Kerrey Yet to Develop Success as Pictured : Campaign: The Vietnam War hero’s failure to garner prominence confounds his supporters. He’s still a long shot in Tuesday’s votes.

Take a snapshot of the Democratic presidential field and Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey will be the one in the second row, waving both arms in the air and bouncing up and down to peek over the heads in front of him.

It’s a confounding picture for Kerrey supporters, who thought surely that he would be more prominent by now. While Democratic officials are worried that controversy has damaged Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton or that Paul E. Tsongas is not made from presidential timber, there sits the Vietnam War hero without a stain on his uniform.

“He’s the one person whose record can’t be beat,” said Daniel Bonniwell, a senior at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., where Kerrey spoke to more than 400 students at a rally Friday. “I think Kerrey is the only Democrat who can get elected because the others have serious flaws.”

But in the four primaries and three caucuses to be held Tuesday, Kerrey is a long shot.

In Georgia, a poll Saturday in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper found Kerrey supported by only 5% compared to 40% who favor Clinton. And in Colorado, where Kerrey thinks he has the best shot, a Denver Post poll Saturday found Tsongas leading with 28% and Kerrey in fourth place with 7%, 10 points behind former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

Just last Tuesday, Kerrey was a convincing winner in South Dakota’s second-in-the-nation primary and he hoped the victory would give him a boost in elections the following week. But now it is not clear that Kerrey will get any reward for winning a state next door to his own.

Kerrey spoke candidly this week about the problems his campaign has had, placing much of the blame on himself for not being able to connect with his audiences.

“How well our campaign does depends on my ability to communicate,” Kerrey told reporters Thursday in Florida, where voters will go to the polls on Super Tuesday, March 10. “I started out awful, I moved to below average, then I was average and now I think I’m above average and we have momentum.”

The senator also said he was initially uncomfortable on the campaign trail. He was unfamiliar with New Hampshire, he said, and people there could not understand his speeches.

“I knew in my head and my heart what I wanted to say, but I just wasn’t getting it out,” Kerrey told The Times in an interview on his campaign plane Friday. “The central idea that I had is this idea of building for greatness; but I don’t talk about that any more because people heard it and they said, ‘What does it mean?’

“So I’ve had to work on describing what I want to do; where I want the country to go.”

Kerrey’s campaign managers still see a winning scenario, confident that Tsongas or Clinton will stumble and that Kerrey will prove to be an attractive candidate if he gets a chance in the spotlight.

His campaign insists that it must simply survive the next two weeks when 1,287 delegates will be allotted. After that, campaign manager Thad Devine said, the race could shrink to a “one-on-one” contest between the two men left standing.

According to Devine, surviving does not mean that Kerrey has to win primaries, only that he must score higher than the 15% cutoff for acquiring delegates. At the same time, however, the campaign already is low on money and fund raising can only be tougher without a win in two weeks of high-profile voting.

Trying to capitalize on his South Dakota win, Kerrey raised just over $400,000 last week after holding fund-raising events in Atlanta, Florida, New York City and Colorado. In contrast, Clinton raised about the same amount in one event Friday in California.