WASHINGTON -- ''Not so fast, John Kerry,'' said John Edwards in campaign debate 48 hours before the Wisconsin primary, a plea to voters to keep the Democratic presidential race alive as much as it was an admonition to the front-runner.
Message delivered.
Message received.
Edwards drew strong support from slow-to-decide voters in Wisconsin, as well as independents and Republicans. His stronger-than-expected second-place finish Tuesday night threw a brief scare into the Kerry campaign and allowed the North Carolina senator all the justification he needed to remain in the race.
''We go full throttle to the next group of states,'' he said. ''People know I'll fight for them, that I take this personally.''
Despite the optimistic rhetoric, the odds are heavily against him, given Kerry's delegate lead and the financial advantage the Massachusetts senator has accumulated from a run of early primary and caucus victories.
''A win is a win,'' he said -- his 15th in 17 tries -- even though Wisconsin was far closer than the blowout that preprimary polls had predicted. ''We underwent a lot of Republican attacks the last week,'' he said. ''Notwithsanding those attacks we showed we can fight back.''
Kerry's front-runner status will be especially helpful in the 10 states that vote on March 2, with 1,151 delegates at stake. California, New York and Ohio, all of which require large sums for television advertising, are among the states on the ballot in two weeks.
Edwards' aides were already at work deciding which states to compete in, and by inference, which to concede.
''We play everywhere, unlike John Edwards and Howard Dean and anyone else in the race,'' said Steve Elmendorf, Kerry's deputy campaign manager. ''Winning is better than losing. We've won more states than anyone else.''
Edwards' showing in Wisconsin meant he could claim one victory at long last -- title of principal alternative to Kerry.
Not long ago, Wesley Clark and Howard Dean vied for that title.
But Clark quit the race last week after finishing behind Kerry and Edwards in primaries in Virginia and Tennessee.
Dean's once-remarkable campaign bordered on hapless, after days of equivocation by the candidate over whether to stay in the race or drop out.
The one-time front-runner lost the support of one prominent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, more than a week ago.
With the AFL-CIO expected to endorse Kerry later this week, the loss of support for Dean from the Service Employees International Union seemed a threat as well.
Additionally, Steve Grossman, Dean's national chairman, defected to Kerry's camp this week. And several other top advisers signaled they intended to quit after Tuesday's primary.
The AFL-CIO aside, governors and senators climbed aboard Kerry's bandwagon as he extended his string of victories.
''John Edwards has clearly established that he's finished second in this whole process,'' said Steve Murphy, campaign manager Rep. Dick Gephardt, driven from the race early. ''I don't think there's any chance he can finish first. We need to unify the party,'' he said.
Edwards begged to differ.
''We feel very good about the momentum we've built up here,'' he said in an Associated Press interview.
Interviews with voters leaving their polling places showed Edwards defeated Kerry decisively among voters who made up their mind within in the final three days of the primary campaign.
Coincidence or not, it also marked the first time since the primary season began that Kerry -- widely viewed by Democrats as the candidate best able to defeat President Bush -- faced challenging news.
Included were a Bush campaign Internet ad that attacked Kerry and received publicity in newspapers and on television. There also was the matter of an Internet-driven rumor of an adulterous affair that Kerry and a young woman both denied emphatically.
Kerry won handily among those who made up their minds earlier, as would be expected for a front-runner who arrived in the state having won nearly all the contests that went before.
Exit interviews also showed Kerry won handily among Democrats, but Edwards outpolled him by a double-digit margin among independents. Republicans accounted for roughly one in 10 votes in the primary -- far larger than in earlier contests -- and Edwards held a margin of better than 2-to-1 over Kerry among that group.
Edwards defeated Kerry among voters who said they wanted a candidate who cared about people like them, and again among voters who preferred a contender with a positive message.
Kerry routed his rivals among voters who made their choice based on which of the Democrats could beat Bush this fall.
Electability has been Kerry's calling card, ever since his first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
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