"Kerry Looking for Super Tuesday Triumph"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXII

An AP article at Yahoo News! yesterday.

John Kerry battled John Edwards from New York to California in a 10-state show of strength Tuesday, seeking to shove his last major rival from the race and claim the Democratic presidential nomination.

Pre-election polling gave Kerry an edge in almost every Election Day venue as he sought a lion's share of the victories to make Edwards' presidential bid a political, if not quite a mathematical, impossibility. Kerry was already pivoting toward a general-election fight with President Bush.

"Boy, wait until you see the fire in my belly," he told a TV interviewer.

The White House dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney to TV studios to criticize the presumptive foe. "He very clearly has over the years adopted a series of positions that indicate a desire to cut the defense budget, cut the intelligence budget, to eliminate many major weapons programs," Cheney said of the four-term Massachusetts senator.

Edwards, a 50-year-old freshman senator who barely competed in half the states, targeted Georgia, Ohio and Minnesota for candidacy-saving victories. Surveys showed the race close in Georgia and barely within reach in Ohio, his prospects for survival dim.

The only other wild card was Vermont, home of former Gov. Howard Dean. He dropped out of the race last month, but sentimental small-state partisans hoped to give Dean a handful of delegates to leverage his budding reform movement.

In all, 10 states with a combined population of 94 million — one-third of the U.S. total — awarded 1,151 delegates, more than half of the 2,162 needed to seize the nomination. In addition to New York, California, Vermont and Edwards' three target states, voters cast ballots in four Kerry strongholds: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Kerry, a 60-year-old senator, had 701 delegates to Edwards' 205, even before Tuesday's voting.

A 10-state sweep could give Kerry about 1,500 delegates — a virtually insurmountable lead. Even with a couple of victories and a better-than-expected showing in several other states, Edwards had to win at least 70 percent of the pledged delegates between now and June — and secure the support of uncommitted party leaders — to overtake Kerry in the delegate chase.

The lawmakers took a Super Tuesday time-out in the Senate to vote on extending the ban on military-style assault weapons. The extension passed, and they returned to campaign work after chit-chatting on the Senate floor.

The pair spent part of the day in Georgia, with Kerry looking ahead to November.

"President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second," he told the American Urban Radio Network.

His unbridled optimism muted, Edwards shook hands outside a polling place in suburban Atlanta, then declined to take questions from reporters.

Answers came all day from 10 states with nearly 50 million registered voters, many of them torn between the two candidates.

"The issue that drove me is getting rid of Bush, and that led me to Kerry," said Ron Debry, 47, of suburban Cincinnati. "Maybe Edwards someday, but I don't think he's ready yet."

Ousting Bush was the top priority for voters in nearly every Super Tuesday state, with large majorities saying they are angry at the president, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and TV networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

"Bush don't mean nothing to nobody but Bush," said Kerry voter John Richburg, 66, of Cleveland. "His lies done him out. He's got to go."

The economy and jobs were the dominant issue in the states, with a majority convinced that U.S. trade with other countries is more likely to take jobs from their states, exit polls showed.

Edwards hoped to seize a loser's share of delegates in New York, California and Maryland. He virtually ceded four New England states.

His best bet for victory was Georgia, but he needed a triumph outside the South — preferably in a battleground like Ohio — to justify a drawn-out fight for the nomination. Edwards believed his tough-on-trade message would play in Ohio, which has lost more than 250,000 jobs since Bush took office.

Kerry won 18 of the first 20 elections, many by routs, in a six-week campaign that drew attention to his decorated service in the Vietnam War and amplified Democratic criticism of Bush. However, with the White House gearing up for Bush's re-election, Democratic leaders grew increasingly eager to end the nomination fight.

"Edwards is a team player," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said. "He'll know what to do."

Edwards won a single state, his native South Carolina — and that was four weeks and 11 defeats ago. He has had eight second-place finishes, five third-places and six fourth-places.

Bush's re-election campaign begins a multimillion-dollar TV ad blitz Thursday designed to bolster the president's sagging political fortunes. Kerry is prepared to dip into Democratic Party coffers to pay for his own ads.

Democratic interest groups, required to act independently of the Kerry camp, laid plans to air ads critical of Bush.

Two other candidates, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Al Sharpton of New York, had no chance of winning the nomination.

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 03/03/04 06:44:17 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry & Political.