For sure, by dominating two Southern contests Tuesday night in Virginia and Tennessee, where he won by respective margins of 25 and 14 points, Kerry essentially obliterated the last remaining argument against his ability to appeal to Democrats, moving the campaign into a phase in which he is going to get what he's been spoiling for: a general election fight with President George W. Bush.

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This impressive veterans' brigade, like those appearing on Kerry's flank on the trail, personifies how the front-runner hopes to avoid the same doom as every Democratic presidential contender in Virginia since 1964, should he become the party's nominee. By playing up his own history as a decorated veteran, Kerry is building a case that he is the true military man in this race. Kerry hopes his war hero status will inoculate him against a Republican talking point, one that could play well in the conservative South -- that Kerry's just a liberal senator from Massachusetts who can't be trusted to protect a vulnerable nation from harm.

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Neither candidate has given up on the race yet, and both have stated adamantly, vehemently and unequivocally that theyre not interested in the second spot. But unless either of them turns the race around dramatically by beating John Kerry outside the South, the VP question is destinys calling card.

Kerry is ascendant now, having won in seven of nine states so far and likely heading toward a big win this weekend in Michigan and perhaps in Washington as well. But the conventional wisdom on Kerry is that he'll be vulnerable to a "Massachusetts liberal" line of attack in the general election, when Bush's supporters will do their best to make him personally answerable for gay marriage, Willie Horton's furlough and Chappaquiddick. Having Edwards or Clark on the ticket, the thinking goes, could complicate such efforts to caricature the nominee.

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Following defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire, and less than a week away from a make-or-break series of Democratic primary election contests, Trippi on Wednesday quit the Dean campaign after being offered a lesser position. At the same time, Dean announced that his high-flying campaign is broke, and he announced to workers that their paychecks will be suspended for two weeks because of a multimillion-dollar debt.

Roy Neel, former chief of staff to Al Gore, was appointed CEO of the campaign, supplanting Trippi, who served as a high-profile campaign manager, ad man and inspirational icon to many of Dean's Internet supporters.

It was devastating news for a candidate who, just four weeks ago, had been seen as the strong front-runner to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The campaign was basking in the glow of upbeat news coverage, fundraising prowess and endorsements from elected officials, labor leaders and celebrities. But after two decisive losses in the space of eight days, chaos that apparently had been percolating through the campaign organization broke into open view.

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Oblivious to McAuliffe, Kerry continued reaching into cars, shaking hands and commanding the drivers to "go vote." Cars and trucks drove by and honked, while a van with a P.A. system rolled by urging everyone within earshot to "change America" by voting for John Kerry.

"I really do have a great feeling," Kerry said to an unruly gaggle of reporters standing in the snow at roadside. "You've got to fight for every vote, and we've worked long and hard at this. I feel really good about this."

He had good reason. After a week of energetic if cautious campaigning, John Kerry emerged as the big winner in New Hampshire, and his support seems to be based largely on a simple argument: that he has the best chance to win in November. With 94 percent of precincts reporting, Kerry had 39 percent of the vote, with Dean at 26, Wesley Clark at 13, John Edwards at 12, Joe Lieberman with 9 and Dennis Kucinich with 1. And in most exit polls, Kerry's supporters tended to be those who placed the highest premium on the belief that their candidate could beat President Bush.

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About an hour later, Wesley Clark, speaking not far away at another gym with an almost identical setup -- bleachers, pulled-up basketball backboards, etc. -- seemed equally regretful. "I'm sorry there were 300 people or 500 that couldn't get in," he said.

For the record, there were actually fewer people shut out of the Clark event. But the fact that these trailing candidates are creating fire hazards wherever they go demonstrates that there's a lot more to the picture here than the marquee Kerry vs. Dean event. Because of the unprecedented primary schedule this year, Clark, Edwards and even Joe Lieberman are arousing interest on the ground that isn't necessarily clear from the polls, which generally show John Kerry with a lead and Howard Dean trailing.

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John Kerry, who has collected several key newspaper endorsements and a lead in the polls here since winning in Iowa, positioned himself as the most qualified to face Bush. Asked if he'd be vulnerable to the label of "Massachusetts liberal" in a general election battle, Kerry said: "I look forward to that fight, and I particularly want to have that debate with this president."

Howard Dean, fighting to stay close to Kerry in the polls after his third-place finish in Iowa, made light of his much-discussed Iowa concession speech, and stressed his record as a budget-balancing governor of Vermont.

