Senator Kerry’s stunning victory last night in the Iowa caucuses reminds us yet again why it’s wonderful that elections are decided by voters and not by the press or pollsters or the union bosses (Gerald McEntee and Andy Stern, call your office) or former vice presidents (you know who).

In retrospect it is clear. John Kerry is a politician not to be underestimated. In 1984, he prevailed over Rep. James Shannon in a bruising Democratic primary to win the party’s nomination for U.S. senator in Massachusetts. He won the Senate seat that year after a hard-fought campaign against Republican Ray Shamie. And he beat William Weld, a popular centrist Republican governor, in the 1996 race for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Bostonians told us last night that yesterday you couldn’t find a Democratic operative in the whole state — they were all in Iowa running a flawless, hard-driving voter-identification and get-out-the-vote campaign.

Beyond the tactics, there is an ideological strand to which Mr. Kerry’s victory can be credited. Mr. Kerry voted for the war in Iraq. On December 17, clashing with Howard Dean’s claim that Saddam Hussein’s capture made Americans no safer, Mr. Kerry said “Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the war on terror, and therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that, and I disagree with the governor.”Dr. Dean started to fade once Saddam was captured last month by American forces in Iraq.

And, as we noted in these columns yesterday, both Mr. Kerry and Senator Edwards, who also did well yesterday, attacked Dr. Dean for wanting to raise taxes on the middle class. If either Mr. Edwards or the other candidates — Dr. Dean, Senator Lieberman, or General Clark — want to stop Mr. Kerry before he wins New Hampshire and runs away with the nomination, they may want to try to turn the tax issue against him, looking back to Mr. Kerry’s years, 1983 and 1984, as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts under Governor Dukakis.

The budget that the Dukakis-Kerry team proposed in 1983 was a lunge for excise, including tax increases on gasoline and cigarettes, according to press accounts at the time. In 1984, according to press accounts, the Dukakis-Kerry budget proposed to more than double the tax on real estate transactions. For middle-class smokers, homeowners, and car owners, those sure look like tax increases. As Senator Lieberman put it so eloquently on January 6, “I don’t know of a case where a Democratic candidate has been elected who called for a massive increase in taxes on the middle class.” So Mr. Kerry was the surprise victor last night only in a sense, for there is a logic to his positions that may well bring additional surprises as the 2004 campaign races ahead.