Primary Struggle Strengthening Contenders

In an unexpected turn, the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination has boosted the prospects of the eventual winner, who seems poised to emerge stronger against President Bush than strategists in either party anticipated.

That twist is just the latest in a campaign already sprinkled with surprises.

As recently as early January, the prevailing political wisdom held that the primary season would leave the Democratic nominee bruised, bloodied and standing at the head of a deeply divided party.

That may still prove true, as the competition sharpens between Sens. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina. The two are heading for a cluster of contests March 2 stretching from California to New York. A split decision that day could prolong the race and increase the chances that it will turn nasty.

For now, however, opinion polls show both candidates have risen in the public’s esteem over the last several weeks. The surveys also indicate that Democrats, regardless of ideology, are strongly united in a single purpose: ousting Bush.

Moreover, some of the polls show Kerry and Edwards leading Bush after more than two years in which the president placed comfortably ahead of all comers.

Analysts caution it is far too early to predict an election more than eight months away.

“The people who could best forecast this election at this point are the economists, if they could tell you what the economy’s going to do; and the foreign policy specialists, if they could tell you what’s going to happen in Iraq,” said John Zaller, a political scientist at UCLA.

Matthew Dowd, a top Bush political strategist, notes that the last Democrat to come through the nominating process in such good shape, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, was buried in the 1988 election by Bush’s father.

“Once this thing gets settled out, the examination of John Kerry will start,” said Dowd, signaling the White House’s calculation of Bush’s likely opponent.

Still, Democrats find their party in far better shape than most expected even a short time ago, when nine candidates were vying in an increasingly fractious contest.

“On the Democratic side, we have a tradition in our primaries of getting a bit overzealous in a way that is not ultimately the best for the party overall,” said Alice Travis Germond, secretary of the Democratic National Committee and a veteran of presidential nominating fights going back to the famously divisive 1968 campaign.

This time, she said, Democratic passions are being channeled in a single direction. “We know the enemy,” Germond said of Bush.

Indeed, the three Democrats who engaged in the roughest intramural campaigning -- former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut -- have been eliminated from contention.

Lieberman was never much of a factor. But Dean and Gephardt were the early front-runners in Iowa, the state that started the nominating process, and their slashing back and forth is seen as a key reason they finished behind Kerry and Edwards, who stuck to more positive approaches.

“Iowa sent a message that the voters don’t want a mud fight,” Germond said. “They spoke clearly, and the candidates have listened.”

Edwards has stepped up his criticisms of the front-running Kerry lately, focusing on their differences over trade. But their quibbling pales compared with some of the epic fights that have riven the Democratic Party in the past -- over the Vietnam War, for instance, or the ideological gulf between President Carter and his liberal challenger, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, in 1980.

“What has hurt Democrats so much is the inward-directedness of their fighting,” said David Rohde, a Michigan State University expert on the presidential nominating process. “While there are differences among the [current] Democratic candidates, there are far more similarities.”

Apart from their deep enmity for Bush, Democrats also are pulling together out of adversity: The GOP has now controlled the White House and Congress for the longest sustained period in more than 50 years.

“There’s nothing like being in the wilderness to make you want to hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” said Jenny Backus, a Democratic campaign strategist.

But anger and exile only explain so much. The primary season has coincided with one of the roughest political patches of Bush’s presidency.

He delivered a State of the Union address that received tepid reviews. He has faced increasingly intense questions about the justification for the war in Iraq, as well as about his Vietnam-era service in the Air National Guard. And he was thrown on the defensive when a top economic advisor lauded the virtues of corporations sending jobs abroad.

“I don’t think Kerry can beat Bush. But I think Bush can beat Bush, and they’re doing a very good job of it at the moment,” said one Republican strategist close to the White House.

The recent events have taken an obvious toll. A survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a nonpartisan organization, found Bush’s job approval falling to 48%, the lowest of his presidency.

Meanwhile, Democrats were increasingly optimistic about their chances of winning the White House -- 61% predicted victory in November, compared with 38% last month. (In the latest survey, 25% forecast a Bush win; 14% said they didn’t know.)

Still, Bush and his campaign team have yet to fully engage in his reelection fight. The structural advantages the president enjoys -- including the powers of incumbency and more than $100 million to spend on advertising between now and the major parties’ summer conventions -- have not gone away.

“A lot of the reasons people have thought this would be a bad year for Democrats had less to do with what would take place in the primaries than what would follow after,” said William Mayer, a political science professor at Northeastern University in Boston who has written extensively about presidential politics.

Dowd, who oversees polling for the Bush campaign, said there was “a softness” to Kerry’s support.

“It’s true that he’s coming through the primary process to a large degree more unscathed than a lot of nominees of either party over the last 20 years,” Dowd said. “But that doesn’t necessary signal what lies ahead in the general election.”

The same might be said about Edwards, whose strong second-place showing in Wisconsin’s primary last week left him as Kerry’s major rival.

The Pew poll offered some perspective: While the number of Americans following the presidential campaign very closely has nearly doubled in the past month -- to 29% -- the other 7 in 10 are not paying a good deal of attention.

That suggests even more surprises between now and November.