Asked about one of his comments earlier in the day about what he called "the Iowa screech," Dean defended his unpolished style: "What I say, what we say in my campaign, when we say we want our country back, we want our country back for all of us," he said. "And you have to get out there and lead with your heart and lay it all out for the American people, because that doesn't happen very often in Washington, D.C."

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He also volunteered an explanation, not only for his unusually energetic performance that night in West Des Moines, but for the missteps that sometimes come with his spontaneity. "I can promise you that I may wear the wrong suits, I may say the wrong thing, but you are always going to know who I am and what I believe in," he said.

Dean on the stump was considerably quieter than usual, although that was as much a function of his failing voice as anything else. "It's very hard to hit those high notes when you have no voice left," he said.

On the issues, Dean was the same no-frills centrist who governed Vermont for five terms. He talked of balancing budgets, health care, and the environment. Coming back time and again to his deficit hawk credentials, he hit his major points while steering clear of the loudest of his usual applause lines. He also stopped talking so much about the process of winning -- a criticism he's heard in recent days -- other than to note that "New Hampshire has a habit of reversing Iowans."

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Over at Kerry headquarters in Manchester, staffers were asked to give up their cellphones to a bunch of veterans who had shown up to volunteer, and the campaign ran out of phones to spare.

After his emphatic come-from-behind victory in Iowa, all eyes -- and the dreaded "front-runner" label -- are on Kerry, whose campaign is now bracing for assaults from six opponents desperate to knock him down.

"The last two weeks of this campaign have really been very different," he told the audience at one of his appearances.

Kerry's not the only one adjusting to dramatic changes ahead of the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 27. All the candidates now face a field completely realigned since just two weeks ago, when Howard Dean dominated the polls here. Kerry trailed both Dean and Wesley Clark before Iowa, but polls now show him ahead. A Boston Herald poll has Kerry 10 points ahead of Dean among likely primary voters, with Clark in third place.

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The results were surely beyond even their most extreme expectations. The Massachusetts senator, whose campaign seemed to be on death's door just a couple of weeks ago, claimed 38 percent of Iowa's caucus-goers. Dean, for weeks seen as the front-runner here and nationally, finished with less than half that total -- 18 percent. The night's other big winner was North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who, like Kerry, came on strong at the end of the race to finish with 32 percent.

"Thank you, Iowa, for making me the comeback Kerry," the winner said to jubilant supporters in a ballroom of the Hotel Fort Des Moines. "Not so long ago, this campaign was written off ... You listened. You stood the ground. And you stood with me on caucus night so that we can take on George Bush and the special interests and give America back its future and its soul."

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On the sidewalk outside a small community center, where Kerry was to receive the endorsement of a local African-American leader and have a surprise reunion with a Vietnam veteran whose life he saved, dozens of reporters and camera crews were waiting for the bus, while dozens more of their colleagues headed inside to secure a spot to watch the proceedings. Tim Russert talked to Al Hunt, and Tom Brokaw strolled up to join the crowd.

Standing in the bus aisle as reporters and aides gathered their things, Kerry smiled. "Uh-oh," he said. "You know who's here? All the BSDs."

In this Iowa contest, the BSDs -- big swinging dicks -- have gone from calling the caucuses a contest between Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt, because of their strength in public polls and their strong organizational support, to a four-way dead heat. Suddenly, Kerry -- who is shown leading in Sunday's poll by the Des Moines Register -- and John Edwards have become the compelling stories of the moment.

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Yes, the race has tightened and yes, the campaign has intensified. The candidates and their troops seem to be in every town and on every channel. John Kerry and John Edwards have finally begun to turn in the strong performances expected of them months ago. A new Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll actually shows Kerry with a 5-point lead. At least partly in response, Dean and Gephardt have blitzed the airwaves with negative ads.

But no amount of political science can predict what's going to happen when Iowa's Democrats gather at a series of caucuses on Monday to select a nominee. Which means that, with the race too close to call, the candidates will be relying heavily in the next two days on armies of volunteers who will be engaged in a grueling process of trying to win one vote at a time.

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At a John Edwards event in the Renaissance Savery Hotel on Locust Street, the message was "opportunity, optimism and hope" according to Edwards and the two politicians who introduced him, the Iowa State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald and North Carolina Governor Michael Easley. Edwards attributes his recent surge in the polls to the fact that he's stayed out of the race for nastiest. "My campaign is not about any negative attacks," he told a crush of national reporters.

John Kerry, who hasn't always played nice in the past, has obviously come to a similar conclusion about what works with Iowans. Kerry is enjoying at least one day as the nominal frontrunner -- the Zogby poll released today had him half a point ahead of Dean. At a marathon question-and-answer session at the Des Moines Playhouse Wednesday night, a room packed with undecided Iowa Democrats asked question after question about mostly local issues. Kerry stayed away from attacks on other candidates, except to say mildly, "We have to offer more than anger..." And everybody knows who's angry.

