SC -- distant 3rd at 17-18% even though it's the state of his birth and the area where "only (Edwards) can make it competitive". Evidently not.
Neveda -- 4%.......
FL -- 17-18%.
MI -- uncommitted lost badly to HRC. The lions share would have been Obama.
No money left to campaign across the nation, no momentum, the unions need to move on before Super Tuesday etc. He's just accepting that it's better to step aside and let people have the binary choice than to finish so far back as to be irrelevant anyway. He's not crazy like Mitt to the point of wasting his fortune chasing rainbows.
He also suffered second-run syndrome. Democrats don't tend to give people second chances once they've run and lost. The GOP rewards it (McCain, Dole, Reagan, Nixon, etc), hence the view of Republicans nominating whomever it is whose "turn" has arrived. I may be wrong, but I believe the last Dem to take the nomination after a failed run was Adlai Stevenson. Gore ran twice, taking the nod the second time, but only after serving as Veep for eight years.
Given that conventional wisdom required Edwards to win in Iowa, since he'd "spent four years there," -- in truth, that was utter nonsense, because he didn't spend much more time there than Obama or Clinton -- he likely took a hit on fundraising and support after finishing second and being wiped out of the news. Coming up with only 4% in Nevada was devastating, given its supposed working-class, union-based electorate. And losing one's home state means certain death.
Again, much of it, especially with regard to press coverage, is unfair. Edwards supporters are right to be angry about it. But that's the silly world we live in. It is what it is.
I'd hoped he'd stay in to try to play kingmaker. That seemed his intention, and it seemed a logical one. For now, I'm simply hoping it has nothing to do with his wife's cancer.
I don't think he's going to be irrelevant, though. There's a good chance he's the next Attorney General, which I like. He probably doesn't want the Veep slot, while AG gives him a very pubic position in which he can make some real differences in his causes. It also perhaps keeps his political career alive. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
He lost my interest when he couldn't make NC competitive in 2004. So much for making the South competitive.
I disagree with your IA assessment. He'd been going there non-stop for years. If the best he could do was 3rd in delegates that shows he's not going to out sell either of the other 2 anywhere else. It was a flop.
After that it was all down hill in the voting booth figures. Forget the media. The votes didn't come in states with small media markets (only a very few watch cable political bs) and where grass roots campaigning is the key. Edwards supporters need to blame something but can't stand the idea that the problem was the voters having a look but deciding to go with one of the other 2 by 5:1....
by irrelevant, I only meant if he was a very distant 3rd and only got a few delegates, he would have lost any relevancy before the convention.
As for a future political career, maybe he should try Governor of NC to polish up that claim of southern appeal.
Was he third in delegates for Iowa? I know he ran second among state convention delegates (the tally shown on television that night), but I wasn't aware of him coming in third on actual DNC delegates.
Some Edwards supporters do, indeed, have a need to blame something, and some are quite nasty, but I think they make a valid point on the media. The press coverage of this race has been complete shit. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I'd love to believe otherwise, but he was never really in the running.
There's no solid progressive narrative in the US, and no media space for progressive ideals. dKos isn't much better. The Dems would rather eat each other than agree on real change.
There seems to be an incredible blindness to practical issues. It's all about the most superficial take on superficial narratives, with people apparently supporting whoever makes them feel good about themselves.
There was only ever going to be one anti-Clinton vote. The press made sure of that by solidifying her status throughout 5/6s of 2007. There was a shot at changing that -- or at least I'd hoped there was -- after Iowa, but they're the Clintons. For all the talk of the press "hating them" (a total crock of shit given how reporters play into their narratives), the primaries were written as Hillary vs Someone Else long ago, as anyone who's watched the whole time knows.
Of course people vote for whomever makes them feel good. And Edwards is no exception there. And, yes, it fucking stupid. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Up here in Ohio, the counties where the Kerry campaign sent Edwards to campaign in, those were the ones where they outperformed Gore/Lieberman. Where Kerry campaigned, they did no better.
I put the result down to the top of the ticket and voter suppression, but still and all, Edwards helped the ticket in Ohio, and the Republicans have never taken the White House without Ohio. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
If you can't carry your own state, where you've been a Senator etc etc you don't have much to add to a ticket. Same with Gore in 2000. Says a lot when your home state won't even hold their nose and back you.
nice try though.
So, yeah, I'm calling BS on you dropping an old stale turd of right wing talking point that falls apart if someone pokes at it with their toe.
All it says when a campaign does not ask people for their vote and then the campaign loses is that you are likely to lose where you don't try to win. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
If you have to campaign aggressively to win your home state there's a problem.
I realize you are an unhappy Edwards backer, but get real. He came in a distant 3rd in this race. Time to get over it and move on.
No, having to campaign at all in a state is not a problem, its a fact of life. If US Presidential politics, a campaign that abandons a state where it does not enjoy a strong PV advantage at the outset to the other party, does not win the state.
Putting the hypothesis "to the test" involves campaigning and losing. The top of the ticket conceding a state and losing is not something that the bottom of the ticket can conceivably do anything to change, so a bottom of the ticket not flipping a Republican PV state to blue in those circumstances is a "no observation" data point.
Judging a candidate on that basis says either the person making the judgment is gullible to Mess Media talking points, or else the person making the judgment is arriving at a foreordained conclusion and and finds the argument a convenient rationalization. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
If John Edwards had insisted on campaigning in his home state, he could have given it a shot. Suspect he also knew he couldn't flip that situation given his own weak standing there. C'est la vie. He added nothing to the ticket in the end like a 20 yr younger John Glenn might have. Favorite sons usually have some extra support.
I get very little info from the mass media. Blaming your problems/losses on them also says something. Edward's message did not sell. Not in 2004 and not again in 2008. Not in states with retail politics nor in those with wholesale messaging. Sorry. At some point you gotta move on. Or you can wring your hands until they are sore. Up to you.
Plan A fizzled, and then Plan B went phlump, and he was left with Plan C ... but as long as a campaign has money to run, there's nothing to force a candidate out of the race. Utsukushikereba sore de ii
Edwards is deep in debt until his matching funds come clear which could be a while as the FEC doesn't have a quorum and therefore cannot release funds.
