Will Daschle endorse Kerry here in SD?

The Washington Times has a piece today by Bill Sammon headlined "Kerry's liberalism a weapon for Bush." Excerpt:

President Bush's re-election campaign has begun a concerted effort to divide the Democratic Party by forcing its congressional candidates to either embrace or reject Sen. John Kerry's liberalism....

[Bush campaign manager Ken] Mehlman suggested that the strategy has the potential to split the Democratic Party along ideological fault lines.

"The way that Democrats are able to get elected in states like Louisiana and South Dakota and Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina is by running as Louisiana or South Dakota or North Carolina Democrats, not as liberal Democrats from Washington," he said.

"And the problem that the Democrat candidates are going to have is they're going to have to choose between either the John Kerry Democrat Party, which does not represent the values and interests of the people at home, or representing the values and interests of the people at home, which means you're not standing at a lot of podiums with John Kerry," he added.

But one recent prominent race suggests that Democrats can win in conservative-leaning states if they do wash their hands of Mr. Kerry.

Democrat Stephanie Herseth, who did not invite Mr. Kerry to campaign for her, won the June 1 South Dakota special House election against Republican Larry Diedrich, who enjoyed campaign visits by Vice President Dick Cheney and first lady Laura Bush.

Note that Tom Daschle is running internet blog ads (an image of which can be seen nearby) on blogs unlikely to be seen by a majority of South Dakotans which show him side by side with Kerry.

By contrast, at home here in South Dakota Tom Daschle boasts of supporting President Bush 75% of the time. Also, Daschle doesn't run any ads here in South Dakota showing him side by side with Kerry

Then there's also the Reuters picture seen below, taken March 11, 2004, at the conclusion of a press conference in which John Kerry refused to apologize for calling President Bush and his advisors “the most crooked ... lying group I’ve ever seen.”