I debated for a while where exactly was the best place to put this post. I finally decided on GD. Moderators please correct me if I am wrong.
Barrack Obama. He’s a pacifist. He doesn’t even believe in using nuclear weapons. Can you imagine what this means if Iran, for example, were to bomb us with nuclear weapons? Hillary Clinton. She may be ahead in some polls. But can she carry the South? A-ha! John Edwards is a well-rounded moderate (most of the time at least) like Hillary Clinton. And he is a Southerner. He even has a Southern accent like Bill Clinton. Therefore, he can carry the South–and therefore is probably the best candidate for Democrats to choose if they want to win back the White House in 2008.
On the average, the polls show:
Clinton vs Giuliani = Clinton + 3.2%
Obama vs Giuliani = Obama +0.5
Edwards vs Giuliani = Giuliani + 2.3%
Clinton wins, and she is the only one with any decent edge. Edwards loses. This is the closest race for the Dems, but here Hillary does the best.
Clinton vs Thompson = Clinton +7.5%
Obama vs Thompson= Obama + 8.3
Edwards vs Thompson= Edwards + 8.4%
Clinton is edged out by a tad. Still she wins vs Thompson.
Clinton vs McCain= Clinton + 3.5%
Obama vs McCain= Obama +3.8%
Edwards vs McCain= Edwards+ 2.3%
OBama and Clinton are almost tied. All win vs McCain.
Clinton vs Romney= Clinton + 10.4%
Obama vs Romney= Obama +10.0
Edwards vs Romney= Edwards= 13%
Here Edwards does better, but clearly it doesn’t matter who the Dems run vs Romney. 10+% is hwaaaay above the margin of error.
Every single poll shows Clinton beating every single Repub, except maybe Giuliani, where two polls show him in a slight edge.
Are you buying into the GOP propaganda? The facts say Clinton can win, and does as well or better in most cases. Although I admit that if Romney gets the nod, Edwards will make it a landslide, rather than just a win.
Giuliani is the most dangerous GOP candidate and the one who will not win the Nomination. It’s true that Edwards and Obama poll pretty well too, but Hillary does have the polls and the warchest to win the nomination."
Barack Obama isn’t a pacifist, and I would like to see a cite where he said he would never ever use nuclear weapons, not even in response to a full scale nuclear attack by Russia or China.
That blog was a little hard for me to parse. According to msnbc he has only ruled out nukes against al-qaeda in the afghan-pakistan region. That doesn’t strike me as pacifism, that strikes me as common sense. In fact it really should be one of those things that goes without saying.
Edwards is the “safe” candidate for the Democrats - as was Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. Some Democrats seem to feel the secret to winning elections is to pick the candidate who’s least likely to offend Republicans. But the result is insipid candidates who don’t inspire voters. The Democrats have to learn from the Republicans and realize you’re never going to get 100% of the votes and not be afraid of nominating candidates who some people are never going to like.
We’ve come away with the same lessons learned from previous elections. But I’d disagree with your conclusion that Edwards is somehow the Dems’ ‘safe’ candidate: with the exception of Kucinich who doesn’t stand a chance, Edwards is the Dem candidate most straighforwardly attacking the interests that Republicans exist to defend.
Going from the particular back to the general, I’d take your logic a step further: our take-away from the past several elections should be that for the Dems, there’s no such thing as a ‘safe’ candidate, so we might as well not bother trying to find one. If Kerry could be Swift-boated, then the wingnuts are going to be able to come up with semi-convincing smears to throw at any Dem candidate. So we might as well just choose the one we like on the merits, be it Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, or whoever.
The OP appears confused as to whether the “best” candidate means the most electable in the general or the one who would make the best POTUS. The first is probably Clinton; the latter, of course, Kucinich.
I agree that not all of Edwards’ support is based on the “safe” issue (as you point out he’s actually more liberal than Clinton or Obama on many issues) but some of it is. The OP and some other calls for Edwards tend to focus on his surface rather than his platform. The OP, for example, describes him as a moderate who will attract Southern voters because he’s a fellow Southerner. Others have questioned Clinton’s or Obama’s electability because they are not white men or because they have “negative numbers”. These are not arguments saying Edwards is the best candidate because of his health or education plans. They’re arguing that he’s the Democratic candidate with the best image.
