After a pre-primary campaign marked by poor poll showings and campaign shake-ups, U.S. Sen. John Kerry's victories in the Iowa caucuses and his 39 percent support in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night came as a shock to the political establishment. The conventional wisdom attributed Kerry's wins down to increasingly negative coverage of frontrunner former Gov. Howard Dean.
But the true reason for Kerry's resurgence may be his perceived ability to beat President Bush, according to Kerry campaign staffers and James Farrell, associate professor of communications at University of New Hampshire.
Dean, the Democratic presidential candidate front-runner for several months, had lost his momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire due to media scrutiny and a negative campaign battle with Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., that painted him as a hotheaded, unelectable extremist, according to Farrell.
In contrast, Farrell said Sen. Kerry, D-Mass., is known as a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a moderate. He added that Kerry may have seemed more palatable and more likely to win than the outspoken Dean.
According to George Twigg, the Kerry campaign's Wisconsin director, Democrats are not only supporting Kerry because of his stances on the issues, but because polls have showed him leading Bush in a possible head-to-head matchup this November.
\Democrats want to beat George Bush very badly, and they see John Kerry as the person who can do that,"" he said.
Farrell said he believes the issue of electability was the main cause of Kerry's surge and Dean's drop.
""If you look at all of the candidates that ran in the Democratic primary, there was not a lot of difference between them on most of the major issues,"" he said. ""There seems to be little doubt that the main appeal of John Kerry was that he was looked at as a candidate who could beat George Bush.""
Kerry's resurgence is more shocking when one considers that mere weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Kerry's campaign was widely considered unemotional, poorly managed or simply doomed, according to several December articles in Slate. Media observers were so sure that he would lose the primaries to Dean that political web site Slate created a ""Kerry Withdrawal Contest"" for who could write the best concession speech for Kerry.
But as Dean's electoral stock fell, Kerry emerged as a new alternative.
Don Eggert, co-chair of Students for Kerry, said that while Howard Dean's campaign had energized the electorate, voters realized that they needed a well-rounded candidate to be able to win the White House in November.
""What really happened is that voters went away from their initial anger at George Bush and realized that that's important, but it's not enough,"" he said. ""They took a second look at the candidates and asked 'Who can actually win?'""
But Kerry is not out of the woods yet. According to Farrell, Dean still has a sizable campaign chest, and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who placed second in Iowa, is a charismatic campaigner who has a natural advantage in the Southern primaries ahead.
Nevertheless, Kerry is considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. But according to Twigg, the Kerry campaign knows the race is far from over.
""We were down and out for so long that we're not taking anything for granted,"" he said.
