Looks to me like we now have two races: one for president and one for veep. A sort of consensus is emerging. The nominee is going to be a northeastern liberal with some crossover appeal, the vice-president will be from the south. The ticket will probably include one veteran and one populist.
In the Kerry/Dean faceoff for president, Kerry clearly has the edge at this point, the momentum of his proven victories. Edwards vs. Clark is trickier to handicap, but Edwards seems to have the momentum there. Just playing the percentages, a Kerry/Edwards ticket seems the most likely, although this leaves the wired constituency without a champion. Alternately, Kerry/Clark pushes the military angle but loses the populism appeal. The two longshot possibilities left Dean/Edwards and Dean/Clark offer either a geographically balanced populist message or an Internet ticket (and with the value of early Internet organizing under heavy scrutiny, and just by the numbers, that last choice seems the least likely now).
I think any of these four combinations could take Bush, with some luck. I realize the veepstakes usually reaches outside of the nomination fight, but this time around things are so much more contested than in recent elections, and it seems to me that the final four have each earned a second look before we reach elsewhere.
Two races
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