HEADING SOUTH (via David Hill, The Bronx):

Kerry's `Southern strategy' spurs worry: Loyalists cheer rare appearance in Tennessee (Jeff Zeleny and Kirsten Scharnberg, 2/10/04, The Chicago Tribune)

"There should be a Southern strategy in a national campaign for a Democratic candidate," said Tennessee party Chairman Randy Button, who thought Kerry's decision to skip the weekend forum was "a mistake." "If you're looking at November, there are going to be some Southern battleground states. Tennessee is one of them."

After winning 10 states, and with polls indicating he is leading in Tuesday's contests in Tennessee and in Virginia, Kerry may all but cinch his fight for the party's nomination. But some Democratic strategists say he also may have passed up a chance to begin presenting himself as a candidate in whom the voters could feel an investment for the fall campaign.

Indeed, when the nominee emerges to challenge Bush, each candidate faces a country with a narrow political divide. While each of the last three Democratic presidents have come from the South, the region was far less kind to its own native son, Al Gore, in the last presidential race; some party leaders believe there may be little reason to think it will do otherwise, particularly if the nominee is a well-heeled senator from the Northeast.

"There's no question that when certain issues are played up, Republicans will point to him being a Massachusetts liberal," said Alexander Lamis, who studies Southern politics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "But you have to confront those issues if you are to win elsewhere."

Mathematically speaking, the Democratic Party does not need to carry Tennessee or other Southern states to win the White House. But other Democrats argue that the lingering effects of a punishing economy accompanied by high job loss could trump the traditional cultural divide over abortion rights, gay rights and civil rights.

Kerry seized upon this earlier Monday as he delivered a speech outside a firehouse in Roanoke, Va., where he invoked a name that resonated well with the crowd of several hundred supporters.

"If you like what Bill Clinton gave you in those eight years," the senator said, "you're going to love what John Kerry gives you in the first four years."