04 March 2004	Thursday	12 Muharram 1425

WASHINGTON: Dawn broke on Wednesday on what will be a record eight-month general election for the presidency of the United States. US Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts vanquished his last serious rival for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination on Tuesday , winning the 10-state "Super Tuesday" contests so convincingly that Senator John Edwards of North Carolina cancelled campaign rallies planned for Wednesday in Dallas, Texas.

Edwards kept smiling and talking like a winner in a speech Tuesday night, but his actions spoke louder when he flew home to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was planning to concede to Kerry.

Even before Tuesday's outcome was known, political advisors to US President George W. Bush were making their own plans - for an advertising blitz starting later this week to counter a two-month barrage against the incumbent.

Since the start of 2004, the presidential nomination process within the centre-left Democratic Party has dominated national attention. More than in most presidential primary seasons, the major opposition contenders have attacked each other less than the sitting president.

Partly as a result, Bush has seen his approval ratings slip in opinion polls since December. His approval ratings are at a vulnerable-looking 50 per cent, while polls put him several percentage points behind Kerry in a previously theoretical - and very premature - head-to-head race.

Bush has already raised at least 150 million dollars just for his unopposed renomination by the centre-right Republican Party. After the August 30-September 2 Republican convention in New York City, his campaign is likely to raise at least another 100 million.

In 1996, incumbent Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was unopposed for renomination and able to spend most of his money promoting the achievement of his administration. Meanwhile, Republican nominee Bob Dole had survived a bruising primary battle that exhausted most of his money, leaving him little to spend until the general election season.

This time, Kerry declined voluntary public financing during the primary season, allowing him as the major-party challenger to keep raising and spending money through the spring and summer. However, most of the roughly 40 million dollars he has raised so far is already spent, putting him on a desperate quest for cash to compete.

Clinton and his wife, US Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, have been prolific fund-raisers for Democrats, and the intensity of their support could be decisive for Kerry.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose meteoric rise and fall in the Democratic presidential campaign represented a political rendition of Wall Street's Internet bubble, out-raised all his rivals including Kerry by harnessing the power of online organization. As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry must now find a way to repeat Dean's fund-raising success.

Kerry's speech to a de facto victory rally on Tuesday night in Washington's Old Post Office, a shopping mall just five blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House he hopes to capture, touched on the already familiar themes he is likely to hammer until November.

Foremost was the promotion of jobs and economic justice through a hike in the minimum wage, a repeal of "tax cuts for the wealthy" and an attack on the loss of US manufacturing to overseas competitors, plus universal health care and energy independence.

Many Democrats believed Kerry's credentials as a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran give him "electability" against a wartime president, and he promised to hold Bush accountable for the war in Iraq and other foreign policy decisions.

"We will rejoin the community of nations, and we will renew our alliances, and we will build new alliances, because they are essential to the final victory and success of a war on terror," Kerry said. "The Bush administration has run the most inept, reckless, arrogant and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of our country, and we will reverse that course."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has already researched Kerry's 6,000 votes during his 20-year career in the Senate. He is sure to be cast as an indecisive legislator with a voting record to the left of US Senator Edward Kennedy.

Even with the outcome now a foregone conclusion, the Democratic contests continue with presidential primary elections next Tuesday in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and - most importantly - Florida. The state famously went to Bush in 2000 by about 500 votes, with its electoral college tally enough to decide the result of the election.

Democrats know that capturing Florida would be a nearly insurmountable blow to Bush's re-election. "The Kerry people are smart enough and serious enough to stage a major event, and what we've seen in Ohio and in other places is that where the Kerry people go, the Bush people follow soon."

Political analyst Carlos Watson predicted in an interview with the Cable News Network (CNN) that the Kerry campaign would try to capture attention next week in Florida. Meanwhile, the Bush campaign is likely to follow the Democrats to Florida, as it has after earlier primaries in potential swing states, including New Hampshire, Missouri and just this week Ohio. -DPA