SORRY BAND OF HOPEFULS NOT A WINNER IN THE WHOLE BUNCH.

Byline: Burt Prelutsky

RECENTLY, I watched a terrific new TV pilot. I just hope it got decent ratings because I want to see it on the fall schedule.

The laugh riot starred the nine Democrats currently looking to move into the White House, come January 2005. The cast included eight men and a woman.

The premise of the show is that each of them is scheming and dreaming of being the next president, and will stop at nothing to get elected.

It pretends to be a reality show, but you only had to listen to the material to know it's the funniest sitcom since ``Seinfeld.''

OK, I exaggerate. But, seriously, folks, based on their overall performance, I would think that the show's host, George Stephanopolus, would emerge as the party's standard bearer. Except that he's short - and the American people seem to hate that in a presidential candidate, inevitably casting their votes as if they were choosing up sides for a basketball game - this George was the only person on stage one could even imagine giving the other George a run for his money.

After all, he's smart, good-looking, well-spoken and has a nice sense of humor.

The nine wannabes, on the other hand, were boring, homely, verbose and, all in all, came across like plague carriers.

Take John F. Kerry. Please. The man desperately wants us to confuse him with John F. Kennedy, but the only resemblance is their initials. Frankly, who he looks like is a cleanshaven Abraham Lincoln, on the day Abe got word his dog died.

For people old enough to recall William Bendix's radio show ``The Life of Riley,'' I'd suggest that the role Kerry was born to play was that of Digger O'Dell, who always introduced himself as ``The Friendly Undertaker.''

Joseph Lieberman, who isn't vice president today, not because of Florida, as he keeps insisting, but because Tennessee's Al Gore was one of the few presidential candidates who wasn't able to carry his home state, always sounds like he's suffering from a terminal case of constipation.

Can anyone really imagine having to listen to that voice deliver State of the Union speeches? I can see the entire nation muting their TVs and reading his lips.

Usually, when you see Al Sharpton on television, you get the impression that just minutes before, he was fleecing the tourists, running a crooked shell game in the alley. But in a gathering that included the likes of John Edwards, Howard Dean, Bob Graham and Carol Moseley-Braun, if Reverend Al didn't raise the class curve, he certainly did nothing to lower it.

I could be wrong, but as I got the message, Edwards wants us to vote for him because even though he wound up a millionaire lawyer, his folks were poor. For all I know, they still are.

In any case, after looking at his smug puss for an hour or so, I'm far more likely to pass on the son and vote for the parents.

As I recall, Kerry also bragged about having had poor parents but made nary a mention of being married to a woman who's the Heinz ketchup heiress and is worth about half-a-billion bucks.

Maybe it's just me, but, frankly, I think Kerry has gone way overboard compensating for his humble origins. Where I come from, $500,000,000 and the White House is just being piggish.

Dean, like most normal people, gives the impression, first and foremost, that he's just dying to get out of Vermont. Yes, he'd like to be our next president, but he'd settle for being baseball commissioner.

But I suppose when you get right down to it, he's as qualified as any of the others to run the country.

After all, as governor of Vermont, with its population of roughly 600,000, he has had a fair amount of experience conducting foreign affairs. It's not that easy dealing with New Hampshire's nuclear threat and Maine's expansionist policy.

You scoff, but I'll remind you that Maine's current governor won re- election handily with the slogan: ``Today, Burlington; tomorrow, Montpelier.''

Of all the candidates, Moseley-Braun had the best reason for running. She's out of work and needs a job.

By the end of the show, it was apparent to everybody but the self-deluded candidates that none of them will garner enough delegates in the various 2004 primaries to show up at the convention with a lock on the nomination.

In fact, the smart money boys are already prophesying that the Democrats will then turn to the junior senator from New York and beg Hillary on bended knee to carry them to victory.

And even though she has said she has no intention of running in 2004, everyone who's gotten to know her over the past 13 or 14 years knows she wouldn't be able to resist being the first female to head the ticket of a major political party.

For the Democrats, there's just one tiny fly in the ointment. Namely, she wouldn't win.

While that hasn't prevented them in the past from nominating such political martyrs as George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, even they have to realize that in spite of Hillary's many fanatical followers, there's no way she can attract the middle-of-the-road voters who determine electoral outcomes.

There is someone, however, who would have been able to possibly eke out a victory in November 2004.

I refer to Bill Clinton. If not for the 22nd Amendment, which precludes anybody from serving three terms in the Oval Office, Clinton, who is still only 56 years old, might very well have considered returning to his old haunt on Pennsylvania Avenue.

But, lest the Democrats start kicking themselves over the missed opportunity, they would do well to keep in mind that, except for that pesky old amendment, Ronald Reagan would probably still be president.