Fierce battle to stop Kerry

[Feanorcurufinwe]

But in a campaign where Democratic voters appear to have exchanged traditional squabbling over ideology for a unified desire to oust President Bush, the key issue in the Junior Tuesday contests is whether any of the other leading candidates -- former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and retired General Wesley Clark -- can win a substantial enough victory to disrupt Kerry's march to the nomination. Kerry, the four-term senator, stormed to the front of the race with wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, and his victories appear to be feeding off a desire among core Democrats to select a party nominee who can defeat the president.

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Missouri is the biggest prize of the day with 74 delegates, and Carrick said he expects Kerry to win there. "It's essentially a friendly electorate," Carrick said of Missouri, noting that Kerry is beginning to construct a traditional, broad-based, winning Democratic coalition of suburban and college-educated voters, blue- collar and labor voters and ethnic minorities. If Missouri is friendly to Kerry, it's decidedly hostile to Dean, whose attacks on native son Gephardt during the Iowa campaign created deep resentment, Carrick said.

"He's the kind of candidate who would have to rent a pallbearer if he died in Missouri," Carrick said.

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"A funny thing happened on the way to the 'Stop Dean' movement," said Donnie Fowler, a strategist organizing the South Carolina primary election for the state Democratic Party. "It turned out it was the wrong horse to get on. "Everybody had been getting ready to stop Dean and you wonder if there's any energy left to stop Kerry," Fowler said.
In the search for a way to slow the Kerry victory march, Edwards is counting on South Carolina, where he was born and where he has said he must win to remain in the race.

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"All he's doing is avoiding a death sentence," Carrick said of Edwards. "Unless he wins somewhere else on Tuesday, I don't see people saying he's off to the races." Clark, a career military officer in his first campaign for election, is hoping for a win in one of what a spokesman called the "basket of states" -- Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico and North Dakota. But even Clark's aides acknowledge all the candidates must prove they can stop Kerry.


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