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The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
'We are not done yet, but it's over'
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Unit
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Wisconsin fallout: Howard Dean heads home to Vermont today after a disappointing third-place finish, while second-place finisher John Edwards touts his success with independents.
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| ON CNN TV | 
CNN-USA has extensive live coverage all night of the impact of Howard Dean's withdrawal from the presidential race, John Kerry's win in Wisconsin and John Edwards' surprising second-place showing there. Follow developments as they happen with reports and analysis all evening.
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VIDEO
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CNN's Bill Hemmer talks with John Edwards.
Sen. John Kerry says Wisconsin voters have moved his campaign forward.
CNN's Candy Crowley on Howard Dean's dilemma.
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| UPCOMING PRIMARIES |
• Tuesday, February 24: Hawaii, Idaho Democratic caucuses; Utah primary • Sunday, February 29: Puerto Rico Republican primary • "Super Tuesday," March 2: Primaries in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Georgia; caucuses in Minnesota When is your primary? For more key dates in the 2004 election season, see our special America Votes 2004 Election Calendar |
SPECIAL REPORT
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- John Edwards emerges today as the co-winner of the Wisconsin primary, aided by independents and late-deciding voters. Sure, John Kerry won more votes, but Edwards has finally achieved his longtime quest for a two-man race -- just in time for suddenly relevant Super Tuesday.
Claiming exclusive rights to the mantle of defeat, of course, is Howard Dean, who heads home to Burlington today for his campaign-turned-movement's latest round of soul searching. He is scheduled to hold an "event" at 1 p.m. ET at the Burlington Sheraton Hotel, where sources say he'll announce he's no longer campaigning actively for president. While his name will appear on the ballot, one aide told the Grind, "the campaign, as we've known it for the past 14 months, will cease to exist. ... It's over."
Labor bigs are likely to jump ship today. Sources tell the Grind that the two unions still on Team Dean -- the Service Employees International Union and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades -- will abandon Dean today and join the AFL-CIO to endorse Kerry tomorrow in Washington.
"We are not done yet," Dean said, loudly and repeatedly, last night in Madison. But if you listened closely, you heard Dean speak about his campaign, also repeatedly, in the past tense. Referring to the SEIU and IUPAT, he thanked labor for staying with him "until the end." Translation: Dean's movement, whatever form it takes, is "not done yet." But his '04 presidential campaign has reached "the end."
Edwards eyes Super Tuesday
Whether Edwards can spin his good night into an actual win March 2 is unclear. Ohio, New York and Georgia are big Super Tuesday states, and Edwards says he'll campaign in all three. (He's in D.C. and New York today for closed-door fund-raisers). But California is also a big state -- lots of voters, delegates and media attention -- and the senator so far is reluctant to invest there.
One reason Edwards did so well in Wisconsin: Late-deciding voters, who exit polls show swung overwhelmingly toward him.
Buoyed by endorsements from Wisconsin's two biggest newspapers, Edwards beat Kerry, 56 percent to 21 percent, among voters who chose a candidate in the last three days; Edwards won 46 to 30 percent among people who decided in the last week. This has been a trend throughout the year, bolstering Edwards' frustration with the compressed, front-loaded primary calendar. Give me another week or two with these voters, he says, and I'll make them mine.
"Do we want a nominee who's propped up [by] the process, or a nominee who can beat George Bush?" Edwards adviser David Axelrod told CNN's Jamie McShane last night. "We realize we're flying into a headwind created by the process. But what makes this such a great story is he's still aloft going into that headwind."
Another reason Edwards had a good night: Wisconsin primaries are open, meaning non-Democrats can cast ballots. Yesterday, only 60 percent of voters were actually Democrats. While those Democrats voted overwhelmingly for Kerry (48 to 29 percent), Edwards beat Kerry by 12 points among the 30 percent of voters who called themselves independents.
"If we're going to win the general election, we're going to have to get independents. This is another in a long series of examples of me being much more attractive to independent voters," Edwards said on CNN's "Larry King Live."
Kerry heads to Ohio
Signing autographs after his speech, Kerry said Edwards' strong showing resulted from cross-over votes of Republicans and independents. Earlier yesterday, he said Edwards "can't run for president cherry-picking states here and there, picking up one or two delegates here and somewhere."
"You have to run for president nationally, and I think I've been the only one in recent weeks who's been doing that and proving an ability to win in these places nationally," Kerry added. "So that's what we're going to try to continue to do."
With that in mind, Kerry sets out for Ohio today, holding a town-hall meeting in Dayton and, later, a rally in Columbus.
The front-runner's plans to travel to the Buckeye State sparked warring conference calls yesterday.
First up, GOP Rep. Rob Portman, a co-chairman of Bush/Cheney Ohio, who said he wanted to talk to reporters because he was concerned that Republicans weren't getting their message out and he "wanted to set the record straight." Portman talked up Bush's ground game and repeatedly painted Kerry as a tax-happy flip-flopper.
Minutes after Portman concluded his remarks, reporters jumped on another call with two pro-Kerry Ohio Democrats, Toledo Mayor Jack Ford and Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken, who vowed Ohio would be "Ground Zero in the 2004 presidential campaign. ... I believe that, had Al Gore stayed in Ohio, he probably would have won here four years ago."
Dem wins in Kentucky
With an eye toward November, Kerry and Edwards should both take some comfort from Democrat Ben Chandler's landslide win in Kentucky last night. Chandler, a former state attorney general and '03 gubernatorial nominee, beat state Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, 55 to 43 percent. He is expected to be sworn into office as early as next Tuesday.
Chandler's win marks the first time Democrats won a GOP-held House seat in a special election since 1991, when Rep. John Olver succeeded the late Rep. Silvio Conte in western Massachusetts. But more importantly for Democrats, it was a sign of President Bush's unpopularity in a district where he took 56 percent in '00.
Early in January, Kerr ran a TV ad in which she walked along the White House promenade with Bush and pledged to support his policies if elected. By February, she had pulled back on her rhetoric regarding the president. Her campaign even deleted a reference to Bush in one of its final ads about Medicare. In the campaign's final days, Kerr declined to invite Bush to Kentucky to campaign for her.
Democrats were elated, but hardly gracious, in victory.
Bob Matsui, the head of the House Democratic campaign committee, came out swinging at the vanquished Republican, calling her a "rubber stamp" for President Bush and saying that voters "rejected" her because "they know Republican policies have totally failed to create jobs in Kentucky as in so many other states."
Chandler's victory should send a warning to the "arrogant Republican government in Washington" that "Americans are ready for a change," Matsui added.
Matsui's GOP counterpart, Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, said Republicans didn't have enough time to overcome the Democrats' voter-registration edge. "It turns out 10 weeks just wasn't enough to get all the way there in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans almost two to one," he said. "This district will remain competitive in the general election in the fall and we look forward to a vigorous race then and putting this district back in Republican hands."
Next up: A special election June 1 in South Dakota's at-large district, where freshman Republican Bill Janklow resigned after his conviction on a manslaughter charge stemming from a traffic accident.
