Edwards stresses style, Kerry goes all out

[Feanorcurufinwe]

BY ADAM NAGOURNEY
New York Times News Service
John Edwards and John Kerry are pursuing sharply different strategies as they gird for the 10-state rush of contests that takes place March 2. Edwards is focusing on six states in search of an upset to trip up Kerry's march to the Democratic presidential nomination. Kerry is pressing in all 10 states, seeking to build a prohibitive lead in delegates, aides said.

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On Tuesday in Ohio, an aide said, Kerry will begin a series of speeches on job loss as part of a "national jobs tour," as he seeks to push back on a subject Edwards has raised with success. Not incidentally, Kerry will be doing this in a battleground state where, should he win the nomination, he expects a spirited battle this fall with Bush on many of the same issues.

More immediately, Kerry's campaign is spending time and money in all 10 states where there are votes March 2 in an effort to broaden his lead in delegates and mathematically eliminate Edwards. One aide described accumulating delegates as the single most important task the campaign now faces. Under Democratic Party rules, delegates are allocated based on the percentage of votes a candidate wins, meaning Kerry will earn delegates even if he loses states.

Kerry now has 497 of the 2,162 delegates needed to win the nomination; Edwards has 188, putting pressure on him to win increasingly large victories in order to catch up with Kerry. "The biggest difference between us is we are running a full-bore campaign," said Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's campaign manager. "We have organizers on the ground in all 10 states. We are doing it everywhere, and we are not cherry-picking."

http://www.charleston.net/stories/022204/wor_22demwars.shtml

[knight_of_the_star]

1. This will get messy

But from the sound of it, Edwards will have a hard time catching up on this, and yet the media is talking about him making a comeback. The numbers tell it differently.