And that attitude is what gets you candidates who get elected. In other words, pundits worry about ‘electibility’ and try to parse the election by calculating appeal to various interest groups, geographic locations, etc. But people tend to actually vote for people who they think would be the president they most want to have.
The candidates who have done best in terms of winning elections were the ‘unsafe’ ones. Bill Clinton was a governor of a small state who trailed a pack of heavyweights. Reagan was an outsider. Bush was an underdog against heavyweights like McCain, who if anything was even more popular and a stronger candidate then than he is now. But look at the candidates who have lost in the past - they were all ‘safe’ choices: Kerry, Mondale, Dukakis, Dole… All mainstream, moderate, ‘safe’ picks. All were crushed in the general election.
That said, I think Edwards sucks as a candidate. This guy has no real qualification to be president. Any city could produce a thousand people with better qualifications than Edwards. This is a guy who has done nothiing but be a trial lawyer, who made it rich in the game, managed to win one election to the Senate, did very little while there, and now wants to be president. Even Barack Obama has better credentials than this guy, and he’s the second-least qualified candidate on either side.
Seriously. Hillary Clinton’s resume makes this guy’s look stupid, AND she’s far more popular. Why on earth would you go with Edwards? He’s about the least safe pick in the bunch. In fact, he’s the only one that I think the Republicans would eat for lunch. If he goes up against Romney, it’ll be slick against slick, and he won’t stand a chance. If he goes up against Guliani or McCain, he’ll look like a lightweight. Dan Quayle all over again.
I agree with your general point, but not with some of your specifics.
The Dem ‘heavyweights’ of the time - guys like Mario Cuomo, Sam Nunn, Billl Bradley, Al Gore, and Dick Gephardt - looked at Bush Sr.'s 1991 approval ratings, and skipped the 1992 primaries altogether.
Clinton’s main rivals were Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown, neither of whom was a ‘safe’ choice relative to Clinton.
Bush was the overdog who’d raised incredible piles of money in 1999. He may have looked like an underdog for about 10 days in early 2000 - between the point when it became clear that he was in trouble in NH, to the point when it became clear that McCain was in trouble in SC - but that’s about it.
Of course, it’s unclear that any Dem could have bested Reagan in 1984, or any Pubbie could have upset Clinton in 1996. The Dems’ problem in 2004 was that none of the candidates were particularly strong or appealing. You’re right about Dukakis, though.
But isn’t picking someone by their resume exactly the sort of ‘safe’ behavior you rejected above? Mondale, Kerry, Dukakis, Dole all had great resumes, as did guys like Howard Baker and Bush Sr. who were the ‘safe’ alternatives to Reagan. ISTM that overemphasizing resume qualities is one of the leading attributes of picking ‘safe’ candidates.
Edwards’ resume is weak, but he’s the major candidate who’s doing the best job of standing up for Dem principles, and turning them into strong positions on the issues of the day. What’s safe about that? You want safe, go for “I want to bring everyone together” Obama, or Hillary, who’s doing so well because people expect her to be Bill Clinton’s third term.
You don’t like Edwards, and that’s fine, but your objections to him have been mostly resume-based, when they haven’t been based on your personal perceptions of him. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t negate the reality that he’s the least ‘safe’ of any of the Dems, excepting guys like Kucinich and Gravel.
Has Edwards managed to explain away this statement on his health care vision for America?
*"Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.
“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”
He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat “the first trace of problem.”*
While I support getting more Americans in for health care screening, the suggestion that you’ll force people to do it as a condition of coverage is insane, not to mention politically suicidal. There’s been a lot of blog commentary about it and some press coverage, but nothing like if he was the front-runner.
A fair point. Yes, I guess I was doing exactly that. Hillary is certainly the ‘safe’ candidate. I just don’t think Edwards has a chance. The ‘unsafe’ candidate in this case that I think could have a shot of winning would be Barack Obama.
But my own previous logic aside, if I were a Dem I’d go with Hillary, because I honestly think she’s got the best shot at winning.
No, but that’s because I’ve never spent a moment considering that possibility.
No, but why does she need to?
