Though New Hampshire is next on the presidential campaign circuit, much of the debate at Iowa caucus sites centered on another part of the country: Dixie.
Desperate to beat President Bush, many undecided Democrats engaged their fellow partisans with discussions of the Electoral College. Often, they focused on Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina.
“Can Kerry carry the South?” Melanie Lahart asked one of the cluster of people attempting to persuade her during Monday night’s caucus at Newton High School east of Des Moines.
“I’ve lived in New Orleans. I’ve lived in Connecticut. And I know he’ll have a helluva time winning the South,” said Lahart, 55, an instructor at Des Moines Area Community College.
Lahart said she was convinced that Kerry would end up “fizzling” in the land of NASCAR and chicken-fried steak.
“It’s very important for the Democratic Party to have the South,” she said. “Look what happened in 2000. So I’m going to Edwards.”
Of course, it couldn’t have hurt that an Edwards organizer promised to make her a delegate to the county convention.
–Flynn McRoberts
SOUTHERN STRATEGY, PART II
That ragin’ Cajun, Democratic uber-consultant James Carville, is frothing with excitement at his party’s wide-open race.
“As we say in the South, this is gooder than grits,” Carville said before a John Kerry rally Tuesday in Pembroke, N.H.
Carville said Kerry is the most improved candidate. But he called John Edwards the best stump speaker he has ever seen.
–Dan Mihalopoulos
GOT A SLOGAN? BRING IT ON!
Every energetic campaign strives for trademark battle cries and theme songs, and the catch-phrases and songs of the 2004 campaign are only beginning to emerge.
Supporters who gathered shortly after dawn Tuesday to meet John Kerry’s charter flight to Manchester, N.H., from Des Moines tested several rallying cries while the senator from Massachusetts gave interviews to morning television shows.
“We want Kerry, Bush is scary!” went one chant. Supporters altered the famous World Cup soccer cheer to say, “Ole, ole, ole, ole, J.K., all the way.” And, like Marines in boot camp, the crowd parroted a man who screamed, “I don’t know what I’ve been told, President Bush is bought and sold.”
Shouts of “Bring it on!”–a stock line in Kerry’s stump speech–echoed through the airport hangar when Kerry, his wife, Teresa, and daughter Vanessa finally took the stage.
–Dan Mihalopoulos
