A Democratic ticket begins to take shape
WYTHEVILLE, Va.
GOING INTO what might have been the final weekend of the Democrats' competitive nominating season, Wesley Clark quietly pulled his television advertising from Virginia's varied markets that stretch from the North Carolina border to a few minutes down Interstate 81 from Pennsylvania, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Blue Ridge, and from the Washington suburbs to the foothills of eastern Tennessee. After starting down the slippery slope into debt to keep his long-shot hopes alive, there were also reports from Tennessee of light TV buys for the final moments of a campaign that lost its original rationale -- the non-Dean -- and has struggled to find another one.
Instead, Clark started behaving like Dean-lite, picking at front-runner John Kerry and John Edwards over their Senate votes that the wise guys in President Bush's campaign are certain to use against Kerry if he clinches the nomination.
Clark gamely slogged on, but the impression grew that his operation in Virginia -- on which he has dumped well over $500,000 since his more heady period in December -- is mostly a Potemkin campaign. In Tennessee he was suddenly barely hanging onto hopes for second place behind Kerry.
In the rush of compressed campaigns and voting that has followed the New Hampshire primary, voters may not have had much of a chance to learn in depth about the candidates, but they have gotten crystal clear senses of who is competing hard in their states and who is not.
For those who prefer to see nomination fights as elimination contests, it is conceivable this week that just one viable, South-oriented candidate will remain, along with what is left of Howard Dean, for a genuinely climactic week in Wisconsin. Like Dean the previous week, Edwards and Clark appear to have been granted excused absences from the weekend's round of decisive Kerry victories.
They should consider themselves lucky, for Kerry's wins were more than impressive -- stretching symbolically as well as actually from the Atlantic (Maine) to the Pacific (Washington) with a genuine piece of America's heartland (Michigan) as the biggest available prize to date.
Even more than his margins, Kerry's strength was in the breadth of his appeal across age, income, and racial groups. He is doing precisely what Dean failed to do at the end of last year when his front-runnership was defined in the softer sands of opinion polls -- consolidating and expanding his support.
Kerry's continued vigor was dramatically on display Saturday night at the annual fundraiser of the Virginia Democratic Party in Richmond. He changed his standard speech, delivering an oration that presented the Democrats as mainstream progressives seeking change against an extreme version of conservatism trying to impose a radical revision of the social order. The concept proved prescient the next morning when Bush muffed another opportunity to set the national agenda with a flaccid performance on Sunday's "Meet the Press."
The presidency has numerous institutional weaknesses, but the chance to use its megaphone to set the agenda is one of its strengths. That is why Bush's abysmal month -- from the imprecise daydream about a trip to Mars, a partisan State of the Union, a credibility gap over unconventional weapons in pre-war Iraq, a nonstarter budget proposal, and now a missed opportunity to communicate on television -- have disheartened his supporters and emboldened Kerry's.
John Edwards has also been dynamic this week. In this small city between Roanoke and the Tennessee border town of Bristol, he displayed two interesting tweaks of his always well-received campaign speech about "two Americas" and unequal opportunity.
In one, he has added a new theme for this economically injured region -- a focus on the loss of middle-class job opportunities, especially to cheap-labor countries. He says to cheers that American firms must have incentives to "hire American," not just buy American products.
Edwards is also putting greater emphasis on his point that the status quo of two Americas should not obscure his vision of one America where the opportunity is equal, including the opportunity to strike it rich, as he has.
On Saturday night, I was at the back of the party dinner hall to watch Edwards activists cheering Kerry's speech while the front-runner's activists were doing the same for their North Carolina neighbor. The grassroots sentiment to have these two quite different Democrats run together this fall is strong.
It may be premature in standard political terms. If Clark or Edwards gets at least two respectable seconds or better tonight, Wisconsin is technically plausible and worth a try. However, the sentiment of grass-roots Democrats that the process has produced two good guys with complementary skills and bases is loud and clear. My guess is that neither Kerry nor Edwards can ignore it much longer.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.
