Front-runner Kerry shifts focus to Bush as challengers struggle

Howard Dean and John Edwards said Wisconsin is not their final stand.
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Bolstered by the polls and disarray in a rival camp, a confident-sounding John Kerry wrapped up his campaign for today's pivotal Wisconsin presidential primary by aiming barbs at President Bush and ignoring his Democratic opponents.
Kerry has focused heavily on job-creation plans, and on Monday he labeled Bush missing in action on the economy. He ridiculed the president for taking a trip to the Daytona 500 auto race in Florida at a time when the economy should have his undivided attention.
"We don't need a president who just says, 'Gentlemen, start your engines,'" Kerry said. "We need a president who says, 'America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.'"
While Kerry was sounding like a general election candidate, Howard Dean's campaign went through an election-eve shakeup that left him battered and his future in even greater doubt.
At the same time, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina said he would sharpen the differences he has with all of his rivals and argued that he was in the race for the long haul. He said it was not too late for a surge in polls that have given Kerry a wide lead in the latest primary test.
"It's not too late because this primary process is going well into March," Edwards said. "I want the voters to know what the differences are between us."
The Democratic rivals swept across Wisconsin on the eve of a primary that has 72 delegates at stake, and could offer the last chance to blunt the momentum that Kerry has built in piling up 14 wins in the first 16 contests of the primary season.
Trouble for Dean
As the campaign wrapped up, Dean was getting the heaviest attention, but it was not the sort that a candidate would want heading into an important election.
As he stumped doggedly across the state, Dean said national chairman Steve Grossman had left the campaign, and other aides speculated Grossman would enlist with Kerry. Grossman had told reporters earlier that Dean was likely to leave the race if he lost the Wisconsin primary, a view that Dean quickly disputed.
"He's made clear in his on-the-record comments to the press he has another agenda at work now," campaign manager Roy Neel said.
For whatever the reason, the shakeup obscured Dean's message on the eve of the primary in a state with a tradition of supporting liberals, mavericks and Washington outsiders -- a state the former Vermont governor has said he badly needed to bounce back from a long string of losses.
The move was the second campaign shakeup in recent weeks in a Dean campaign that at one point was the presumptive front-runner, but has failed to win a single primary or caucus. Former campaign manager Joe Trippi was forced out earlier.
While it wasn't clear whether Grossman left or was pushed, it didn't matter ultimately.
"My response is, I'll speak for the campaign," Dean said.
Dean said he had hope of winning in Wisconsin but would stay in the race regardless. "I think it's possible for us to do well even if we don't win," he said.
"Let me remind you all that I have more delegates than everybody else in this race except John Kerry," Dean told reporters. "So I think the campaign obituaries that some of you are writing are a little bit misplaced," he told reporters.
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