Kerry Set to Sweep Primaries
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome. I'm Paula Zahn. It is Tuesday, March 4, 2004, primary night in four Southern states. Here's what you need to know right now about the result. No surprise here. We can tell you Senator John Kerry has won in Florida. Of course, he was virtually unopposed. But Florida is getting a lot of attention because of the voting problems there in the year 2000. And Kerry has also won Mississippi, another of tonight's primaries where the polls have already closed. Exit polls can tell us a few things about what may happen next November in key battleground states like Florida, and that's ahead. First, though, here are some of the other stories we're following tonight. As teens take the pledge to abstain from sex before marriage, a new study has startling news on whether that's helping them avoid sexually transmitted diseases. And an Internet site looks for older men who prey on young girls, then exposes their identity. Local TV then picks up on the idea, luring those same men who look for minors. Is that a public service or a perversion of justice? Miami reportedly targets hip-hop performers. They are photographed, followed, and put on file at police headquarters. Is it just good police work or the most obvious case of racial profiling? And a man shot dead in a Masonic lodge. Was it a ritual turned deadly? We're going to take you inside the world of the Freemasons, who they are and what they believe in. Now let's put the primaries "In Focus" tonight. To take us through the exit polls and the mood voters are heading towards in November, regular contributor Joe Klein from "TIME" magazine is here. Welcome. And in Washington with us tonight, senior political analyst Bill Schneider. Hi, Bill. How you doing tonight?</s>WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Paula.</s>ZAHN: What's most interesting thing to you about these exit polls tonight?</s>SCHNEIDER: Well, it looks like Howard Dean was speaking for an awful lot of Florida Democrats when he said -- and I quote -- "Yes," because those Democrats in Florida are angry. Let's take a look. We asked them, how do you feel about President Bush? Are you angry, dissatisfied, satisfied, or enthusiastic? Forty-nine percent say they're angry at President Bush and your brother, too; 41 percent say they're also angry at their governor, Jeb Bush, George Bush's famous brother. Now, what are they angry about? Well, a couple things, but here's one. Will their votes be counted accurately? Only a quarter, 26 percent, say they're very confident that their votes will be counted accurately this year. That's lower than the Democrats in any of the other states that voted today. Florida Democrats have a grievance they can nurture all the way to November. These are Democrats that have one thing on their mind, and it's not international affairs. The economy, health care, domestic issues clearly predominated on their scale of concerns. International affairs, terrorism Iraq, much, much lower. What we're finding, Paula, all over the country is that domestic concerns are the thing that drives the Kerry vote. International concerns drive people to vote for George Bush. The bottom line is, he who controls this agenda this year wins.</s>ZAHN: Do you read the tea leaves the same way, Joe?</s>JOE KLEIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Slightly different, especially on that last point. You know, it's a real irony here that the reason why John Kerry has won this nomination, I think, is because Democrats looked at him and said, this is the guy who would be best able to stand up next to George W. Bush on foreign policy and national security matters in the fall. There are limits to polling, and this is one of them. I think it's a subconscious feeling on the part of Democrats.</s>ZAHN: What have we learned, if anything, about moderates tonight from this exit polling?</s>KLEIN: It's not just tonight, but in all of these primaries, Kerry has done less well among moderates than John Edwards has. And as we look forward now, now that he's the nominee, he is going to have to start moving towards the center, and he's going to have to figure out in what issues he's going to move towards the center, because that is where this election is going to be won or lost. Both the bases are obviously motivated. It's going to be in the middle where this is going to be decided.</s>ZAHN: Which brings you to the question of the most obvious choice for a running mate. If he chooses John Edwards, does that gracefully bring John Kerry to the middle?</s>KLEIN: Well, John Edwards is at the top of the list that we saw tonight among choices. But that's mostly because we've been talking about this for the past month. You know, Dick Gephardt is way down the list. I think only 4 percent of the people voting in Florida favored Gephardt as the vice president, and yet he's a name that you hear quite a bit from among the people who surround Kerry, in part, because he might be able to get you the crucial Midwestern state of Missouri, in part because he appeals to the blue collar vote in states like Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania, very important, and also because he is a real partisan Democrat attack dog. One name that wasn't on the list, which would be kind of interesting, is the hot rumor in Washington today, John McCain.</s>ZAHN: Do you put much credence in that one, Bill Schneider?</s>SCHNEIDER: John McCain? Not a great deal. He disagrees with Democrats on too many issues. I think there would be too many problems with McCain on abortion and other issues. I would disagree with Joe on only one point. I do think Democrats were conscious that Kerry would be able to check President Bush, stand next to him and talk about international affairs and national security with credibility, but they want him to be the nominee, so they can move the agenda past that to the issues that they really care about, which isn't international affairs. It's the economy and health care.</s>ZAHN: Get the final word tonight, Joe.</s>KLEIN: Well, I think Bill and I have a difference on this one. I think they're concerned about everything across the board. And the going to war, you know, in Iraq is a major issue and always will be with Democrats.