Howard Dean took to the podium first, trailing John Kerry and John Edwards badly, and congratulated them on running excellent campaigns, and thanking his supporters for their hard work. After that, Dean gave an increasingly strident speech taking credit for changing the nature of the debate, some of which may be true, and oddly kept decrying corporations moving to Bermuda, when he made it easier for those same corporations to avoid the tax consequences of such moves by setting up tax shelters in Vermont. In that manner, but not in temperament, it was vintage Dean.

I thought I heard a hint of a withdrawal in Dean's speech, almost eulogistically reviewing what he sees as the accomplishments of his campaign. With key staffers defecting and a string of poor showings in the primaries, even Dean sees that the game is about over for his Presidential campaign. The latter part of Dean's speech, however, got cut off by the almost simultaneous starts of the Edwards and Kerry post-election speeches. Fox briefly cut over to Edwards but switched to Kerry immediately after he began speaking. Kerry's speech was dull and uninteresting, delivered in a monotone and featuring all of the usual suspects of the liberal platform.

Now with 58% of precincts reporting, Kerry has a four-point lead over Edwards and looks like he has Wisconsin wrapped up, but his image as an inevitability may be damaged, and Edwards certainly earned a second look with his showing tonight. But if he wants to be taken seriously, Edwards will need to win a couple of states in the next Super Tuesday two weeks from tonight.

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