Subject: John Kerry Locks In His Gains From: ERIC ROSTON [TIME reporter] Sent: Tuesday, Feb. 03, 2004

Campaign staffers for Sen. John Kerry awoke on Tuesday morning feeling upbeat but vulnerable, as they prowled the Wyndham Phoenix Hotel for caffeine to gird them for the day's seven state primaries. They felt cautiously buoyed by news that the four-term senator was proving more popular than President Bush in five polls about the presidential-election — and by the fact that no sitting president, according to a campaign advisor, has faced such a deficit in the polls this early since Gerald Ford in 1976.

But historical factoids are not bankable bets, particularly when they concern the nation's perfectly checkered political landscape. The Kerry campaign is all but rhetorically focused on securing the Democratic nomination rather than on beating Bush. "We are not looking down the road too far," says a Kerry aide. If there's one thing this campaign has learned over its rocky ride into Iowa, it's not to assume anything. And with live candidates still on the trail, there remains work to do. "You got a guy out there [Dean] who's going nuclear on anything and everything anyone does any day." Edwards, too, has put aside his aw-shucks optimism to rip into Kerry's viability in the South and his connection to lobbyist campaign donors.

At the end of the day, Kerry prevailed, winning five of the seven contests, and showing a surprising competitiveness in Oklahoma, a state the campaign spent relatively little time and money in. The campaign quickly turned Edwards' towering home-turf victory in South Carolina into one of its own, pointing out that the North Carolina senator outspent Kerry 4.5 to 1, and that he had low single-digit support there six weeks ago. Arizona, New Mexico, Delaware and most importantly Missouri fell into Kerry's column. By Tuesday morning, the campaign was already looking ahead to Saturday's contests in Michigan and Washington, where Kerry gave his victory speech. As the first exit polls came in showing Edwards up in two states, the Kerry campaign announced it would go "on-air" tomorrow with television ads in Virginia and Tennessee, where Edwards will campaign hard coming out of South Carolina. "Now we will carry this campaign and the cause of a stronger, fairer, more prosperous America to every part of America," Kerry said in his prepared remarks. "We will take nothing for granted."

Several candidates claimed to be running nationwide campaigns this week. But Sen. John Edwards largely spent his time defending his beachhead. On Sunday, front-runner Kerry hibernated, away from the political and meteorological elements, in  Fargo, N.D. for a full day — the equivalent of an entire week in campaign time. That's a campaign stop off the beaten path for sure, but the Kerry campaign was hell-bent on visiting all seven Feb. 3 states. The Massachusetts senator also needed a sports bar where he could watch the Super Bowl uninterrupted. The New England Patriots won in the last four seconds — a victory that Kerry took onto the stump for the next two days. "It's great to see New Englanders go to Texas and win. It sets a great precedent," Kerry told more than 300 supporters at the University of New Mexico student union Monday morning.

In his remarks, Kerry emphasized the role armed-services veterans have played in his campaign. And in television interviews before his appearance, he synthesized his campaign platform in soundbites. Asked by Sean Hannity on Fox News about the questions raised in the Democratic party about Bush's Vietnam-era service in the national guard, Kerry delivered a subtle attack that, no doubt, is an indication of things to come: "I don't know the facts on it. What I've always said is that I defended Bill Clinton's choice, and I would defend the president's choice with respect to going into the Guard. I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, becoming a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard. Those are choices people make."

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