Political Caucuses

Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination rolled along Sunday, as he scooped up a victory in Maine's party caucuses -- his third this weekend. He now turns toward primaries in Virginia and Tennessee on Tuesday. Kerry's closest rivals scrambled to slow his momentum, but they came up empty-handed. State by state, Democrats continued to fall into line behind the senator from Massachusetts. With 50% of the statewide vote tabulated, Kerry had 45% of the vote.

Saturday morning, the Democrats of Precinct 41-BEL-0101 met in the gymnasium of Sunset Elementary School on the south end of this upper-middle-class suburb near Seattle. They came in from the rain, about 35 of them, and sat around two folding tables under a basketball hoop. The youngest was 19-year-old Ross Kirshenbaum; the oldest, 75-year-old Bob Kubby. Most had never been to a caucus before.

The first rounds of Democratic primaries and caucuses have taught one lesson above all: In the party's compressed nomination calendar, momentum trumps money and organization. Propelled by victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts won five of the seven states that voted Tuesday, even though he did not advertise in any until last week and had not set foot in them for months. Former Vermont Gov.

In the backroom realm of presidential politics, Michael J. Whouley is known as a candidate fix-it man, the hush-hush operative the big boss summons when strategies go south. Four years ago, the plain-spoken campaign advisor brought his genius for field tactics to help Al Gore engineer a comeback when insurgent Bill Bradley seized the initiative in the Democratic primaries.

Sen. John Edwards entered the hotel ballroom at 9:30 p.m. like a prizefighter, walking along a 30-foot catwalk in front of several hundred supporters while pumping his fists into the air and grabbing at outstretched hands as though they were religious offerings. The room had all the energy of a victory dance, never mind that Edwards didn't win. When you're expected to fail, coming close can be good enough.

John F. Kerry sat in a 10th-floor suite at the Hotel Fort Des Moines on Monday night, surrounded by his family, grinning. Howard Dean had called to offer congratulations. He'd called Dick Gephardt himself. He and John Edwards had played phone tag but finally connected. The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus results were in, and he was the winner. "How does it feel? It feels like comeback Kerry.

Ward 4 in Waverly, Iowa, continued its long-running knack for picking winners in the Iowa caucuses when Sen. John F. Kerry became the top choice among its 147 Democratic participants. The precinct that chose Al Gore in the 2000 caucuses and general election narrowly gave its support to the Massachusetts senator, who was supported by 47 at the caucus, held at Waverly Shell Cross High School. The precinct bucked the rest of the state, however, by placing Missouri Rep.

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann told viewers Monday that relying on an entrance poll to predict the outcome of the complicated Iowa caucuses was "slightly more dangerous than juggling hand grenades in the dark." Still, MSNBC and the other news networks began airing the results of their commissioned poll on the caucuses as soon as they were available at 5 p.m. Pacific time, half an hour after the 1,900-plus meetings opened.

With all the hullabaloo accompanying the Democratic caucuses in Iowa, it was easy to forget about those other Iowans -- the Republicans. There are more than 600,000 registered Republicans statewide, and a fraction of them also caucused Monday night, drawing about a dozen GOP luminaries to the state to seek support for the party -- and for President Bush.

Rep. Dick Gephardt's likely withdrawal from the Democratic presidential campaign will mark the end not just of a presidential bid, but probably of a political career that reached across a generation of politics and left lasting fingerprints on national policy, his party and Congress.