ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., 6 September 2003 — Struggling to stand out in a crowded field, seven Democratic presidential candidates avoided conflict with front-runner Howard Dean and focused instead on a more familiar target — President Bush.

“This president is a miserable failure,” Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri said Thursday night during the first major debate of the 2004 campaign.

Dean, the former Vermont governor who achieved front-runner status after a summer surge in the polls and in fund raising, had expected to be a primary target of his rivals. But he emerged from the 90-minute debate relatively unscathed.

“Dean kept his shine on,” said Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. “Nobody took any of the gloss from the type of message and the type of campaign he’s been running.”

Joe Lieberman tried.

The Connecticut senator accused Dean of pressing for fair trade standards that would scuttle existing treaties and cost millions of jobs.

“If that ever happened, I’d say the Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression,” Lieberman said.

It was the type of shot Democratic activists had expected since Dean surged this summer to the head of the nine-candidate field. A day before the debate, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson spoke for the entire party when he predicted verbal “fireworks.”

But there was more fizzle than fireworks. Democrats targeted Bush, not each other.

• Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts accused the president of a “failure of leadership” in the world.

• Lieberman said Bush has been a “powerful failure” on the economy.

• Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Dean accused Bush of refusing to tell the truth about the conflict in Iraq — both its costs and risks.

Said Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie: “The one thing they were unified on was their negativity and their attacks on the president.”

The candidates’ reluctance to attack each other may have best served Dean, but some Democrats said he lacked his usual passion. “He was pretty laid back,” said Waring Howe Jr., a Democratic activist in South Carolina.

“The man looks like he’s running like a front-runner,” Brazile said. “That was not the real Dean. He was too cool. Maybe he missed Al Sharpton.”

The civil rights activists from New York did not participate in the debate, a victim of bad weather on the East Coast.

Each candidate could declare small victories in pushing forward their themes or massaging their images.

Gephardt, accused of being bland and lacking in passion, waved his hands and spoke in red-faced anger about Bush.

Kerry, his campaign rocked by Dean’s rise, has a reputation of being aloof but he drew laughter with two jokes at Bush’s expense.

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, former governor of his battleground state, called his experience a great asset. While others talk about solving problems, “I have done it,” he said.

Former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, the only woman in the field, pledged to equalize pay among men and women.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich showed himself as the most liberal candidate, promising to repeal two major US trade deals his first day in office.