Reply #57: Kerry was seen as a stronger candidate when he won Tennessee and Virginia

[JI7]

if he had lost those states the other candidates could have made a strong argument against him saying he would not be able to reach out to more moderate or conservative people during the general election and would therefore be a weaker candidate.

and in fact kerry won mostly because he did well with traditional democratic voters. and edwards did better with conservative leaners so the argument would have have stood but the fact that kerry still ended up winning those states made it much harder to argue that point. so the south did make a huge difference.

i bring this up because you made some arguments about ignoring the south. but the south was not ignored. and this can be seen especially in kerry picking a southerner as vp.