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Will the real Democratic candidate please stand up?

With this new anthology, indie publisher Seven Stories Press gives voters a whole year to do their homework on this question for 2008. Editor-in-chief Amy Scholder has gathered top political journalists to cut through the chaff of soundbites, YouTube spots and messy inner-party debating that have "served to clog rather than clarify the situation." Scholder states in her introduction that she sought a guide to the candidates that "doesn't tell you how to think or who to vote for, but instead tells you how each contender got to this stage, [and] what they really stand for."

To that extent, the book succeeds. It is meaty and informative, brimming with the candidates' every political hypocrisy, making sure to sweep out even the highest cobwebs from their closets. The result of doing so, unfortunately, achieves the opposite effect: it leaves the reader feeling further clogged. Struggling with a mass of factual contradictions, prospective Democratic voters may not be able to stop the apathetic "lesser of the evils" battle they have seen play out in their minds in previous years.

Air America host Laura Flanders says that Sen. Hillary Clinton "is a compromiser and always has been.... The most successful presidential candidates are different than Senators; they make certain issues central and campaign against them even against resistance." Barack Obama's "ruminative style makes him seem like a lover without the thrust of dominance," writes The Nation's Richard Goldstein. Sex columnist Dan Savage spends more time exposing the unlikely union of Dennis Kucinich's marriage than his unlikely bid for chief executive. And so on.

The best piece of the anthology comes from Mother Jones correspondent Jim Ridgeway in his dissection of "the second tier," those fringe candidates that seem to run without much money or support from the polls. The essay analyzes not just the stances of the candidates, but also the problems of a political process that allows for these kinds of candidates, one that allows them "to get something out of [the act of running]...most likely a plum position in [another] administration."

Readers who come to this anthology looking for an alternative to the pithy blogs and television shows will not find much relief from the current quagmire of punditry. Come primary time, voters would do themselves the greatest service by catching a ride to Iowa or New Hampshire rather than participating in the stagnant negativity present in these editorials. The journalists here are mostly progressive, and their doses of liberalism err toward the side of righteousness -- the same righteous attitude that served the Democrats so well in the last two elections.