Being Southern doesn’t guarantee you can win the South. That’s a little insulting to Southerners, even if there’s some basis for it. And Clinton did okay in the South _ better than Kerry and Gore, yes _ but not great. He won Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee, while Bush got Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Virginia and the Carolinas. And demographic trends in Virginia give the Democrats a shot there even if they don’t nominate a Southerner.
Yes. I mean, you can make an argument that Edwards is the best candidate, but your reasoning is flawed. The Democrats don’t need to carry the South any more than the Republicans need to win the Northeast.
For us old, unreconstructed Populists, Edwards is the best candidate, period. Alas, I don’t think there are enough of us left to turn an election.
Jackmannii: I suspect that what Edwards meant by “It requires that everybody get preventive care” is that everyone would be able to receive preventive care that is covered by health insurance, not that everyone must get an annual checkup or whatever (i.e.: "It requires that everybody get access to preventive care). But I am in no position to prove that that was his intent.
While I’m more optimistic about the chances of other Dems in the general election campaign than you are (I’d say that excepting Kucinich and Gravel, each of them has a decent chance of winning the election if they can first win the nomination), I agree that Hillary’s got the best shot, for two reasons.
One (which we’ve already beaten into the ground) is that so many accusations have already been leveled at her that (excepting the hardcore 30%) it’ll take something really quite exceptional to get people to even pay attention. OTOH, I’m sure the noise machine can come up with fresh-sounding BS about Obama, Edwards, Richardson, etc., and we won’t know how good they are at shooting it down until they do so, or not.
The other is that, by virtue of her sex, Hillary takes out of play the very successful GOP penchant for impugning a Dem candidate’s manliness and masculinity by means unrelated to the issues.
Anyone nominated by the Dems (even Bill Richardson) will be denounced on the right as the extreme of un-American Leftism. So you don’t really need a moderate to win–unless you really want a moderate to govern. You need someone who will positively stand for something that the people want & the other guy doesn’t stand for–a “positive selling point,” if you will. This gives people a reason to vote for them as opposed to voting against the other guy.
Hillary Clinton is an odd one. It’s “not a woman’s place” to be President, but effectively, she is the incumbent in this race, & has that advantage. Her selling point: health care, which gives her an additional positive beyond familiarity & incumbency.
Barack Obama & Bill Richardson–while both nice, moderate gentlemen–will seem “too foreign” to a lot of people. Even if they sway enough swing voters, they will have a hard core of bloodthirsty opposition on the other side, who will see them as the ultimate Fifth Columnists–never mind that that has nothing to do with reality–& seek to undermine their administrations by all means available. Barack’s selling point is his own intellectual ethic, which is a bit vague. Richardson is a likable moderate, & unexceptional as such. Ah well.
John Edwards is a populist. He doesn’t call himself a leftist, or say that he represents “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” like Howard Dean; instead he talks about standing for regular people–the poor, the common–without lapsing into polarized political-affiliation terms. This is his genius. Of course he’s an economic leftist by the historic standards of the US. Of course, so is Mike Huckabee, & so was W Bush, albeit less sustainably–so why define it with left/right terms?
So, yeah, Edwards runs a good campaign. Pity he’ll lose a lot of votes (including mine in the primary) due to his lack of governmental executive experience, & Washington experience (relative to, say, Biden)–thus appearance of overreaching his grasp. I’d rather make him Attorney General or Sec. of HHS.
Oh, I forgot Biden & Dodd (my favorites, oddly enough). They each need a good positive selling point. I respect their experience, but they’re running against an incumbent & need to realize that.
Moreover, as I’ve argued before, national polls are meaningless, since we do not elect presidents by popular vote. We have to look at state-by-state polling, and particularly the swing states.
From the November 19 issue of Time Magazine:
Hillary Clinton is much less likely than Obama or Edwards to persuade swing voters, it seems to me.
I don’t see any trends here that should give national Democrats hope, unless, of course, they nominate and run nationally people like Jim Webb or Mark Warner. Frankly, I don’t see that happening.
Virginia Democrats as a species are a bit different than their brethren in the DNC or in Kos country. They’re far more respectful of the military, more socially conservative, and far more friendly to gun rights.
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