I've been telling you for weeks to keep your eye on Washington D.C. They outmanuevered New Hampshire to get the first primary spot this year, and the press is increasingly beginning to recognize it.

I have little doubt that NH will still be widely heralded as the first "true" primary--a ridiculous assertion, but our old beltway boys are incredible creatures of habit--but D.C. will make its mark.

From Tuesday's Metro Column by Marc Fisher in the Washington Post:

One day, the Associated Press reports that next year's first presidential primary will be in New Hampshire, and then suddenly, the wire service corrects itself and puts the District at the top of the calendar.

Similar corrections appear in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe and other newspapers. . . .

But in the political hotlines and columns that count, the District's primary is increasingly listed as No. 1, maybe not with a bullet but at least with an asterisk.

And the campaigns now treat the District, for the first time in its brief history of semi-independence, as a factor. Campaigns are staffing up, organizing events, even bringing in the candidate. Howard Dean came to town, sidling through the Bohemian Caverns nightclub on U Street, talking about the injustice of denying half a million Americans the right to representation in Congress. The District primary is proving to be an early test of Dean's ability to reach beyond his base in NPR America -- those white, college-educated, socially liberal voters who yearn for a latter-day Adlai Stevenson.

John Edwards promised a Washington audience that "we're going to be campaigning hard here." Joe Lieberman reminded voters that he introduced the No Taxation Without Representation bill that would grant the city votes in Congress. Long shots Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton plan efforts here, hoping to rejigger the election calculus.

E.J. Dione opens his op-ed in Tuesday's Washington Post by saying:

You can't understand an election without understanding the dynamic that underlies it. The dynamic for the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries is, at best, only half understood, and many on the right don't understand it at all.

Thank you! The beltway boys have really been dense in understanding this one, but there are a few good glimmers in this piece:

If the rebellion in the Democratic Party were primarily ideological, closet centrist Dean would be going nowhere. What Dean understood earlier than his rivals is that Democrats wanted someone who did not seem intimidated by Bush. Iraq became both a substantive issue and a symbol. If Dean was willing to fight Bush on Iraq, many Democrats reasoned that he'd be tough enough to take him on across the board.

. . . The critical fact is that the roots of the anti-Bush feeling among Democrats were planted before the war. Democrats are still incensed that even though they strongly backed the president after 9/11, Bush turned around and used issues of national and homeland security (1) to club them in the 2002 elections, and (2) to push through his ideological program, especially more big tax cuts.

I don't think Dione completely nails the dynamic here, but for a beltway boy, he's starting to get warmer.