RALEIGH, N.C.–Sen. John Kerry has won seven of the first nine Democratic contests for president. It’s virtually unthinkable that someone could score that many victories early on and not become his party’s nominee. This week, the John Edwards campaign will try to make a virtue out of that “virtually.”
For one thing, Edwards’s good showing on Mini-Tuesday–winning a large mandate in South Carolina and essentially tying Gen. Wesley Clark in Oklahoma–is generating just the sort of perverse, expectations-game buzz in the national media that cynics would have expected. The only surprise of the night, other than Al Sharpton’s welcome deflation down south, was the Oklahoma near-tie. Everything else, including even Kerry’s margins of victory in the rest of the states, had been predictable ahead of time. That’s a bore, as was Kerry’s pedestrian presentation and photo opportunities.
The Edwards team, knowing his South Carolina win would present the best opportunity yet to present their still-unknown candidate to the rest of the country, scheduled his victory speech right as the polls were closing in Missouri, Delaware, and Oklahoma. While the various network news operations cut away for a moment to issue projections of Kerry wins in the first two, they quickly cut back to Edwards giving an effective performance and looking like a winner. Kerry, comparatively, looked at his campaign rally like he was about to knock back a couple and go yachting (come to think of it, I think I did catch a glimpse of Teddy Kennedy in the background …).
Now, of course the Edwards folks know that most Americans–and most voters in the upcoming Democratic-contest states of Michigan, Washington, Maine, Tennessee, Virginia, Nevada, and Wisconsin–weren’t getting their news by watching the 24-hour news channels. But by skillfully presenting their candidate there, they helped to shape the media’s own perceptions of the way the night was unfolding and generating some strong images for the eleven o’clock news and the morning papers. Indeed, I saw Newsweek’s Howard Fineman on MSNBC try on several occasions to steer the commentator panel back to the idea that Kerry was the big winner on Tuesday night, only to see the conversation turn immediately again to how Edwards can still make it a race (with Fineman chiming in, anyway).
The other thing going for Edwards in the coming week will be some continued nervousness among some Democratic moderates and among southern Democrats (including liberals) about the prospect of a Massachusetts liberal topping the party’s ticket in November. Not quite believing the match-up polls with President Bush, and properly so, they continue to remain focused on the problem facing the Democratic minority in the U.S. Senate: the risk that they may lose additional ground to the GOP in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Some are also worried about races for governor, Congress, and state legislatures. You can bet these folks were watching cable news Tuesday night, and may make a phone call or write a check for Edwards in the coming days.
All of this could still come up way short. As I wrote last week, Edwards really needed to win at least two states on Mini Tuesday to change the fundamental dynamics of the race. He didn’t do it, though he came close. Clark’s performance in his neighboring state of Oklahoma will just encourage this wacky candidate to continue his doomed race, which will mainly cause trouble for Edwards in the southern states of Virginia and Tennessee he must win next Tuesday. Plus, Edwards signaled that he would campaign not only there but also in Michigan, where a new Detroit News poll out Tuesday had Kerry way ahead with 56 percent, before the Mini-Tuesday results came out, with Dean (13 percent) and Edwards (6 percent) way, way behind. The latter must be hoping he can at least boost his showing to a credible second, perhaps a quarter or so of the vote, relying on Edwards’s populist appeal to blue-collar workers and his support among Detroit-area ministers of African-American congregations. But with Washington and Maine off his itinerary and likely going big for Kerry, too, can Edwards survive until the later February contests in several rural states? And isn’t all this just a prelude to John Kerry’s inevitable nomination, his inevitable call to Edwards for vice president, and Edwards’s inevitable “yes” despite many previous refusals to consider the idea?
Stay tuned–the media really want you to.
–John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal, a statewide newspaper in North Carolina. His latest book is Investor Politics.