Howard Dean’s do-or-die vow to win Wisconsin is looking like Mission Impossible, according to a poll released yesterday.
Dean has retreated to Wisconsin – which votes on Feb. 17 – but a new poll suggests it will be his last stand, since front-runner John Kerry was the choice of 32 percent of respondents. Wesley Clark had 9 percent, Dean got 8 percent and John Edwards took 7 percent.
“It’s a real uphill battle for Dean,” said University of Wisconsin pollster G. Donald Ferree Jr., but he added Wisconsin is unpredictable.
Kerry is set to build his lead for the nomination substantially today by raking in piles of delegates in the Michigan and Washington state caucuses. Kerry has a giant lead in polls for Michigan, the biggest state to vote so far.
Dean, once the far-and-away front-runner, said yesterday he’s willing to consider running for vice president.
“I’ll do whatever is best for the party,” he said.
But even though Dean is slumping in polls, he still tops Kerry in raising Internet campaign cash.
Dean on Thursday challenged his backers to kick in $700,000 over four days to pay for Wisconsin TV ads, and they did it in a single day. So he doubled the target to $1.4 million, and the tally was nearing $1 million last night.
That’s nearly twice as fast as Kerry raised money over the Internet after his stunning win in the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses. He took in $365,000 over the next 24 hours, his team says.
Dean plans to start airing TV ads in Wisconsin on Monday. Aides said the ads, at least the first ads, will be pro-Dean messages, not anti-Kerry attacks.
The big warning signs for Kerry were more reports suggesting he is very cozy with some of the special interests he often denounces.
Kerry has recommended people for posts at federal home-loan banks at least three times just before or after they gave him campaign cash. Kerry denied any quid pro quo.
It was revealed last week that Kerry holds the current Senate record in taking campaign cash from lobbyists, that he had closer ties to Clinton-scandal figure Johnny Chung than he’d acknowledged, and that he intervened to protect a taxpayer-funded boondoggle for insurance giant AIG, which then gave $48,000 to his political efforts.
Meanwhile, Clark said President Clinton’s aides wanted to abruptly end the war in Bosnia in the summer of 1999 because it could interfere with the presidential campaign of then-Vice President Al Gore, the Washington Post reports.
“There were those in the White House who said, ‘Hey, look, you gotta finish the bombing before the Fourth of July weekend,’ ” Clark said. “That’s the start of the next presidential campaign season, so stop it.”
Clark, a former NATO commander, gave the interview to NATO’s official historian in January 2000.
Clark did not name the officials.
With Post Wire Services