Ain't No Stopping John Kerry

Geez. Elections seem to be close these days, and even though John Kerry was the sweeping victor in last Tuesday’s primaries, the race for the Democratic nomination may well have changed significantly because of the outcome of the Oklahoma primary, where Gen. Clark eked out a 1200-vote win over John Edwards. A swing of a mere 600 votes or so would have given John Edwards his second victory of the evening and would have most likely blown Gen. Clark out of the race, setting up a two-man race between Edwards and Kerry this week in Tennessee and Virginia, where Edwards might have been able to topple Kerry. Then the race would have moved to a real showdown in Wisconsin and perhaps beyond.

Alas, Clark won Oklahoma and stayed in the race, thereby assuring that he and Edwards will split the non-Kerry vote in Tennessee and Virginia on February 10th. And because of that split, Kerry has a good chance of winning those states outright and really nailing down the nomination. This is especially true because Kerry had no competition over the weekend in Michigan and Washington, due to the complete collapse of the Dean campaign, and so Kerry's overwhelming momentum builds.

Kerry has been looking and acting like the nominee, focusing his attention on President Bush, while his Democratic opponents struggle in relative obscurity, enmeshed in a Catch-22. They, too, want to act more “presidential” by focusing on their message and on Bush, in order to demonstrate that they too are electable. But in order to topple Kerry, they need to take him on, and no one wants to do that, particularly since Iowans rendered their harsh verdict against the attack campaigns of Gephardt and Dean.