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"You shouldn't be nobody's sneak date," Sharpton said.

He then told the students that he saw a parallel in the way that Washington's heavily black electorate was being treated by his opponents in the race, and by the Democratic Party establishment, who, he said, were making the Jan. 13 election in D.C. into a "sneak primary." Democrats are trying to win some love on the sly, in other words, without showing some public commitment.

"I think that the assumption by the other candidates is that they won't have to be accountable to the African-American community," he told reporters afterward, "and that whoever the nominee is, we will have to vote for them anyway because we won't have anywhere else to go."

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But concealed in this optimistic picture is a doomsday scenario that is shaping every serious Democratic campaign: If Dean does not win the January contests with a show of force, by convincing margins, then even a victory could count as a loss.

According to variants of this scenario, the former Vermont governor would go into the Feb. 3 contests weakened, having failed to live up to high expectations. He would be running then in states like South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arizona where conservative Democrats, buoyed by new hope of success, may fare better. Facing tougher competition, he would have to spend more. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, would remain at war with itself.

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After the capture of Saddam Hussein, the senator from New York laid out her own views on Iraq, in speeches and in interviews. She articulated sharp criticisms of the Bush administration while staking out an unapologetically hawkish position on Iraq.

"I was thrilled that Saddam Hussein had finally been captured," she said in a Monday speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Like many of you, I was glued to the television and the radio as I went about my daily business. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our troops, to the president, to our intelligence services, to all who had a hand in apprehending Saddam. Now he will be brought to justice, and we hope that the prospects for peace and stability in Iraq will improve." Clinton made four key points: She doesn't regret voting to authorize the president to go to war; she's "delighted" that Saddam Hussein was captured; American troops should stay in Iraq for as long as they're needed, and at higher levels than present, if necessary; and the postwar fight to secure Iraq is crucial.

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And so, the thinking goes, Howard Dean and Wes Clark would make a Democratic dream date in November 2004.

But just 48 hours before before the capture of Saddam Hussein outside of Tikrit, Clark made his strongest statement to date about why a Dean-Clark ticket is a bad idea. Clark, who says that he's uniquely qualified to go "toe-to-toe" with President Bush on security issues in 2004, said that whether he's on the ticket or not, the Democrats can't win with Dean as their presidential candidate.

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Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has been among the fiercest critics of Dean in past debates and on the campaign trail, consistently passed on opportunities to criticize the man who now holds a massive lead over him in the polls here in New Hampshire. Although he criticized Gore at the outset of the debate for endorsing Dean -- he said he was surprised by the decision, given Sen. Joe Lieberman's "loyalty" to Gore in the past -- Kerry demurred when asked directly whether Dean could beat Bush in the general election. And asked later about a statement Dean had made about not letting faith interfere with policy decisions, Kerry said he agreed "completely," going on to talk about the importance of separating church and state.

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Said one guest at the fundraiser: "Everyone just realized immediately that something huge was happening."

The Gore endorsement happens in Harlem Tuesday morning, followed by a joint trip to Iowa; it's significant as a sign of Dean's establishment support, helping him appeal to primary voters his insurgent campaign hasn't yet won over. It will also provide the Dean campaign with another huge burst of attention as his opponents seek to gain traction in the final weeks before the primaries.

"Gore was the nominee in 2000, the winner of the popular vote and one of the leading figures in the party," said Democratic consultant and former Gore advisor Michael Feldman. "I don't know too many people who could have made an endorsement in this race and had a bigger impact."

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"All anyone wants to talk about is who's going to win," said Cuomo. "What Democrats should be talking about is who should win." Pushed further, though, Cuomo makes it clear that he is not just tired of the pundits, but of what they all seem to be saying: that Howard Dean has got it locked up.

"If you're talking about insiders -- people who talk about this stuff, study it, go give speeches -- if I make 15 calls to those people today and get 30 scenarios from them, they'll all be the same. Dean's going to win because ..." Cuomo says. "This other guy is failing because ... Nobody talks about the substance. I've gotten calls from a couple of people who I respect very highly for their intelligence and credibility. Both were with different candidates and said to me, 'You've got to go with Dean.' Why? 'Because he's going to win.' Why? 'Because he has people excited. Because he has money. Because he has a lock in the polls in New Hampshire. Because he has two big unions, he has the kids, the Internet loves him, because he came out early against the war.' That's all fine. But should he win?"

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