BENNIFER, BRANGELINA, O'KERRYBAMA? Kerry, Obama (Photo: Getty Images)
The early days of the holiday season are flush with the promise of sloppy office party hook-ups and heart-tugging Lexus commercials to come, but it would be a disservice to forget their mirthless downside: forced reconnections with family members best left forgotten.

Nobody knows this frustration better than the candidates in the Democratic primary, who are struggling over how best to deal with the possible reemergence of long-faced-Brahmin John Kerry. The rumor mill has him shopping for a candidate before the Iowa caucuses. Party leaders might like the windsurfing Senator chained-up in the basement like Sloth from Goonies, but with Bubba backing his wife and Al Gore apparently staying neutral, Kerry is the highest profile Democrat yet to back a primary contender candidate. And endorsement from a one-time presidential nominee and vocal war opponent, however, isn't just good for cache, it's good for cash.

For Kerry, picking a candidate may be easier said than done, considering his own checkered-history with each of the six "serious" contenders (aka everybody but Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel). Radar runs down the betting odds on who has the inside track on an endorsement one operative described as, "like asking for a pet and getting a spitting cobra."

Barack Obama
The whispers say Kerry has zeroed in on Barack Obama as his pick. Aside from the whole black thing, Obama is a lot like his colleague from Massachusetts: well-dressed, vaguely handsome, and face-meltingly boring on almost every stump since '04's "Audacity of Hope" speech. Kerry's man crush on the Illinois senator extends back to Obama's early days in the senate, when Kerry unsuccessfully tried to position himself as Obama's mentor/badass-older-brother by sidling up to Barack on the senate floor and throwing one of his arms around the freshman senator's shoulders and not letting go. Obama decided he'd be better off having Yoda-like turncoat Joe Lieberman as his mentor.

ODDS: 3-1

Joe Biden
The sleeper in the race, Biden is one of Kerry's closest friends in Washington, and a serious contender for Kerry's veep in the 2004 race and Secretary of State if he won. Still, if Kerry was going to loan out his star power to his friend, he probably should have done it a little sooner; as of the third-quarter of this year, Biden has raised a paltry $6.1 million in total for his White House bid (in comparison, Kerry's BFF Obama brought in $20.4 million last quarter alone).

ODDS: 6-1

Hillary Clinton
A Kerry endorsement might be the breakthrough Hillary needs to win over anti-war lefties, but their differences over the Iraq war may be too great to overcome (they all but remove Kerry from Secretary of State consideration in a Clinton White House). The Clinton camp has also taken some swipes at Kerry he may be unwilling to overlook: Clinton aide Ann Lewis criticized Kerry's campaign style, and Senator Clinton herself was on the front lines laying into Kerry for his botched "stuck in Iraq" joke last year.

ODDS: 15-1

Chris Dodd:
Dodd and Kerry are both New Englanders, approximately the same age, and entered the senate at around the same time. Those in the know say their relationship has been strained since 1994, when Kerry, citing "screw-ups" during Dodd's time in charge of the DNC, backed Tom Daschle over Dodd for senate minority leader, giving the South Dakota senator a razor-thin one-vote victory over Dodd.

ODDS: 60-1

Bill Richardson
Richardson was an early contender to be VP in 2004, but was dogged by concerns about alleged womanizing, eventually removing his name from consideration before Kerry and his staff vetted him further.

ODDS: 100-1

John Edwards
The uneasiness between Kerry and John Edwards (and, for that matter, both men's staffers) was the political world's worst kept secret in 2004, but after Kerry's defeat, their relationship turned downright nasty. Bob Shrum says that before he came aboard, Edwards promised Kerry he wouldn't run in 2008 if they lost. Kerry loyalists say Edwards sleepwalked through the '04 campaign, a sharp contrast from the pitbull act he's been putting on this time around ("A lot of what I'm seeing now, I wish I'd seen in 2004," former Kerry communications director Stephanie Cutter told the New York Times last week).

ODDS: 2 billion-1