E-Mail This Article to a Friend Stuck in neutral (continued)

IF KERRY’S current woes can be largely explained by Republican disingenuousness combined with Kerry’s own proclivity for hedging, overexplaining, and trying to be all things to all people, there is something else at work, too: Kerry is not well known outside of New England. And because of the peculiar manner in which the primaries played out in this campaign, he is less well known than he might have been.

William Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University and co-author of The Front-Loading Problem in Presidential Nominations (Brookings Institution, 2003), notes that media scrutiny of Kerry pretty much ended last summer, when he lost his early front-runner status to Howard Dean. Then, in January of this year, when Kerry crawled out of the political crypt to defeat Dean in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, it created so much momentum that the nomination was Kerry’s in a matter of weeks, before the media and Kerry’s Democratic opponents could gear up. Then, too, Kerry’s last remaining challenger, John Edwards, made a point of staying positive, which further protected Kerry from scrutiny.

"A little kind of buyer’s remorse often sets in, but I think it’s probably going to be greater than usual this time around," says Mayer, explaining that many Democrats sense that Kerry was not fully vetted. Indeed, Mayer believes Kerry may be most vulnerable on what is supposed to be his greatest asset: his perceived electability. "Anyone who had watched him in Massachusetts had to be a little skeptical that that was the case," Mayer says. "He’s never had what anyone would call a great deal of charisma. He doesn’t connect all that well in some ways with ordinary voters. You can go on down the list."

Yet the alternatives to Kerry that are sometimes mentioned are not particularly plausible. For all his sunny optimism, Edwards attracted few voters in the primaries. He is entirely bereft of foreign-policy experience, and one imagines that Karl Rove would not mind running against a wealthy plaintiffs’ lawyer. New York senator Hillary Clinton has her strengths, but she may — through little fault of her own — be the most divisive figure in American politics. Former vice-president Al Gore inspires pathological hatred among certain elements of the media, and has moved considerably to the left since the 2000 campaign, which could make it difficult for him to win the undecided moderates who will determine the election.

In other words, the Democrats are not merely stuck with Kerry; he may in fact be the strongest candidate they could have chosen to do battle with George W. Bush. And it’s not like the "buyer’s remorse" to which Mayer and others refer hasn’t happened before. In the spring of 1976, there was an "ABC" movement — "Anybody But Carter" — after an unknown former Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter amassed a huge early lead in the primaries. The late senator Frank Church and then–California governor Jerry Brown jumped into the last few primaries, but Carter won the nomination — and turned out to be a strong candidate, if not a particularly strong president. In the spring and summer of 1992, Democrats were in despair, as some polls showed Bill Clinton trailing not just George H.W. Bush but also Texas businessman Ross Perot. The party turned its lonely eyes to then–New York governor Mario Cuomo, but it was too late. Clinton, of course, became the first Democratic president to win a second term since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

Des Moines Register political columnist David Yepsen, who chronicled Kerry’s stunning comeback in his state’s Democratic caucuses, says Iowa Democrats have no misgivings about Kerry because they got to know him before finally giving him their support. "People around here knew what they were buying into," he says. "An Iowa Democrat looking at this thing is not going to get too excited about it, because they’ve seen John Kerry flop around and not seem too focused, only to come on strong at the end." And though Yepsen says Kerry remains too moderate for many left-leaning Iowa Democrats (Kerry won, after all, with just 38 percent of the caucus vote), Democrats as a whole remain angry enough at Bush that he’s predicting the Hawkeye State will support Kerry this November.

The notion that Kerry will somehow be rejected before he can accept the nomination at the FleetCenter this July is not only a figment of Rush Limbaugh’s imagination; it also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of modern presidential politics. The vast majority of delegates have pledged that they will support Kerry. That’s how they got their ticket to Boston. Kerry will win by an overwhelming margin. Convention delegates have two jobs: to ratify the winner of the primaries and to drink heavily. They haven’t actually chosen presidential nominees since the 1960s, and that’s not going to change in 2004.

The political landscape is littered with the corpses of pundits and opponents who’ve underestimated Kerry over the past 20 years. The question is not whether the Democrats can live with Kerry. The question is whether Kerry can jolt himself out of his current lethargy and run the kind of campaign that gives him a fighting chance to defeat George W. Bush this fall. The record will show that he’s done it before. The problem this time is that if he waits until his back is against the wall, it may be too late.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com. Read his daily Media Log at BostonPhoenix.com.