What If John Edwards Doesn’t Help?
- 05.17.2008 - 9:52 AMKentucky’s primary is Tuesday. Let’s say for sake of argument that the polls there, as they were in West Virginia, are accurate (or even underestimate Hillary’s lead). We then will see a big win for already-declared loser Clinton and another round of rather horrid exit polls for Obama. And there won’t be a John Edwards endorsement the next day to distract the media.
Ah, but there will be the Oregon results, you say. True enough, but that’s not exactly where the general election is going to be decided. The nagging issue which will continue to vex Democrats will be: where are those 270 electoral votes going to come from? So far the polls say it won’t be from Red states like Kansas, Florida, or Ohio (or states like Arkansas, which Clinton would put in play).
Where is the new majority for Obama and what states with enough votes will be put in play? It may be too late for Clinton, but the question she posed about the viability of Obama’s coalition remains.
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May 17th, 2008 at 10:19 AM
“And there won’t be a John Edwards endorsement the next day to distract the media.”
The John Edwards endorsement was merely a convenient excuse to allow the MSM to ignore the real story: Hillary Clinton’s 41 point victory over Obama! The Edwards story deserved no more than a secondary consideration. The MSM’s infatuation with BO is doing the Democrats no favors. They have been ignoring his weaknesses. It is only the middle of May—and already the non-Ivy League whites are waking up to the dangerousness of an Obama presidency. Things are likely only to get worse.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:50 PM
The question might have been better phrased as “How much will John Edwards hurt?”
John Edwards, ambulance-chaser, faux-populist, hate-his-neighbor hypocrite is anathema in his home state of North Carolina. Which is one reason he’s no longer in the Senate: he’d likely have not won re-election. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) says “thanks, Johnny!”
Mr. Edwards has negative coattails, and could not even carry NC for the ticket in 2004.
May 17th, 2008 at 5:45 PM
The whole John Edwards endorsement story was much ado about nothing. He dragged the thing out so long and it’s now at the point where Obama is virtually guaranteed to win, anyway, so who needs him? Even if he were a major vote-getter in NC, which he isn’t, the window of his usefulness to Obama had already passed. He is just fishing for a cabinet position. How obvious can a person get?
Same thing with Richardson, who should have endorsed Obama before the Texas primary if he was really going to have an effect. He is another one with minimal influence on voters. Hillary is a lot more popular among Hispanics than Richardson is. Nobody needs him either.
The interesting question is, how many politicians actually have an endorsement to offer that means anything? I think the answer is - very few. Teddy Kennedy did nothing for Obama in Massachusetts, which was Hillary’s best state. Ditto for John Kerry. Bob Casey did nothing for Obama in Penn. None of the black politicians who endorsed Hillary made one drop of difference to her very low vote totals among blacks.
Lieberman probably helped McCain, and Rendell clearly helped Hillary, as did Strickland in Ohio. Beyond that, I’m not sure many people have made a difference. There aren’t a lot of guru figures out there anymore.
Back in the good old days when Ed Koch ran for mayor in NYC, the Bobover Rebbe used to give him a blessing the day before each election. And by empirical evidence, it seems to have helped.
May 17th, 2008 at 5:55 PM
Assume for the sake of argument that Ohio goes for McCain in November. Obama could still make up the balance by winning New Mexico, Colorado, and Iowa– if he holds the Kerry states that would put him at 273. And even if he drops New Hampshire, he would be at 269 and from there the House of Representatives would decide.
May 17th, 2008 at 9:53 PM
Wow. Listen, I understand that the trajectory has changed for the right and now Hillary is the preferred candidate (explaining why this is would take more words than a comment on a blog allows), but you have to understand that this race is over and, in fact, has been over since February (as a wise Clinton aficionado revealed after NC). Hillary has lost the nomination. Winning WV and Kentucky is simply irrelevant at this point - no matter how much you want to insist otherwise.
What I don’t understand is that if you believe Obama would be easier to beat, why all the water-carrying for Hillary? Shouldn’t you be pleased that the stronger candidate has been dispatched? Doesn’t this bode well for your own candidate’s odds?
It is literally impossible to understand your concern.
May 17th, 2008 at 10:06 PM
Who cares how Oregon votes.? It is about as representative of the United States as Belgium. The last time I was in that socialist/pacifist paradise I wasn’t allowed to pump my own gas. The state mandates that gas be pumped for me by a young person in order to create jobs. It’s kind of like the leaf-raking jobs the WPA had. Oregon’s tax-friendly, PC-minded polity would rather the state not be polluted by anything resembling an economy.
May 18th, 2008 at 1:20 PM
Barack Obama wanted John Edwards’ endorsement publicly, otherwise John Edwards would
not have endorsed him at all.
So Obamabots, stop with the smart ass remarks about John Edwards. Obama got what he requested, and obviously at the time he wanted the endorsement. Plus the United Steel Workers and several delegates, that’s John’s contribution, not to mention the gift of gab
and knowledge of the issues and how to solve problems, that Obama doesn’t have a clue to.
Obama will be a puppet President, and needs all the elders help he can get to help on the
economy which obviously was not his strong suit in school if he took economics, foreign policy
which he knows nothing about except for the time he spent going to elementary school in Indonesia (which he mention in a Town Hall meeting in the primaries in Iowa as his foreign experience )LOL and visiting his grandmother in Africa, does that count.
John Edwards got to mention the problem of poverty in this country with 37 million people living in the richest country in the world below the poverty line and Obama got to repeat that issue to his audience, showing that he will make it an issue during his Presidency if he gets it.
.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:20 AM
You don’t need a poll to know Kentuckians will vote for Hillary. You just need to know what Kentuckians are like. They’re like most Americans used to be, before the advent of political correctness.
Obama is not going to get the big, decisive win he wants. He may not win at all, especially if his campaign contributers are made public. I never thought I’d feel any respect for Clinton, but seeing her outfight this media inflated phony, I cant begrudge it.
This is all good news for McCain and sensible Americans.