Another three caucuses, another three easy victories for John Kerry. The excitement from two weeks ago is starting to fade away as Terry McAuliffe’s plan for a front-loaded calendar comes to fruition. I never thought it would be this easy for Kerry.
Remember all that talk we heard from Howard Dean’s camp about ignoring the seven primaries on Feb. 3 so he could focus on the weekend of Feb. 7 and 8? That didn’t quite work out. The good news for Dean was his performance in Washington, where he garnered 30% support, the highest percentage he’s received in any of the first 12 contests. The bad news is he still lost to Kerry by 19 points. Not exactly a barn-burner.
The big winner from the weekend, though, was Dennis Kucinich (I say with tongue only partially planted in cheek). Our quirky candidate had the best weekend of his career as a presidential candidate, finishing ahead of John Edwards and Wesley Clark in two of the three caucus states. Enjoy it now, Dennis; you may not come this close to winning again until you run for re-election to the House in November.
In case you missed the results, here are the top three from Michigan, Washington, and Maine.
Michigan
Kerry — 52% (91 delegates)
Dean — 17% (24 delegates)
Edwards — 13% (6 delegates)
Washington
Kerry — 49% (47 delegates)
Dean — 30% (29 delegates)
Kucinich — 8% (0 delegates)
Maine (with 50% of the precincts reporting)
Kerry — 45%
Dean — 26%
Kucinich — 15%
The delegates for Maine aren’t available quite yet because the state is so incredibly slow in releasing its results. I have no idea why.