Dean Now Candidate in Most Need

On the night before the Iowa caucuses, James Carville had a prediction so dramatic as to seem reckless: The wave building behind Sens. John F. Kerry and John Edwards was so big that each would win more than 30% of the delegates at stake. Carville, the campaign manager for Bill Clinton in 1992, proved to be dead-on.

Now Carville has an equally stark forecast for Howard Dean in New Hampshire: Win or go home.

The Dean campaign insists it has the money, the institutional support and the grass-roots army to soldier on in the presidential race no matter what happens in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Dean, the frontrunner in fundraising and national polls for months, made that case in his frenzied concession speech Monday night in Des Moines.

But after his collapse in Iowa, Dean faces a situation his supporters could not have imagined a few weeks ago: Win in New Hampshire or accelerate a downward spiral that could unravel his campaign.

The challenge for Dean now may be to follow Edwards and Kerry in retooling his message and persona on the fly.

In Iowa, Edwards executed the clearest midcourse correction by repositioning himself as the optimistic candidate who stayed above the fray, while Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) in particular savaged each other.

Kerry, starting around the time of the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in November in Des Moines, refashioned himself as a scourge of “special interests.” And while his language often seemed stilted and overheated as he railed against “Benedict Arnold corporations,” his staff thinks the populist focus softened and humanized his image, which had seemed too patrician and too redolent of Washington.

Kerry also made more effective use of his biography, especially his service in Vietnam, and in the final days adopted the positive tone that worked so well for Edwards.

Now the question is whether the early leader can follow the lead of his rivals and unveil a Dean 2.0. In Iowa, Dean’s signature issue fizzled: He lost to Kerry even among the 50% of voters who said they “strongly opposed” the war in Iraq, according to the poll of caucus voters by the National Election Pool.

In the last few days, some senior Dean advisors said they agreed the Iowa trends showed a need to reintroduce their candidate with a broader message -- a view seconded by prominent neutral Democrats.

“If Howard Dean runs the same race he’s been running this week in New Hampshire, he is not going to win,” said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network and the leading party centrist who has been most sympathetic to Dean. “They have got to make it clear what he’s for, and not just what he’s against. The clear message of Iowa is that primary voters are hungering for a positive message.”

Dean showed no sign of changing course in his first rally in New Hampshire after the caucus. Speaking to hundreds of supporters after 3 a.m. in Portsmouth, he again leaned on the war by describing himself as the one candidate willing to “stand up to George Bush when nobody else would stand up to him in the Democratic Party.”

But by his second appearance, he had quieted his delivery and focused on his record as a tough administrator in Vermont.

Anxiety over Dean’s direction surfaced Tuesday even on his campaign’s official Web log, or blog, which until now has been mostly an extended Valentine’s card to the candidate and his advisors. “Dean must be aware of his appearance when he gets overly enthusiastic or angry; appearances matter,” wrote one supporter.

The pressure on Dean to find a more resonant chord could not be greater.

Traditionally, the week between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary can be the most intense -- and for the candidates, the longest -- week in American politics. The candidates face a quicksilver electorate capable of decisive, last-minute shifts amid a concentrated glare of media attention unmatched in any contest that follows.

Historically, New Hampshire has shaped the final results of the race as much as any other single state.

The Granite State is capable of reversing Iowa’s verdict; indeed, at times the state has appeared to enjoy doing so. In the seven contested elections since the establishment of the caucuses in 1972 as a tool for selecting convention delegates, the Democratic winner in Iowa has carried New Hampshire four times; the Republican winner in Iowa in the three contested caucuses since 1980 has lost in New Hampshire each time.

This year, the stakes in New Hampshire are highest for Dean, Kerry, retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Sen. Joe Lieberman.

With Edwards’ unexpectedly strong performance in Iowa, most analysts agree the North Carolina senator will have enough momentum to sustain his campaign through the Feb. 3 primary in South Carolina, no matter what happens Tuesday.

For the other four, New Hampshire is likely to be a fork in the road. If Lieberman, whose campaign there has been mired in single digits, cannot break into the top tier over the next week, he may be forced to the sidelines.

Lieberman received a potential boost when the Manchester Union Leader endorsed him this week, but he must now confront in Edwards and Kerry rejuvenated competitors for the centrist voters the Connecticut senator has targeted.

Clark has raised enough money and built enough support in states that vote in February -- especially those across the South and Southwest -- to give his campaign hope that he can survive even if he slips in New Hampshire.

Yet other campaigns aren’t sure Clark can retain a realistic chance without showing well in New Hampshire. In the last month, while he and Lieberman have had the state mostly to themselves, Clark rose steadily in the polls, establishing himself in second place with as much as 24% of the vote in a survey conducted Jan. 12-14 by the independent American Research Group, just behind Dean.

But Kerry began rising sharply in New Hampshire late last week; the ARG poll released Tuesday morning showed Kerry at 20% and Clark with 19%, with Dean still leading at 28%.

These trends will present Clark with his first real political trial by fire. Clark’s rivals view his support as soft and easy to dislodge. If over the next seven grueling days, he cannot sustain his support, his credibility as a candidate could be seriously wounded.

Despite his big win in Iowa, Kerry’s challenge in New Hampshire is formidable too. The last 30 years of presidential nomination fights are littered with candidates who came roaring out of Iowa with what George H.W. Bush famously called “big mo” -- momentum -- and then failed to win the nomination after stumbling in New Hampshire.

Like the elder Bush in 1980, Kerry is betting on momentum. Kerry has virtually shelved his efforts in the states that follow Iowa and New Hampshire. He was the only major candidate who didn’t buy any television advertising last week in any of the states voting in February.

His campaign’s theory is that momentum from strong showings in the first contests will catapult Kerry into contention in the later states. “We have a completely different theory of the nominating process,” says Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic consultant advising Kerry. “We don’t think that voters absorb information weeks and months before a primary and then vote on it.”

Yet such a slingshot approach requires constant reloading with victories that generate more momentum. If Kerry doesn’t win New Hampshire, he may fail to attract enough attention to raise his stock in later states where polls have shown him trailing Dean and Clark.

David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Edwards, predicts that Dean and Kerry cannot both survive New Hampshire: The one who finishes behind the other, Axelrod argues, may find it impossible to continue his campaign for long.

That assessment may be unduly harsh, especially in Dean’s case. The early frontrunner still enjoys significant assets. He raised more money in 2003 than his rivals -- almost always a key to locking up the nomination in either party.

With his financial advantage, Dean has invested more heavily than his rivals in organization and advertising in states that vote in February, including Arizona, Washington, Maine, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

All of that could help Dean survive a disappointing finish in New Hampshire. Just before the Iowa vote, Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager, predicted that candidates this year could stumble several times and still come back because the field was so evenly matched.

Still, for Dean, the trends in Iowa are ominous. He built a strong base of support among the hard-core activists who committed to candidates last year. But the large group that tuned in to the race more recently found him less appealing. Dean won one-seventh of those who picked a candidate in the last week.

If he can’t quickly find a face that less-partisan voters find more attractive, this week may prove as bitter for him as the last.

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Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this report.