Eleanor Clift

California Sen. Barbara Boxer broke the logjam this time and forced the debate, defying conventional wisdom, which said the Democrats didn't want to appear sore losers and it was time to move on.

With hardly anybody around over Christmas weekend, a handful of Capitol Hill aides scrambled to respond to the unfolding catastrophe in South Asia. The earthquake off the coast of Indonesia occurred at 7:59 A.M.

As 2004 draws to a close, it's time to look back on the stories that didn't get enough attention from the media. These are my top 10 nominations for stories that were undercovered but which will command top billing in the year ahead.

Most Americans still have some fear and suspicion of Russia, so they feel assured when George W. Bush travels to Moscow, looks into Vladimir Putin's eyes and vouches for the Russian president's soul.

Not since Margaret Sanger's crusade to legalize birth control in the 1920s has family planning come under such assault. Pharmacists around the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth-control pills, exercising their right to "refuse and refer" under the industry's code of ethics.

The struggle to be Democratic National Committee chair is round one of the battle for the soul of the party. The obvious choice is Howard Dean, who has the clarity of conviction and the passion that voters hunger for even if they don't always agree with him.Party activists around the country are furious at the Washington Democrats for blowing the election.

Who'll be the new Democratic chairman? Howard Dean is favored by party activists who think Democrats lost because they weren't aggressive enough. Red State governors disagree, and want to take the party away from D.C. Dems who, they believe, have lost touch with the country. "The party should look in the mirror," says former South Carolina governor Jim Hodges.

Touring his library early this week, President Clinton paused before the electoral map documenting his victories in 1992 and 1996. Montana was colored red. "I won Montana," he protested.

Ralph Nader was right. The Democrats didn't need his help to lose. Nader's share of the vote was miniscule. He thought, as many people did, that John Kerry would win.

At 80, former president Jimmy Carter remains an active humanitarian--and a prolific writer. His Revolutionary War novel, "The Hornet's Nest" (Simon & Schuster) was released in paperback last month; his 19th book, a recollection of relaxing times spent with friends and family called "The Things that Matter Most" (Simon & Schuster) will be out next month.

Bush pollster Matthew Dowd, unshaven and looking weary, met with print journalists Thursday for one last spin session. For the record, he thinks the president will win, but he sounded so unconvincing that halfway through the hourlong lunch, a reporter said, "OK, so the race is very close and one or the other will win."When the laughter subsided, Dowd remembered his talking points and said a bit sheepishly, "The lead [of the story you ought to write] is that the election is very close and...

Bobby Muller was a Marine lieutenant leading an assault in Vietnam when a bullet severed his spine in April 1969. He spent almost a year recovering in a Veterans Hospital in the Bronx, where the woes of other battlefield casualties echoed his own and led him to dedicate his life to what he calls "war-related work."Muller cofounded Vietnam Veterans Against the War with John Kerry and is now president of Vietnam Veterans of America.

The rationale for war in Iraq has collapsed, so President George W. Bush has declared another war, this one on John Kerry. Bush's blistering attack on Kerry as weak and wavering on war and the worst kind of tax-and-spend liberal foreshadows the next four weeks.

George W. Bush didn't look at his watch the way his father famously did during a presidential debate, but he might as well have. The president had the air of a man who couldn't bother being there.

If Al Gore hadn't messed up in the debates in 2000, he'd be president today. All or nothing, that's how much is riding on the debates that get underway next week in Miami.

It's like that television ad, "Another loan lost to Ditech." From the Kerry campaign's perspective, this was another week lost to the Republicans. George W.

President George W. Bush did what no other candidate has done, says consumer activist Ralph Nader. "He ignored Labor Day." Instead of paying homage to American workers, he used a holiday campaign appearance in Poplar Bluff, Mo., to poke fun at John Kerry for going wobbly on the war.It's not surprising that Bush would downplay organized labor.

Karl Rove makes Chuck Colson look like a girly man. Colson didn't have the audacity to go after John Kerry's military record when President Nixon was looking for dirt on antiwar leaders.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth stopped by NEWSWEEK's Washington bureau this week to explain their version of what happened in Vietnam 35 years ago and why John Kerry doesn't deserve three Purple Hearts.

John Kerry disappointed a lot of Democrats when he said that he would have voted for the resolution that gave George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq even had Kerry known then what he knows now--that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to Al Qaeda.

The House and Senate leadership doesn't have enough time to take up the 9/11 commission's recommendations about overhauling the nation's terror fighting network until next year, but the House Government Reform Committee can find the time to squeeze in an investigation of Sandy Berger before the election.Republicans are acting like Berger is the worst threat to national security since Julius Rosenberg.

Republicans couldn't even muster a simple majority for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but that didn't stop the GOP-controlled Senate from devoting the better part of a week to the dangers posed by recognizing same-sex unions as legitimate marriages.A waste of time, yes, but a valuable lesson for the American voter because of what it tells us about the modern Republican Party.

In his choice of a running mate with no national-security credentials, John Kerry is betting that the November election will turn on the economy, not Iraq.

It's far too early to say we're on the road to recovery in Iraq, but it's been a good week for the Iraqi people, and for President George W. Bush. It's comforting that the new interim government was able to sneak in without extraordinary incident.

The outpouring of sentiment around the death of Ronald Reagan is about wanting to feel good. The former president had that effect on us regardless of his policies.

The outpouring of sentiment around the death of Ronald Reagan is about wanting to feel good. The former president had that effect on us regardless of his policies.

The timing is odd. About to embark on a foreign trip, on his way to his helicopter, President George W. Bush stops to announce his CIA director has resigned.

What was the subliminal message of John Ashcroft's stepped-up terror warning earlier this week? It's that if the terrorists want to disrupt the presidential election, that must mean they're for Democratic candidate John Kerry.Think Madrid.

It's not surprising that the latest Bush campaign television ad has Laura Bush speaking on camera. A new Pew poll reveals a 12-point gender gap for Bush, enough to sink her husband in November. "Women are sick of Bush and all the macho strutting; it's gotten pretty old," says a Republican strategist.If the First Lady were the candidate, the Bush campaign might have a better shot at arguing it stands for compassionate conservatism.

Somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden is having the second-best week of his life. American soldiers using Saddam's torture chambers to abuse and sexually humiliate Iraqis pushes the U.S. presence in Iraq beyond the point where it can be saved.Capitol Hill is in an uproar, and the White House is panicking.