JOHN-VS.-JOHN RACE IMPERILS LEADER
By DEBORAH ORIN
February 4, 2004 -- COLUMBIA, S.C. - It's starting to look like a two-man race between John Edwards and John Kerry - and that's just what John Kerry didn't want.
Kerry notched five more wins and boosted his front-runner standing, but he couldn't knock out the upbeat rival whose Clintonesque message wins the loudest cheers on the stump - and thus poses the greatest long-term threat to Kerry's nomination.
"John Edwards is really catching fire," said Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile, one of the savviest Democratic strategists.
Edwards also was Kerry's chief rival in Missouri, despite making only a minimal effort there, and did surprisingly well in Oklahoma, where he nearly tied Wesley Clark for first.
Clark didn't get the big-margin win he needed in Oklahoma, despite outspending everyone by a mile there, but wasn't ready to call it quits last night. That could be good news for Kerry, who'd rather avoid a head-to-head showdown with Edwards.
Howard Dean's not out of the picture yet either.
While his candidacy might be flopping around like the fish he grabbed at a Seattle market yesterday, the former Vermont governor is adamantly vowing to stay in the race and has enough money to keep going. Dean will keep coming at Kerry kamikaze-style from the left.
That means Kerry now faces a two-front war, with Edwards and Dean coming at him from different sides.
The biggest risk for Kerry is that Edwards now gets another chance to take off, as he did in Iowa, where he surged at the end to finish a surprisingly strong second to Kerry. Edwards was also rising at the end in New Hampshire but ran out of time.
As the field winnows, voters will start seeing a John-to-John contrast - Edwards, as the new kid on the block, will get his first big burst of the media spotlight as voters weigh his energy and optimism against Kerry's experience and Vietnam War medals.
Kerry will also face tougher questions about whether he can win in the South after losing big-time in South Carolina and running third in Oklahoma.
As Edwards keeps noting, no Democrat has won the White House without winning several Southern states.
Still, Kerry piled up delegates last night and he's the odds-on favorite. Until Edwards wins somewhere up north, Kerry can keep painting Edwards as a regional candidate.
Voter surveys show Kerry's biggest asset is that Democrats believe he can beat Bush. The latest CNN-Gallup poll has him leading the president by 53 to 46 percent.
But that same poll shows Edwards is already in a tie with Bush, and the challenge for Edwards will be to convince voters that he'd be as strong as Kerry against the president.
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