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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) There is a slight air of desperation in the political class as party factions cast about for a dark horse in the 2016 presidential race.

Its not quite to the point of Anyone but Clinton or Anyone but Bush, but there is a palpable sense in both parties that alternatives might be better.

There are echoes on both sides of the Ann Coulter meme in the 2012 campaign Romney will be the nominee and we will lose applying this time not to Mitt Romney, though he may run again, but to the putative frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

They lead the pack in their parties simply because polls and donors at this point are all about name recognition, but both of them carry wagonloads of baggage. They are so vulnerable in a general election campaign that it already makes you wince.

However, a dark horse already emerged once to beat Clinton, and that experience has made voters shy of the whole dark-horse thing.

As distasteful as the idea may be, voters may go with the brand-name candidates in the same way they feel safe with any brand-name product you know what youre getting.

Not that either Bush or Clinton wouldnt make a good president. In fact, at this point, they seem virtually interchangeable, and undecided voters might choose one or the other simply by flipping a coin.

After Barack Obamas record which could be described as mixed at best voters could be forgiven for not wanting any more experiments.

And yet, there seems to be yearning among those who are already paying attention to the 2016 prospects to find someone that might genuinely excite voters once they wake up to the pending choice of a new chief executive for the country.

Dark horses are the rule in the Republican field in this cycle. Jeb Bush, by dint of being the third in his family to run for president, has a head start, but not enough of one to discourage other aspirants.

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Darrell Delamaide's Political Capital: Desperately seeking a dark horse for president