Last night belonged unquestionably to John Kerry. The Massachusetts senator took a strong first place in the New Hampshire primary, drawing 39 percent of the vote statewide by the time 97 percent of the precincts had reported. Dean came in second with 26 percent; Wesley Clark and John Edwards tied for third with 12 percent each; Joe Lieberman lagged with a mere 9 percent. The result means that John Kerry has almost all the momentum heading into next week’s votes across seven states. He has proved he can retool his campaign and his personal style to look better on TV and sound better on the stump. He’s also had the good sense to steal some of Dean’s best lines, notably the one about battling against Washington’s special interests.
Yet Kerry also faces some peculiar challenges. First he has to rebuild his organization in several states that were plundered of campaign personnel as he fought to save his chances of winning in Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina, one of the states that holds its primary next week, has been understaffed since Kerry formally announced his presidential bid last year as he diverted his aides to his big tests up north. Does Kerry ignore the South now, and does he have time to build a campaign in other states–such as Missouri–that are newly in play since Richard Gephardt withdrew from the race? Kerry’s decision of where to fight is almost as crucial to his success–and as difficult to call–as Dean’s.
As the undisputed front runner, Kerry will also now find the gloves are off. Other campaigns are staring at their do-or-die moments. Their best chance of survival rests on prolonging the fight by halting Kerry’s romp home. “We’ve moved a lot of material,” says one rival-campaign aide of the voluminous oppo research on the Massachusetts senator that is now finding its way into journalists’ hands. Other rival-campaign staffers are salivating at the prospect of digging into Kerry’s Senate record, especially his fund-raising records, to see if they can dig up anything on those infamous special interests inside the Beltway. “We’ll see if he can take the pounding,” says one.
In many ways, Kerry may have already proved that he can take that beating. When his campaign fell into disarray late last year, and Dean swept ahead of the pack, the Massachusetts lawmaker managed to fight an aggressive campaign in Iowa without looking like he ran an attack-based race. He humanized his life story with compelling testimony from vets who knew him in Vietnam. And he sharpened his message with a platform of social justice and a crisper delivery on the campaign trail. Above all, for Democrats this year, he looks and sounds presidential–an impression that is only underscored by the latest NEWSWEEK poll that gives him a slight edge over President George W. Bush.
But while they may have lost their second electoral test in a row, the Deaniacs won’t lie down. Aides have long said that the most extraordinary feature of the former Vermont governor’s campaign is its base of supporters. As Dean held out the microphone to his raucous fans last night, that notion was hard to dispute. They’re on track to raising another $2 million since Dean’s spontaneous combustion last week. And, most important, they extinguished the Iowa flames in New Hampshire. But can the Webheads rise again to deliver real-life votes on the ground?
The Dean campaign is a long, long way from victory. Yes, their 13-point loss was better than the 20-plus deficit that many opinion polls predicted. And yes, it shows that they’re nowhere near as dead as many pundits proclaimed. But they’re still very far from answering the toughest questions about electability. How do they do that? “By winning something,” says one senior Dean aide. The campaign retreated to its headquarters in Burlington, Vt., today to figure out yet another new strategy with that goal in mind. Their first playbook called for a general-election approach during the primary season, taking Dean across the nation as he laid the foundation for this fall’s battle against President Bush. Yet after two big defeats, Dean is finding it hard to drop that multistate strategy to focus his energies on one or two states. He travels to Michigan twice and Washington state once in the next five days, even though their primaries are not for another 10 days. He also flies to Wisconsin, which doesn’t vote for another three weeks. “This is less about the next seven states than the next seven weeks,” says Dean spokesperson Tricia Enright. That’s an ambitious schedule for a campaign that has yet to win a single state.
Other campaigns now face their own critical tests. John Edwards needs a strong victory in South Carolina to prove he can capitalize on his rise from the depths. Wes Clark needs any kind of victory anywhere in the nation, following his deeply disappointing 27-point loss in New Hampshire–a defeat that was even more remarkable considering he skipped Iowa and spent weeks almost unopposed in the Granite State. And Joe Lieberman, who also skipped Iowa and moved to New Hampshire, really needs to edge into the double digits to convince anyone to send him more cash.
Yet even before those campaigns figure out their future, New Hampshire may already have narrowed the race to a two-man battle for the nomination: Kerry versus Dean. They remain the only two with the money and the organization to fight the long war for Democratic delegates. But there is one giant difference between the two campaigns. The diehard Deanies, unlike the Kerry stalwarts, must still overcome the voters’ doubts about their candidate. They were there as Dean poured hot coffee for his freezing New Hampshire fans outside a polling center Tuesday. “Last night was fabulous,” Jo-Ellen Thornton told the former governor, referring to his fired-up town hall meeting in Exeter. “You were back to your old self. We just lost you for a couple of days.” With precious little time before the next showdown, the Deaniacs can’t afford to lose him again.