</s>ZAHN: Hey, Bill, I've got to say that's one of the best reprisals I've heard of the Howard Dean war cry in a long time. Would you like to repeat that one more time before I go off the air?</s>KLEIN: We could do a duet, Bill.</s>SCHNEIDER: I would injure myself.</s>ZAHN: Well, that, I would look forward to. Joe Klein, Bill Schneider, thanks for helping us zero in on the voters tonight. The candidates, of course, have their own version of crossfire going lately, so let's bring in our "CROSSFIRE" co-hosts, James Carville and Tucker Carlson. Welcome. Good to see both of you.</s>JAMES CARVILLE, CO-HOST, "CROSSFIRE": Thank you, Paula. Good to be here.</s>ZAHN: Our pleasure. James, I'm going to start with you this evening. What do you make of these numbers, in particular, the numbers showing that John Kerry would be in a virtual dead heat with the president among men? How worried should the White House be about this number?</s>CARVILLE: Well, I think that, overall, they've got to be terribly concerned, because it's not just the numbers, what they are. It's how fast they've deteriorated for the president. And I think that's why you are seeing him trying to react in television real fast. I think that's why you're seeing a big launch of an attack against Senator Kerry. This is sort of unprecedented for something to happen this big, this fast, and this early. The three things that happen, it's quite remarkable confluence of events in American politics.</s>ZAHN: So, Tucker, what do you do to turn those numbers around?</s>TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST, "CROSSFIRE": I think the men number is a problem. Democrats typically lose men by a big margin, 19 points in 2000, in national elections. And John Kerry has, I think, self- consciously, targeted his campaign at men: I hunt. I served in Vietnam. I strut around in duck boots all the time. I play hockey. You know, the message is, I'm not Mike Dukakis. I'm not a wimp. And I think it's been pretty effective. Bush obviously can do the same thing, and I think he ought to. Bush, I think, needs to get this campaign about national security, even if that means talking about Iraq. He needs to be focused on terrorism and national security. And they're the issues that matter anyway, so it's a good thing.</s>ZAHN: All right, but, James, let me ask you this. Does that make any sense to you, what Tucker just said? Because if you look at some of the latest polls -- and we'll put a graphic up now basically showing that Americans care more about the economy than they do about national security by a very wide margin.</s>CARVILLE: Well, I think that they do. But the poll can't sort of detect that. Obviously, the president is expected to be able to keep us safe and keep us prosperous at the same time. The public is not going to make these kinds of distinctions, where -- and neither is John Kerry going to say, well, look, I may not be able to keep you prosperous, but I can keep you safe. And John Kerry is going to say, well, elect me because I can do both. Going back to what Tucker said about the men, when I saw him at the Houston rodeo, this is not -- the Houston rodeo -- and I love rodeo. I grew up with it. But, basically, this is a pretty Republican event. And this is really campaigning in his base, just like going to Daytona at the NASCAR event. And it does show that they are concerned about these men. I'm not sure that they need to be as concerned as they are, but they're sure sending a signal out.</s>ZAHN: Ah, but, Tucker, you say that's not a number that's easily reversed, particularly with the style of campaigning that John Kerry's doing right now.</s>CARLSON: I don't know if it's not easily reversed. It's just interesting. It means that John Kerry is reaching out to a group that maybe other Democrats haven't, Al Gore, for instance. I'm struck, though, on the economy, that the consumer confidence number, six points above average now, is actually higher than it was during Clinton's reelect in 1996. So it's another way of saying there are a lot of ways to measure how the economy is doing. That strikes me as a pretty significant one. It's not all about jobs. And people seem relatively confident. I can't think -- I don't know if there's been an incumbent president to lose when the consumer confidence number was that high.</s>ZAHN: So, do you think the president has any vulnerability when it comes to the economy, James?</s>CARVILLE: Well, of course. He's got a 39 percent approval rating or something on the economy. He's got a 32 percent approval rating on health care cost. I mean, he's got a ton of vulnerabilities. He's the first president since Herbert Hoover that not a single job has been produced under his administration. He's also got a terrible, terrible vulnerability on this question of the budget deficit. People know about it. They feel terrible about it. They feel like it's a measure of how the country is doing. So, yes, he's got a ton of problems there and he's going to be dealing with them between now and next November.</s>ZAHN: Yes, but is the deficit going to send anybody to the polls?</s>CARVILLE: I think about a third of the country would describe it as a problem of severe magnitude. And the deficit is going to be a much -- it's something that people can understand. It's something that people can relate to. It's a way to keep score. And I think that people understand that there's something unseemly about taking a surplus the size this crowd did and turn it into a deficit. And if they don't think that's going to drive voting behavior, let them go ahead and say no one cares about it. I think John Kerry needs to talk about it a lot.</s>ZAHN: All right, got to leave it there, gentlemen. James Carville, Tucker Carlson, thank you both.</s>CARLSON: Thanks, Paula.</s>CARVILLE: Thank you, Paula.</s>ZAHN: Teenagers vowing to abstain from sex until they marry. Now some numbers are out on whether it really helps prevent sexual diseases. And overeating, it has caused so many Americans to get so fat. The government is now taking action. Are Americans eating themselves to death?