One note about Kerry’s strength in this state. As you know, Kerry’s been running for a long time. And long before things started heating up in the second half of 2003 Kerry had this place wired. He had lots of the state’s Democratic activists lined up on his side. He had former Governor Jeanne Shaheen on his side. And an experienced campaign staff.
Now, after he started to drift in the polls in the face of Dean’s surging numbers, all that organizational muscle didn’t seem to count for much. But since voters themselves in the state began giving him a second look that organization has played a very important role helping him capitalize on post-Iowa momentum and it seems quite likely to help him harvest those votes very effectively on Tuesday.
In short, Kerry had a lot of latent strength in the state even when he seemed dead in the water. He had a very big sail ready to catch the wind out of Iowa.
And along the lines of establishments and organization, we’d all gotten accustomed to thinking that Dean destroyed the Democratic establishment in the Fall when he rocketed ahead of their candidates, developed a new way of fundraising, and bashed them silly for their feeble opposition to the president. But maybe that’s wrong. Perhaps when he really delivered that establishment a fatal blow was in the winter when he got all of them (Gore, Bradley, Carter sorta, Harkin, McGreevey, Kamarck — yes, we saw Elaine, we saw!) to endorse him and then, with them in tow, drove off a cliff.
