans.

Politics is one of the few realms that has the analysis, predictions and scandals normally reserved for sports. Politics, like sports, is dominated by personalities, but is ultimately a team effort. Successful politicians, like athletes, get where they are by hard work, luck or occasionally pure skill. Stick with the analogy a bit longer and it’s not hard to conceive of political parties as franchises, defections as trades and polls as rankings. Basically, politics has all the scores, the stats and the strategies that so thrill sports aficionados.

Of late I have been mutating.

An alarming trend has been my decreased viewing of ESPN in favor of C-SPAN, and my addiction to Google News and centerforpolitics.org.

While the California recall election was of fleeting interest, my attention is now focused primarily on the major leagues: the wide-open race for the Democratic presidential nomination. I would like to see a Democrat in the White House in January 2005, but not being an American citizen, I have no say in the matter. That does not stop me from viewing the process from the perspective of an curious outsider. After all, this may be one of the most interesting contests in recent American political history.

One only needs to scan the candidates to see why. John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman are the veteran Democrats who have long established themselves on Capitol Hill and all of them were front runners from the start. They know the ropes, they have the money.Lieberman was only a hanging chad away from becoming vice-president; Gephardt ran for the top spot in 1988.

Early this year, the comparatively young and inexperienced John Edwards had a brief hot streak, and then the unconventional Howard Dean metamorphosed from underdog to front runner. He’s now the man to beat.

Most recently, Wesley Clark, a retired general who was NATO’s chief during a scrimmage in the Balkans, has decided to try his hand at the game of politics and has begun a tardy but so-far-flourishing campaign.

A few things to look out for in the upcoming political season: first of all, funding, which is of the utmost importance. There are no pretenses about monetary equality in politics. As the New York Yankees know, money can often buy success in America.

Dean is leading the pack by getting way more money on his unique internet fundraising campaign than anyone else got out of a $3000-a-plate dinner, so he can run television ads wherever, whenever.

But money does not always translate itself into success, as the NHL’s New York Rangers found out last season. Edwards, for example, is finding it difficult to succeed despite his financial resources. But the bottom line is that in politics there are no salary caps and therefore no ways by which to even the monetary odds.

The second aspect of note in the nomination procedure is the importance of the early primaries. The primaries in New Hampshire, D.C. and South Carolina and the Iowa caucus are far more critical than the sizes of those states should warrant. Nominees from those states, or their neighbors, have distinct home field advantages over their rivals. Hence Gephardt, being from Iowa, has the upper hand in its caucus, while the New Hampshire race looks to be one between Massachusetts Senator Kerry and former Vermont Governor Dean.

Stats may be interesting but they do not necessarily produce quality results. Polls show that Dean has the overall lead among Democratic voters in the nation, while Clark may have the best chance of getting more votes than President Bush.

However, the only scores that matters in the final election are in that archaic progeny of post-revolutionary federalism—the Electoral College. It is interesting to note that while Dean, Clark, Kerry and Gephardt might be more popular, it may be that Lieberman and Edwards have the best chances of winning the election should they get the nomination. That is because Lieberman can conceivably procure Florida for the Democrats, while Edwards is likely to win his home state of North Carolina. Both are key large states that might otherwise be more inclined to vote Republican. And both Lieberman and Edwards would probably still win the traditionally Democrat-dominated states such as New York, California, Illinois and our very own Minnesota. It may be that some teams could be the best in the playoffs, but just aren’t good enough to get there.