Deborah Orin reports in the NY Post that Sharpton Candidacy Giving Dems the Jitters:
On his debut day as a presidential candidate, Al Sharpton upstaged most other Democratic wannabes at the first 2004 cattle show and showed why he gives big-time agita to a lot of Dem strategists.Free advice to the Democrat party: when you lay down with dogs, you come up with fleas.
His rivals embraced the driving force behind the Tawana Brawley hoax as an equal aspirant to the Oval Office and even competed to curry favor with him. Both former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts claimed Sharpton had offered them the vice presidency.
In fact, most other Democratic candidates seemed a bit cowed while Sharpton and Dean - the two Democrats who are farthest to the left and the most passionate speakers - got the loudest cheers from activists at Tuesday's dinner for the pro-choice lobbying group NARAL.
"If Sharpton does well, it's going to be hard to deny him a place at the podium at the Democratic convention - in prime time," frets a party strategist already worrying about how heartland America will react.
Sharpton, after all, was found guilty of defaming a white prosecutor with false charges that the prosecutor raped Brawley. It took Sharpton three years to pay the $65,000 fine plus interest. And on Tuesday he defiantly insisted Brawley was no hoax, saying: "I believe we were right."
