John And George's Big Weekend

This campaign news analysis was written by Douglas Kiker of the CBS News Political Unit

While pitfalls certainly continue to exist for Kerry between now and winning the Democratic presidential nomination, by any rational analysis -- and by rational I mean the analysis of someone not working for John Edwards, Wesley Clark or Howard Dean -- it's now a one-man race for the nomination. Barring a huge bombshell revelation or slip-up by Kerry, always a possibility, the nomination is his.

On Saturday in Richmond, Va., Kerry -- fresh off huge wins in the Michigan and Washington state caucuses that further entrenched the junior Massachusetts senator as the front-runner – unveiled a new line of attack against the Bush administration that could well develop into the Democrats' overarching theme for Campaign '04.

"They're extreme, we're mainstream. And we're going to stand up and fight back," Kerry said on Saturday night in Richmond.

While the "extreme" line is notable both for its attempt to co-opt a GOP theme -- Republicans already have begun trying to paint Kerry as an extremist, a liberal who's been soft-on-defense and best friend to Ted Kennedy, just for starters -- the second sentence could be the more important one as the campaign develops.

Rightly or wrongly, Democrats have a reputation as the meeker, milder of the two parties when it comes to nasty, down-and-dirty hardball politics. But in the past two weeks, the Kerry campaign has shown that it intends to swing back hard when challenged by Republicans.

Last week, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Kerry was part of "the extreme elements of his party" -- sound familiar? – and then he and other Republicans began a concerted effort to morph Kerry into the dreaded Michael Dukakis. But one Kerry staffer told The New York Times, "This is not the Dukakis campaign. We're not going to take it. And if they're going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the '88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything." Dukakis never put his dukes up and Kerry's team doesn't intend to repeat that history.

On the other stage of the proto-general election, the man who Kerry wants to unseat spent the weekend mopping up after one of the worst weeks of his presidency.

A few hours before Kerry spoke at the Virginia Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, President Bush taped an interview for NBC's Meet The Press in which he spent an hour on his heels trying to convince the American people why he should be given a second term in light of revelations of intelligence failures that led to the war against Iraq and continuing concern among voters over the stability and forward momentum of the nation's economy and the ballooning federal budget deficit.

The Washington Post reported last week that the appearance on "Meet" was the president's idea. He felt he needed to defend himself against the relentless barrage from the Democratic presidential candidates and set the record straight on how and why the U.S. so misjudged intelligence on Saddam Hussein's now-in-doubt weapons of mass destruction program.

Polls may have had something to do with it, too.

Bush's approval rating dipped to 47 percent in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken in early February; that compares with 56 percent just a month ago. Another survey, for Time magazine and CNN, showed Bush barely ahead of Kerry in a general election match-up, 50 percent to 48 percent. That is a remarkably close race for an incumbent president and a candidate who's yet to even get his party's nomination.

Meanwhile, the non-Kerry candidates continue, for the next few days or week perhaps, to hang on, somehow.

Big wheels fell off Howard Dean cart's on Saturday when Gerald McEntee -- president of the political powerhouse American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union – pulled the plug on his group's endorsement of Dean. The AFSCME endorsement, which came much to the dismay of Kerry and Dick Gephardt last year, had been one of the most salient examples of Dean's then-frontrunner status. AFSCME's nod, along with that of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which came at the same time, momentarily legitimatised Dean in the eyes of many Democrats, not to mention political pundits across Washington.

But, as they say, that was then and this is now. McEntee, no doubt, has spent the better part of the last two trying to figure out which part of Kerry's rear end he should kiss first in order to get back into his good graces. (He can get in line after political dead men Al Gore and Bill Bradley, who aren't likely to be getting any Cabinet appointments in a Kerry White House after backing Dean when Kerry most needed help.)

Edwards – with far less money than Kerry and trailing him in the key Southern states of Virginia and Tennessee that vote on Tuesday – is still a contender, of sorts, but with each passing day Kerry's lead appears more and more insurmountable.

Edwards, appearing on ABC, was asked whether he'd accept the number two slot should Kerry continue steamrolling his way toward the nomination. ABC showed a graphic of the Time-CNN poll result showing 71 percent Democrats surveyed think it would be a good idea for him to choose Edwards as his running mate.

Vice President talk in February? It sounds like the general election has been joined.

By Douglas Kiker