A win is indeed a win, even if it’s Kerry’s slender 6-point victory in Wisconsin. But as Bill Clinton showed in New Hampshire 12 years ago, a strong second place can also be a win-as long as you beat expectations. John Edwards leaves Wisconsin with a new lease of life, especially from the fundraisers who must bankroll a nationwide, two-week race towards Super Tuesday’s primaries. (In contrast, a distant third is most definitely a dismal defeat for Howard Dean in what his campaign once called a must-win state.)
Does the good news for John Edwards mean bad news for John Kerry? Not necessarily. Before Wisconsin’s primary, several senior Democrats were voicing regret that the primary season was apparently ending so quickly in a Kerry coronation. Their chief complaint: the primaries have galvanized the base at the same time as pushing down the president’s polling numbers. A few more weeks of free media attention would do Kerry no harm, and continue to suck oxygen away from the White House. That’s why the Wisconsin result could be good news for both Kerry and Edwards. “What’s the downside for us?” asked one senior Kerry aide. “The longer this goes on, the better. Edwards has said he won’t attack us, and we can keep on winning.”
So goes the positive spin on Kerry’s shaky performance. That rosy scenario is based on the notion that many factors will stay the same. Edwards remains positive and attack-free, Kerry keeps steady and gaffe-free, and Democrats don’t get a bad case of buyers’ remorse. Such forecasts are not so far-fetched. After all, two weeks is precious little time for Edwards to build any momentum. On the other hand, it was only four weeks ago that Dean fell off a cliff in Iowa.
Behind the headline victory for Kerry, there is enough in the Wisconsin numbers to make Democrats a touch jittery about their presidential frontrunner. Kerry won handily (by 17 points) among the two-thirds of Wisconsin voters who say they are Democrats. But he lost heavily to Edwards (by 18 points) among the independents and Republicans who made up the rest of the voters. He also lost to Edwards among the 60 percent of voters who said their choice depended on the issues, not the candidates’ ability to beat President Bush in the fall.
Does that mean Edwards’ focus on jobs and poverty pulled in working-class people and moderates? Not exactly. Wisconsin voters overturned the conventional wisdom all over the place. Exit polls showed Kerry, not Edwards, taking the lion’s share of people earning less than $50,000 a year, who represented around half the voters on Tuesday. Kerry also nudged ahead of Edwards among moderates, holding a 41-to-39 point lead. He even won among women voters, destroying the glib view that Edwards’ good looks were enough to attract their votes.
With little time to campaign across the nation over the next two weeks, the rival campaigns have almost no room to think about their mistakes. Did Kerry’s message fail to resonate in the final days of Wisconsin’s primary? Kerry’s aides say there is no need to change anything in their strategy, insisting that they will continue to focus on the next primary ahead.
In fact Kerry spent most of his time in Wisconsin looking several months ahead to the general election. Instead of trying to bury his party rivals, he spoke exclusively about George W. Bush. When the president staged campaign-style events in Florida about the recovering economy, Kerry staged rival events in Wisconsin about the loss of jobs on Bush’s watch. When Bush met with National Guard troops in Louisiana, Kerry swung at him for supply shortages in Iraq and cuts in benefits for veterans back home. Kerry even took time out last week to respond to Bush’s plans to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. It’s no coincidence that Kerry gets his biggest cheers for his red-meat attacks on Bush and his promise to bring an end to the Bush administration.
Kerry is now the second Democratic frontrunner to discover that there are perils in starting the general election campaign before you’ve locked down the nomination. Howard Dean tried and failed to do that late last year, believing the poll numbers were pointing to huge victories in the early primaries. Whatever his shortcomings, John Kerry is far less presumptuous than Dean. At least he’s won 15 of 17 states to date.
He’s also proving to be far more nimble-footed than the former Vermont governor. As he claimed victory in Madison on Tuesday night, Kerry used his national spotlight to strike some remarkably Edwards-like notes. He spoke of “the hurt of workers without work” and the need to protect workers “in every trade agreement”. He sounded upbeat and optimistic about “America as a land of opportunity”. And he even managed to reach out to Dean’s supporters, stretching his arm to the cameras as he spoke of “so many young people who have lost faith in the system”.
For sure, Kerry has been saying similar things throughout his campaign, and his campaign aides insist that his speech was not reworked after Edwards’ strong showing. But now that Kerry faces what amounts to a head-to-head fight with Edwards through Super Tuesday, he might need to say it a little louder.
