"Most games are lost, not won."
- Casey Stengal (1890-1975), baseball Hall-of-Famer
With the New Hampshire primary over and John Kerry still leading the other Democratic candidates, John Ellis, writing at Tech Central Station, feels that Kerry needs to seize the moment and put an end to his challengers' candidacies in South Carolina next week.
"He has his rivals on the killing floor. Governor Dean, after two defeats in two states ready-made for his candidacy, is finished. General Wesley Clark, whose candidacy was conceived to provide Democrats with an anti-Dean, has been rendered meaningless. Senator Joe Lieberman is done; you can't raise money when you run out of the money. Senator Edwards remains, but diminished by New Hampshire...So the question is: will Senator Kerry pull the trigger?"
"Pulling the trigger," to Ellis, means Kerry has to throw everything he has into winning the South Carolina primary, but that doesn't appear to be what Senator Kerry is planning. Jake Tapper, of ABC News reports that Kerry believes the notion that Democrats have to appeal to Southern voters in order to win the presidency is a mistake.
Perhaps Kerry's remarks were an unintentional slight on his part, but he has many Democratic leaders concerned. If, in fact, he meant what he said, then this race will not be decided anytime soon. Edwards, and possibly Clark, will win the majority of Southern delegates and turn this into a close contest. The question is not, "Will Kerry pull the trigger?" but "Where will the gun be pointing when he does?"
5 comments:
I'm not sure how well Kerry would do in the South, but it seems to me to be a big mistake to just write the region off. It's a conservative region, but there's discontent with Bush here. That's what Dean was trying to tap into with his unfortunate Confederate flag remark.
Kerry's got the momentum, but I think that he going to be fighting it out with Dean and Edwards until at least Super Tuesday, March 2.
Congratulations on making the Editor's Pick List again! As I have said before, you have a great journal which I read daily!
If we're really lucky, the gun will be pointed to his big toe! And if he's standing on a concrete foundation (no pun intended) maybe it will ricochet and get Edwards at the same time.
To begin your most recent excellent entry on John Kerry, you quote Casey Stengal: "Most games are lost, not won." I think, however, that Kerry needs also to know, per Yogi Berra, that "90% of the game is half mental." That means that 50% of the game (or 45%, depending on what good old Yogi meant) is going to depend on what comes out of Kerry’s heart, rather than his brain. So far, I can’t tell what's really coming out of his heart.
I never was any good at statistics.
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