COLUMN: Ignore the pundits, the voting season is young
Last Saturday’s Nevada caucus was painfully disappointing to the John Edwards campaign. Like Iowa, Nevada has a lot of working class and rural voters whose support Edwards thought he could count on for a strong showing. Indeed, just days before the caucus, several polls had Edwards in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And yet, Edwards placed a distant third. He won a dismal four percent of the vote. Caucus rules are partly to blame-when candidates like Edwards don’t pass the threshold of viability (15-25 percent depending on the precinct), their supporters have to caucus for another candidate. Notwithstanding these caucus oddities, Edwards graciously owned his defeat. “I got my butt kicked. That is what happened in Nevada,” he told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “And the job for me now is – I have learned this from my whole life experience, is when you get knocked down, you have got to get up. You have got to get up and start fighting again.” Matthew T. Richardson, a long-time friend of Edwards, said, “He’s still just as driven,” despite his political losses. “He’s lived through losing his son, his wife getting (breast cancer). I’ve heard him say one time he’s been through the worst he’s ever going to go through. He’s been through it all.” Since his defeats in New Hampshire and Nevada, there have been calls for Edwards to drop out of the race. There has even been some talk that Edwards, if he continues to campaign, will be this election cycle’s Ralph Nader.
The assumption here is that Edwards is pulling support away from Obama-that the two of them are splitting the “change” and “anti-Clinton” votes. It makes sense, but it’s not true. More likely, Edwards is doing Obama a favor by staying in the race.
Edwards attracts two core (and very different) constituencies: the liberal “blogosphere” and the more conservative older, white and working-class voters. The former group, to which I belong, would prefer Obama to Clinton. But the latter group, which makes up the bulk of Edwards’ support, would actually shift to Clinton. Notice that when Edwards did well in Iowa, Obama won, but when Edwards did poorly in New Hampshire and Nevada, Clinton won. So Edwards is drawing votes from Clinton, not Obama.
Another favor Edwards is doing Obama is his promise to stay in the race until the Democratic convention this summer. If there is no clear Democratic front-runner by the convention, Edwards will probably throw his delegates behind Obama (who he’s hinted at preferring over Clinton). That is, of course, unless John Edwards is the front-runner himself.
Let’s not write the Edwards campaign’s obituary quite yet. There are 47 states that have yet to weigh in on the race, with South Carolina holding its Democratic primary this Saturday. Edwards is polling third in South Carolina, but he does have some marginal momentum and unique advantages going into the primary.
First, Edwards won last Monday’s debate by a wide margin. While Obama and Clinton were going at each others’ throats, Edwards rose above petty politics and spoke to the issues most important to South Carolinians: health care, poverty, education, etc. CNN’s Bill Schneider remarked, “John Edwards got himself back in it-he showcases his style and his key issues, and is clearly back in the game.”
Second, Edwards recently received the envied endorsement of Martin Luther King III, MLK, Jr.’s son. In a state where half the Democratic primary-goers are black, this endorsement may give Edwards some traction.
And third, South Carolina is where Edwards was born. He’s the native son and is well-liked in the state.
Still, Edwards and his supporters are under no delusion-it will take a miracle to even secure second-place in South Carolina this Saturday. Certainly, stranger things in politics have happened, but it’s an uphill battle. At this point, though, I’m not supporting Edwards because I think he will win, I’m supporting him because I think he should win. And so long as he’s running the most progressive campaign and offering the boldest solutions, he deserves to be in this race and will have my vote.
So please, ignore the pundits-this is not a two-person race between senators Obama and Clinton. Not yet, at least. Millions of Americans have yet to hear Edwards’ vision for the country. I hope the media won’t deprive them of that opportunity.