Candidates' fault lines on issues emerge

With months still to go before the presidential primaries, the rough contours of the 2008 general election are already taking shape as Democrats and Republicans divide over those issues, Iraq and others. Come next year, voters could face choices similar to those in the polarized 2004 campaign.

"The differences among us are minor," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said in a Democratic presidential debate June 3. "The differences between us and the Republicans are major. And I don't want anybody in America to be confused."

Clinton was talking about the war in Iraq and trying to sidestep an assault from party rivals. But she could just as well have been discussing the partisan divide over letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military (Democrats say yes) or whether America should establish English as its official language (Democrats say no).

For now, candidates on both sides are mainly focused on winning their parties' nominations. Meanwhile, in their campaign appearances and in five nationally televised debates, the leading contenders have begun staking a series of bright-line positions the eventual nominees will probably carry into the fall campaign.

The current political landscape seems to favor Democrats. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center after last week's back-to-back New Hampshire debates found most Americans closer to Democrats' support for raising taxes, putting more tax dollars into healthcare, pulling out of Iraq and allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

"Democrats' great advantage is they represent change," said Andrew Kohut, president of the nonpartisan Pew Center. "We're in an environment in which the public is favoring change and not continuity."

Still, Kohut and others said, it is impossible to know whether Democrats will retain that edge all the way to November 2008.

"The issue agenda, at least right now, tilts pretty heavily against Republicans," GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio said. "That doesn't mean the race will be about the issue agenda. The race could be about character. The race could be about leadership. The race could be about a whole host of things, not necessarily the specifics of healthcare or taxes or education."