Would Clinton be the nominee if Edwards' affair had come out earlier?

[John_Mace]

Howard Wolfson think so.

Hillary Clinton would be the Democrats’ White House nominee today if former presidential hopeful John Edwards had come clean earlier about an extra-marital affair, a top aide to Clinton believes.

“I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee,” Howard Wolfson, who was the combative communications director for Clinton’s doomed campaign, told ABCNews.com.

Now, I generally take Wolfson’s musing with a large grain of salt, but this got me thinking… Is this a possible ploy to get some supers to switch at the Convention and give the nomination to it’s “rightful” owner-- ie, Hillary Clinton? Maybe this is just a trial balloon from the Clinton camp, but it sure seems like an odd thing to put out there when Clinton is supposed to be behind Obama 100%.

Thoughts?

[Harborwolf]

That was my thought as well. For someone who is supposed to have moved on and committed herself behind the actual candidate, she seems to still be stuck on the coulda woulda shouldas. I agree that she’s floating the notion out, either to see who bites for a convention floor shootout or to put the lean on Obama for the veep slot.

I just can’t see a reason to be second guessing this far after the fact.

[Little_Nemo]

I don’t know. I think it might have hurt Hillary. The revelation of Edwards’ infidelities would have provoked memories of Bill Clinton’s infidelities and the problems they caused the Democratic party. There might have been a backlash against Hillary Clinton with a feeling of “let’s not go through this again”. Obama would have been seen as the “safe” candidate.

[Marley23]

I don’t see it as a ploy. It’s just bitching from people who can’t accept the fact that they got beat.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@Harborwolf

That was my thought as well. For someone who is supposed to have moved on and committed herself behind the actual candidate, she seems to still be stuck on the coulda woulda shouldas. I agree that she’s floating the notion out, either to see who bites for a convention floor shootout or to put the lean on Obama for the veep slot.

Well, to be fair to Hillary, this is Wolfson saying it, not her. I’m sure ol’ Howard is desperately eager to find reasons why his professional efforts failed so miserably. After all, it can’t be any mistakes HE made, right?

[Harborwolf]

@EddyTeddyFreddy

Well, to be fair to Hillary, this is Wolfson saying it, not her. I’m sure ol’ Howard is desperately eager to find reasons why his professional efforts failed so miserably. After all, it can’t be any mistakes HE made, right?

Perish the thought. It just seems so durn hinky. Hillary makes her statements about her supporters being heard. Now this.

[elucidator]

Hillary lost because she counted on the accepted wisdom of centrism, she was afraid to stand for change when the situation demands change. Even if we win, the country is in very deep kim chee. Liberals have that one great failing, they are afraid to be thought radical, they cringe from the accusations of weakness and lack of patriotism, and thereby *demonstrate *weakness and lack of patriotism. Usually, this isn’t too bad, but there are times that call for serious change, and these are them, the ones that try our souls.

Edwards was considerably to the left of Hillary, Obama just the merest hairsbreadth to the left of her. For Edwards supporters (like me, at the time) the natural second choice was Obama. For progressives its pretty much always fight for what you want, take what you can get, and hang on grimly to it as they try to pry it out of your fingers.

[elelle]

Well, perhaps, but you can’t just pedal back on the wayback machine and lay claim to votes in But Only What If Land. People voted on what they knew at the time. To then base that “if they’d known that then, they would have voted this way”, is crazy-making, and useless.

Then, there’s this tidbit, from the OP’s link:

In an interview released Monday, Wolfson also said that Clinton’s campaign knew about the affair but kept quiet.
“Any of the campaigns that would have tried to push that would have been burned by it,” he said.

So, ya had your chance to use that to advantage, and didn’t. Just shut up now, then.

[DSeid]

Again 538 brings some data to a question.

For Clinton to have beaten Obama, she would have needed (as Wolfson correctly points out) about two-thirds of those Edwards voters.

The thing about Iowa, however, is that unlike virtually any other electoral contest, second choices matter, since Democratic caucus rules dictate that a voter may caucus for her second-choice candidate if her first choice does not achieve the 15 percent of the vote required for viability. As such, Iowa pollsters did a lot of work in trying to determine voters’ second choices. And in virtually every survey, Clinton did rather poorly as a second choice: an average of several surveys in December showed that she was the second choice of about 20 percent of voters, as compared with 25 percent for Obama and Edwards (an even later version I have sitting on my hard drive showed the second-choice breakdown as Edwards 30, Obama 28.5, Clinton 23.5)

So the odds are that, if John Edwards had dropped out on the morning before the Iowa caucus, Obama would have won by more points rather than fewer.

