February 18, 2004
Wisconsin Narrows the Race to Two; Kerry Rolls On
A win is a win - except when it isn't.
Or to put it another way: Kerry wins, but only sort of. Edwards loses, but seems to win. And Dean loses and loses and loses.
In finishing first in Wisconsin, Sen. John Kerry added another state to his long list of primary and caucus victories. But his surprisingly narrow win over Sen. John Edwards raises more questions than Kerry would like about the breadth of his appeal.
Exit polls showed Kerry performing best among core Democratic voters, including self-described liberals, voters who described themselves as angry with the Bush administration, and voters at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder.
Edwards performed better among upscale voters, suburbanites, more conservative voters and political independents. And among the 42% of primary voters who said that the economy and jobs together constitute the top issue of the day, Edwards easily outpolled Kerry, 47%-34%.
In what is looking like the biggest irony of the results, Kerry swamped the rest of the field among those voters who said that beating Bush was the top candidate quality that they were seeking. Among that 23% of the primary electorate, Kerry took 69% to Edwards' 21%.
Those results are ironic because Edwards increasingly looks like the Democrat most able to defeat Bush, and he demonstrated on Tuesday a far greater ability to attract the votes of key swing constituencies.
Does Wisconsin fundamentally alter the Democratic contest? Nope.
Edwards' showing isn't likely to stop Kerry's march to the Democratic nomination. Kerry continues to have more money, momentum and endorsements, and he can continue to run in more states than his North Carolina rival. No matter how well Edwards did in exceeding expectations, he still has won just one primary contest.
Edwards is doing best when voters see him and hear him, when he has an opportunity to sell himself. But there are simply too many contests on March 2 for Edwards to do what he did Iowa and Wisconsin. And he won't have Independent voters to appeal to in many of the Super Tuesday states. He'll need to win among Democratic liberals, a group he has had trouble with.
So in spite of the closeness of the Wisconsin results, Kerry has taken another giant step to the Democratic nomination.
Finally, the Howard Dean locomotive is out of steam. His weak showing in Wisconsin demonstrates to all but his most hard-core supporters that he not only can't win the Democratic nomination, he isn't even an important factor in the race.
At the end of the day, Dean proved to be more bark than bite. He caught the fancy of true believers, but he never demonstrated that he had anything close to broad appeal.