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Clark climbs aboard Kerry bandwagon
Senator says he's ready for Republican onslaught
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 12:44 p.m. ET Feb. 13, 2004
MADISON, Wis. - Sen. John Kerry’ accepted the endorsement of former rival Gen. Wesley Clark on Friday and said he is prepared for an onslaught of criticism from the Republican Party and is ready to fight back as he moves closer to the Democratic nomination for president.
Clark, a career Army officer before turning to politics, drew on his military experience in announcing his endorsement of Kerry at a campaign rally in Madison.
"Sir. Request permission to come aboard. The Army's here," he said to Kerry, who attained the rank of lieutenant in the Navy while serving in Vietnam.
The military references continued as Kerry told the crowd that Clark would stand beside him and “help walk the point in this great battle as we go forward to take back the presidency of the United States."
Clark, who dropped out of the race on Wednesday, vowed to help Kerry secure the nomination and prevent President Bush from winning a second term in November.
"President Bush hasn’t led America. He’s misled America, time and time again," Clark said. "We have to put a stop to it."
Kerry, the runaway front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, hopes to make Clark’s voters his own when he clashes with Sen. John Edwards and Howard Dean in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, where 72 pledged delegates are at stake.
His support increased from 41 percent in a survey taken last weekend to 53 percent after Clark’s withdrawal, according to a poll released Thursday night by the American Research Group. Edwards was at 16 percent and Dean at 11 percent with 16 percent undecided in the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.
Kerry holds commanding lead
Kerry already has 539 delegates, according to an Associated Press count, compared to 182 for Dean and 166 for Edwards. It takes 2,161 delegates to win the nomination for president.
Earlier Friday, Kerry told radio talk show host Don Imus, in an interview also broadcast on MSNBC TV, that he is prepared for a barrage of negative ads and commentary from the GOP.
“We’ve seen evidence. We know exactly where these guys are gonna go, and I’m ready for it,” he said. “I’ve been at this for a while, Don, and I’ve been through some tough races. I’ve been pretty well, you know, vetted and examined from one side to the other. And I think that they’re in for a surprise. I’m going to fight back. I am a fighter, and I’m ready to fight back.”
Kerry also said he would not discuss questions about President’s Bush’s service in the National Guard. “It’s not my record to comment on. I’m not going to pay any attention to it,” he told Imus.
Kerry: War opposition was a measure of character
Asked about a photograph showing him sitting near actress Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally in 1970, Kerry said he protested the war after he had served in Vietnam and considered doing so a measure of his character.
Fonda has been criticized for decades for her opposition to the Vietnam War, particularly for traveling to North Vietnam in 1972, at the height of the war, and posing in an anti-aircraft gun.
“I disagreed, like everyone else in America, with the choice she made at that point in time. I thought it was terrible,” Kerry said on the Imus program. “We just move on, Don. We’re 30 years beyond that. I think people are interested in the future.”
Kerry displayed a front-runner’s confidence on Thursday, taking a second straight day off from public campaigning Thursday while Edwards and Dean made their rounds in Wisconsin.
Edwards, who has won one primary thus far, made clear that he intends to remain in the race regardless of his showing in Wisconsin.
After spending time in Wisconsin Thursday, he flew to Los Angeles to raise money. He flew back to Wisconsin overnight to campaign Friday in Milwaukee before flying back to Los Angeles again for fund raising later in the day.
Edwards says voters ‘still have a choice’
Seeking to connect with displaced workers in Wisconsin through a sharply populist message, the North Carolina senator told Democratic voters that they “still have a choice” because the race is far from settled.
“First of all, the nomination process is going to go on for a while, well into March,” said Edwards, who is fighting the perception that Kerry has become the overwhelming front-runner for the nomination. Edwards has won only once during the first 14 primary tests.
Edwards conceded he is facing a front-loaded primary season designed to yield a nominee quickly. It also makes slowing a front-runner difficult.
“I think you fight against the calendar,” he said. “As long as I can get out and get this message out ... every place it’s gotten out, it’s worked.”
Edwards has refrained from the type of attacks that other candidates have used in the race, and in an interview with the Associated Press, said the decision has helped him.
“The American people are tired of the same old politics that they’ve seen for so long, the attack politics,” he said.
By contrast, Dean has become increasingly critical of Kerry in recent days as he looks for an upset in Wisconsin.
The former Vermont governor, winless to date in the primary season, campaigned with his wife, Judy, on Thursday the day, using health care to emphasize his campaign’s call for change in the way business is done in Washington.
Dean targets ‘special interests’
At a town hall meeting in Oshkosh, Dean said lobbyists, pharmaceutical companies and corporate health care all block efforts to hold down costs and expand coverage.
“Special interests in Washington stop real change every time,” he said. “The process is broken. In order to change America we have to change Washington.”
Dean is the former front-runner in the race, and a nursing school training dummy might seem a curious campaign prop. But he leaned over the dummy nonetheless, touching the arm as if feeling for a pulse.
“I don’t like that breathing pattern very much,” Dean said to his wife — like him, a physician.
Thus far, the preprimary polls in Wisconsin offer little encouragement to Dean or Edwards in their hopes of springing an upset.
“I think Senator Kerry is in very good position here,” said Gov. Jim Doyle.
Doyle said it is unlikely he will endorse a candidate before Tuesday’s primary, but added that Kerry “would be an outstanding nominee.”
Doyle, who passed out leaflets for Kerry’s failed congressional campaign decades ago, said there always is a potential for surprise and “Wisconsin does have a trend of independence.”
Kerry bound for Nevada
After campaigning in Wisconsin on Friday, Kerry was headed to Las Vegas to attend a late-night rally on the eve of Saturday’s state caucuses. He was the only candidate expected to make an appearance before the caucuses.
State Republican Party chief Ed Gillespie took notice of Kerry’s status as the front-runner and asserted that Democrats were preparing to run “the dirtiest campaign in modern presidential politics.”
“This is because they don’t want a debate on the issues, and they don’t want to run on Senator Kerry’s record,” Gillespie said, according to excerpts of his prepared remarks. “I guess I can’t blame them for that.”
Twenty-four pledged delegates are at stake in the Nevada caucuses. Voters in the District of Columbia also will attend caucuses on Saturday, with 16 delegates at stake.
Clark was the fifth contender to quit, after Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and Rep. Dick Gephardt.
Moseley Braun endorsed Dean, Gephardt supports Kerry and Graham and Lieberman have yet to declare their backing for any of the remaining contenders.
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