It was also the case that Barack Obama appeared to get the lion’s share of Edwards supporters once Edwards dropped from the race

[elucidator]

@elelle

…So, ya had your chance to use that to advantage, and didn’t. Just shut up now, then.

Hogwash. There’s at least 10,000 ways to get a story out without leaving your fingerprints on it. They didn’t know squat, if they did, they’d have been on the phone to Drudge Report in a New York nanosecond.

[John_Mace]

@elucidator

Hogwash. There’s at least 10,000 ways to get a story out without leaving your fingerprints on it. They didn’t know squat, if they did, they’d have been on the phone to Drudge Report in a New York nanosecond.

I thought that at first, too. But the better strategy would have been to hold the story until it was needed-- if Edwards starting climbing in the polls and challenging Clinton. Of course, that never happened, so why bother? As was noted above, why remind people of sex scandals if it doesn’t do you any good?

I don’t know if Hillary is behind this latest idiocy, but I think we can safely say that Bill is none to happy with an Obama candidacy. His absurd answer last week when he was asked if Obama was qualified to be president attests to that. And with Hillary wanting her supporters to be “heard” at the convention, it sure seems possible. Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure.

[Phlosphr]

@John Mace

I don’t know if Hillary is behind this latest idiocy, but I think we can safely say that Bill is none to happy with an Obama candidacy. His absurd answer last week when he was asked if Obama was qualified to be president attests to that. And with Hillary wanting her supporters to be “heard” at the convention, it sure seems possible. Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure.

Underlining mine - this is true. After this convention when Obama and his veep choice hit the floor full throttle until November, the Clinton’s dynasty will have one more hole shot into it. The spotlight will be off them [maybe permanently] and Obama, Michelle and the little ones will have the limelight for a long while. And if Obama makes it into the white house [which at this point I’d be hard pressed to say he won’t] people will be saying, “Clinton who?”…

[Frostillicus]

According to Kos, Howard Wolfson is full of shit:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/11/163149/067/156/566331

[Mr.Moto]

I seldom agree with Kos or the bloggers there, but I think it is indisputable that Edwards voters were more inclined to go with Obama than Clinton as a second choice. We saw tons of that demonstrated here on these boards. Add in the fact that voters turned off by weird family drama won’t be natural Clinton supporters, and this theory completely disintegrates.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

Would Howard Wolfson grow a pair of balls if Hillary took testosterone injections? We’ll never know.

[Oy]

Hello? Wolfson is now working for Fox News. Not exactly showing himself to be a loyalist, is he? He obviously has no stake in anything but himself, so why not a stab at showing that he couldn’t possibly have been to blame for HRC’s loss - no, it was that darned John Edwards’ being in the race that did it!

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

The more I see of Hillary’s campaign staff, the happier I am that she’s not going to be running the government.

[Marley23]

Wasn’t Iowa a caucus anyway? I mean, those are undemocratic and don’t count, so why would it matter if Clinton had won it?

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@EddyTeddyFreddy

The more I see of Hillary’s campaign staff, the happier I am that she’s not going to be running the government.

GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY!!!

I’ve just started reading this Atlantic Monthly article, and the above comment is but a watery shadow of my thoughts on a Hillary Presidency now.

Wow, it was even worse than I’d imagined! The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men. Surprisingly, Clinton herself, when pressed, was her own shrewdest strategist, a role that had never been her strong suit in the White House. But her advisers couldn’t execute strategy; they routinely attacked and undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.

Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

Italics in original. Lordy, lordy, but we dodged a howitzer.

[John_Mace]

@Oy!

Hello? Wolfson is now working for Fox News. Not exactly showing himself to be a loyalist, is he? He obviously has no stake in anything but himself, so why not a stab at showing that he couldn’t possibly have been to blame for HRC’s loss - no, it was that darned John Edwards’ being in the race that did it!

Wow. All he rates in Wikipedia is 1 sentence? With all the shit he threw out during the campaign? As for loyalty, what he appears to be loyal to is $$. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

I guess the statement about Hillary and Edwards gets his name in the news. The more I learn about this, the more it looks like Wolfson could be acting as a lone wolf here. I still don’t trust the Clintons, but Wolfson has ample reason on his own to be stirring up the pot.