Will bounce help Kerry seal the deal?

PHOENIX

IT TURNS out that there are four ways of dealing with the bounce John Kerry has enjoyed from his first two victories in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination: Ride it, attack it, ignore it, or offer an alternative. Each presents its own opportunities and risks, but as 10 states prepare to vote this week (seven today), every political calculation and all the elements of voter decision-making start with the Kerry surge and the fact that it has transformed the campaign everywhere in the country.

So high was the bounce that the major question to be answered this week is whether any other presidential campaign will remain standing credibly after it ends.

In states that Kerry had to virtually abandon in order to gamble everything that a victory in Iowa would propel him forward, the transformation has been astonishing.

From single-digits in polling in New Mexico, he has gone above 30 points in two weeks; here, he and Howard Dean have basically changed places. It is not entirely pure momentum; the same voters I met in Iowa and New Hampshire are to be found nationally -- people who think Kerry is the strongest challenger to President Bush.

Riding this bounce, Kerry campaigns on the theory that the phenomenon is the same here as it is in any of the other six states. He has run here no differently than he has elsewhere -- a long-ago war hero who will fight for average citizens. He has either appeared personally or advertised on television as if the issue in the five primaries and two caucuses were the surge itself.

One clue is that Kerry's message is almost entirely introductory and biographical, as if people had forgotten that he had campaigned all over the country for months last year.

In person, Kerry essentially delivers his Iowa-New Hampshire remarks about overcoming special interests to actually accomplish missions President Bush has failed to even begin.

But on television -- news as well as commercials -- the coverage simply celebrates his presence somewhere while the ads trumpet his persona.

After Missouri, Arizona is the second largest prize on the table today, and along with neighboring New Mexico it will present the first opportunity to see results from a state with a large Hispanic population. In fact, however, the verdict from Arizona will at most measure Hispanic opinion about Kerry's bounce, not about immigration, border, and human services issues.

Wesley Clark is campaigning -- primarily here and in Oklahoma while making a stab at New Mexico -- as if the Kerry phenomenon had not happened. Indeed, moving through the Southwest over the weekend he presented himself as a career military version of Kerry -- a distinguished retired general called back to service to right the country's course.

The problem is, he is doing this in a different political context, after having skipped Iowa and faded in New Hampshire.

In the absence of a strong domestic policy message, he has continued to fade from his pre-Iowa peak when Dean seemed strong.

Dean is the opposite. Making only token appearances in the Feb. 3 states and with no paid TV, he has decided to launch a personal attack on Kerry's character. He says that Kerry is a special interest clone because he has raised money from registered lobbyists, a handmaiden of the special interests. He also says that there appears to be no difference between Kerry and Bush where influence-peddling is concerned.

This stuff comes complete with a warmup act by a former Marine general, Joe Hoar, who calls Kerry a lightweight and dilettante.

This is the rhetorical equivalent of Dean's famous Iowa scream. It does not deserve a respectful hearing, and so far it isn't getting one.

The intriguing ploy at the end has been John Edwards's decision to reemphasize his opposition to the trade treaties and the export of US jobs with speech material and a TV ad that went up in the final days in South Carolina (which he has to win) and in Oklahoma (which he probably needs to win to stay viable). Edwards's freshened message fills the void left by Dick Gephardt's departure after Iowa.

It is a strong message on a subject that hits people viscerally, but Edwards may have undercut its effectiveness at the last minute by suddenly going negative in South Carolina yesterday on the silly matter of Kerry accepting contributions from lobbyists. All these moves, however, merely underline the basic truth that the keys to the Democratic kingdom are almost in John Kerry's hands. Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.