EEUU

Kerry logró la segunda victoria pero no hay nada seguro en la próxima ronda

Autor: Todd S. Purdum

Fecha: 28/1/2004

Traductor: Celeste Murillo, especial para P.I.

Fuente: New York Times

Kerry Notches 2nd Victory but Next Round Is Far From Certain

John Kerry has now done what none of his rivals for the Democratic nomination have yet come close to doing: He has won twice. Decisively. He has momentum, media, money and the ability to raise more, as well as a staff of experienced, disciplined operatives and a list of endorsements that are each growing by the day.

Howard Dean has now failed twice, decisively, in the states where he has worked hardest, with the voters who know him best, even among those who share his signature issue: opposition to the war in Iraq.
As the campaign shifts from an expectations game to a fight for real delegates, Dr. Dean needs to win somewhere. There were signs that he might leapfrog to states like Michigan and Wisconsin that vote later next month, then regroup for the big contests on both coasts on March 2.

As he was last week in Iowa, Senator John Edwards was the man in motion at the end of the race. Almost half the voters who chose him here did so in the past three days, an indication that he was gaining but ran out of time.

Mr. Edwards now heads to next week's contest in his native South Carolina a presumptive favorite son.

Gen. Wesley K. Clark skipped Iowa to campaign in New Hampshire almost exclusively for more than a month, hoping for a springboard against Dr. Dean, only to find himself competing against Mr. Kerry.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who moved from his home in Connecticut to a condominium here, fell even flatter, in what he portrayed as a "three-way split decision," at the bottom of the pack. Both Mr.

Lieberman and General Clark vowed to press on, though it is difficult to see just where they might catch fire.

Still, Mr. Kerry has only begun to be tested on the national stage. He has yet to compete among black and other minority voters, or in the South and the big swing states that tend to decide general elections. The quirks of personality, pedigree and policy that left him struggling to connect with audiences for much of last year still leave him vulnerable to assaults from Democrats and President Bush.

Mr. Kerry spent five austere and not always popular years of his adolescence boarding at St. Paul's School, just up the road in Concord, and it was there that he first displayed the hot political ambition as well as the cool personal reserve that have marked his career and this race. He has spent much of the past five months in a grinding effort to reintroduce himself to voters here, many of whom have known him for nearly two decades as the junior senator from neighboring Massachusetts but seemed drawn instead to Dr. Dean's fresh face.

"I'm all that's left standing of the Old Man in the Mountains!" Mr. Kerry declared Monday in Portsmouth, comparing his craggy Yankee profile to the famous granite rock formation at Franconia Notch that crumbled last year. Mr. Kerry hopes that he will soon loom alone on the political landscape, but, as Robert Frost memorably wrote, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

Nevertheless, in Tuesday's vote, Mr. Kerry reclaimed the undisputed mantle of front-runner, and in a staid victory speech he asked supporters to "stand with me," while Dr. Dean, subdued after his Iowa exuberance, reached for the more humble "stand with us."

As was the case in Iowa last week, surveys of voters leaving the polls here suggested that they chose Mr. Kerry more for his electability than for his compatibility, with 46 percent of his supporters saying they voted for him because he was the best candidate to beat Mr. Bush, compared with 42 percent who said he shared their views on the issues.

One in five voters said electability was the quality most important to them, and 60 percent of those chose Mr. Kerry. The most important quality, cited by about 30 percent of voters over all, was a candidate's standing up for his beliefs, and of those only about one-fifth picked Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry's advisers were hoping to emerge from New Hampshire in a head-to-head contest with Dr. Dean, one which they believed they could then quickly win..

But the voting did not produce anything like that clarity, and the race now moves to a far wider pool of voters, in disparate regions, where different candidates might yet rise.

Seven states from South Carolina to Arizona hold primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, but the big test that day may well be in Missouri, a state that is an almost-perfect microcosm of both the Democratic electorate and the general one.

Missouri may be the first state this year in which no candidate can be presumed to have a regional or sentimental advantage. It will be Mr. Kerry's first stop on Wednesday.

Kenneth Warren, a professor of political science at St. Louis University, said he believed that the New Hampshire result would be of overriding importance in Missouri.

"I think voters are really looking for the viability thing, which candidate can win — they like to be with the winner — and which candidate can beat Bush," Professor Warren said. "My opinion is that no one is going to be able to do much in the way of organization."

Joe Erwin, the state Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, noted that Dr. Dean had long had a strong operation in his state, while Mr. Kerry has not advertised or really campaigned there since he declared his candidacy on an aircraft carrier near Charleston last year. No non-Southern Democrat has won the White House since 1960, and Mr. Erwin said, "I think you have to make Edwards a kind of favorite son here."

But Mr. Kerry and the others are planning to campaign there, too. "It's good for the Democratic Party that the South matters early in the process," Mr. Erwin said. "Too often the entire South has been late to the dance."