Edwards Tests at 50:50

I don’t want to be too hard on Edwards here as it is understandable that a politician will try to find strong points to stress in an interview, but I couldn’t helpĀ  but chuckle a bit on this one as quoted by The Los Angeles Times:

Presidential candidate John Edwards said Monday that he is the strongest general election candidate in the Democratic field because he’s won in the South and his chief rivals have not been tested there…

“I think in the case of most of the other (Democratic) candidates, they’re just not tested, not at all,” said the former North Carolina senator.

Edwards did get elected to the Senate from a southern state–one time. He then was unable to carry his own state in 2004, and was widely believed to be unable to win if he had tried to keep his Senate seat.

I also see this as attempting to follow the Carter and Bill Clinton paths when the country has changed. The south currently belongs to the Republicans and the real strategy is to limit them to those electoral votes. Democrats will win if they can solidify their hold over the north and midwest (such as picking up Ohio), win in Florida, and/or make further gains in the west.

If I was Bill Richardson, I’d be all over Edwards on this one. Not only has Richardson been tested in a battleground state, he is also qualified to be President.

1 Comment

  1. 1
    Nick says:

    I can see Edwards doing well in some rural parts of the country-but not the South (except for maybe Florida). Edwards couldn’t even help the Kerry campaign wins Edwards’ home precinct, nevermind the state of NC itself.

    The fact is that only 6 of the Democrats’ 30 house seat pickups in 2006 were in the South (and two of those, Foley and Delay) were gifts. Except for Clinton’s winning a majority of the vote in Arkansas, Democrats have not a majority of the vote in any southern state since 1980-even though every post-1972 Demticket (save for 1984) had at least one southerner on it.

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