Crisis-prone Dean on the ropes as Kerry takes over: ThePost.ie


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Crisis-prone Dean on the ropes as Kerry takes over
Sunday, February 01, 2004

By Niall Stanage in New York

The race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination goes national on Tuesday.

In s even states, stretching from Arizona to North Dakota, voters will choose who they want to see bear the Democrats' mantle against George W Bush in November's election.

The results should clarify the likely outcome of a battle that has already seen extraordinary swings in fortune.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts is now the clear front runner for the nom i nation wh i le Howard Dean, the former governor of Ver mont who electr ified grassroots activists last autumn, is on the ropes.

Kerry is thriving on the momentum generated by two major successes. Last Tuesday, he added a convincing win in New Hampshire to the previous week's victory in the Iowa caucuses.

Kerry garnered 38 per cent of the vote in New Hampshire. Dean could manage only 26 per cent in a state he was once thought certain to win.

Retired general Wesley Clark prevailed over Senator John Edwards of North Carolina for third place, but only by a tiny margin. Each man's share of the vote - 12 per cent - was unimpressive.

The big question is whether Kerry can stay out in front of his rivals. His performance in South Carolina on Tuesday will be watched particularly closely.

The state, a member of the Civil War-era confederacy, is socially conservative but also has a substantial African American population. Some observers believe Kerry's image as a rich north-eastern liberal could harm him there.

If he wins, his campaign will receive yet another big boost. He will have proven that he has broad appeal. A victory in Missouri, the most populous of the states voting in two days' time, could have a similar effect.

The current state of play represents a remarkable turnaround for Kerry,whose campaign was once thought to be dead in the water. The resurgence can be traced to a personnel shake -up in November and a clear improvement in his own performance on the stump.

He has almost conquered his tendency towards longwindedness and has connected better with voters. Continual references to his heroism in the Vietnam war - he won three wound awards, Purple Hearts - have also been effective.

Dean's campaign, by contrast, seems to face a new crisis al most daily. On Wednesday, the candidate's decision to bring in a confidante of Al Gore's under the title of chief executive precipitated the resignation of campaign manager Joe Trippi.

Even more worryingly for the formerVermont governor, he is running into financial difficulties, despite having led the field in fundraising. By the end of last year, Dean had raised $41 million. But he invested enormous resources in Iowa and New Hampshire in the hope of winning by large margins and so acquiring unstoppable momentum.

The tactic failed miserably, and now Dean is thought to have only $5 million left. The candidate has asked his staff to work without payment for the next two weeks. He will be the only major candidate to air no TVads in any of the seven states which vote on Tuesday.

Dean is pinning his hopes on winning later contests in states he judges to be more favourable - aides repeat the names of Michigan, Wisconsin and Washington like a litany - but the strategy strikes many observers as overly optimistic.

Dean is no longer even considered the most likely challenger to Kerry's dominance. That role has fallen to John Edwards. He has run the most optimistic campaign of any of the Democratic hopefuls. Edwards is also the best communicator in the field, offering glimpses of Clintonian empathy with voters.

Edwards, by his own admission, must win in South Carolina. He was born in the state and one of his central selling points as a candidate is the fact that he is a southerner.

Republicans have dominated the south for more than 30 years, and the only Democrats to win the White House in that time (Clinton and Jimmy Carter) have both come from the region.

Victory for Edwards is by no means assured. Kerry may have picked up enough speed to carry all before him. Wesley Clark, the other southerner in the race, will be pulling out all the stops to win at least one contest on Tuesday and, though his best chances of success now lie elsewhere, he established an early presence in South Carolina.

The wild card in the state is Al Sharpton. The black civil rights activist has a history of opportunism, but his performance almost always exceeds expectations when the electorate includes a large number of African Americans.

Kerry and his aides are growing in confidence, however. None of his rivals laid a glove on him in a televised debate onThursday evening.

If he does well on Tuesday and avoids gaffes and scandals thereafter, he looks odds-on to be Bush's opponent in November.