The day before Wisconsin...

Howard Dean's campaign chairman let it be known yesterday that after Wisconsin he would announce his support for John Kerry (he'd worked on a Kerry Senate campaign.) Today he is no longer the Dean campaign chairman, which seems to indicate that Dean is going on in some way, even after his defeat tomorrow.

John Edwards got another newspaper endorsement in Wisconsin, and people are pointing out that the poll numbers for he and Dean put together would make a competitive candidate. But he's running third in the latest polls. Will he and Dean strike a deal? Only if the deal is for Dean to pull out and support him. It will never go the other way.

We just saw C-Span coverage of a rally in Madison in which Teresa Heinz Kerry spoke. Stories about her have split, some emphasizing her outspokenness and eccentricities, others rhapsodizing her skills as a campaigner. In Kerry's victory speeches she's just been this little figure to the side in the front row on the stage, seldom in one of those waving embraces that usually characterize the shots of the Political Couple. But hearing her speak, and watching the audience, it's obvious why they say she is such a great campaigner. She speaks in a soft, accented voice, yet her audience was utterly rapt. She is not packaged, she's alive up there, cogent and eloquent. Her theme was, no more cynicism. Allow America to be the living symbol of possibility again, as it was when she grew up in East Africa. She's funny and feisty, intelligent, and you sense this individualized combination of sensuousness and elegance and a touch of wildness. She's real. And she must have that power of presence, because that audience---assembled for a rally, and therefore pumped up---hung on her every word, and was totally with her in feeling. It was something to see.

Ted Kennedy spoke next. He's 71, and has weathered well. He's slimmed down, looks healthy, sounds on top of his game, and looks pretty happy. Apparently his relationship with both Kerrys is more than political. He and his second wife befriended Teresa when she moved with Kerry to Boston. So the Kennedy continuity, a very real element that will become more important as the campaign goes on, is a living one. The Republicans can paint Ted Kennedy as the liberal devil all they want, but on President's Day in the U.S., the Gallup organization says that when asked what President in U.S. history they admire the most, it's a two way tie: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.