Southern dems would not ONLY make splitting the south possible

[Bombtrack]

making the electoral votes of Florida, and with Clark Arkansas and Louisiana tossups, and with both Edwards and Clark having Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee longsots.

But it would also force Bush to do things to excite southern and rural republicans that will turn off independants everywhere.

It will force him to run his campaign more as a right-winger and not as a moderate, as he could if he were running against Kerry(or Dean)

Lately here I've seen Clark supporters posting attack threads on both Kerry and Edwards. We need to be fair and realist in our criticm because it's more effective. More and more I think there is sufficient evidence that the GOP would least favor facing Either Clark or Edwards, and although they'd rather face Dean than Kerry, they'd rather face Kerry than one of the 2 southern candidates. (not ONLY because they are southern and Kerry is northern however).

[LiberalBushFan]

1. Southern moderates aren't going to love Edwards just because he's Southern

Mainly because he's too pretty. They'd prefer tough, brave Bush.

[PVnRT]

4. Try to reduce your brush size there

You're painting with much too broad a stroke.

[Bombtrack]

9. Edwards is an American dream story. He's like Atticus Finch

Maybe some ugly people will resent his good looks, but just as many will like more him subconciously because of his looks. He will benefit from unintentional, animalistic shallowness that tons of voters have.

[HereSince1628]

13. Well, a very much better compensated Atticus Finch maybe

But then I didn't notice the part in To Kill A Mockingbird where Atticus backed corporate factory hog farms, either.

[Bombtrack]

15. when did Edwards back them?

could you provide a link or are you just spreading lies?

[SheilaT]

2. A couple of thoughts here.

First off, the south is not monolithic. I'm not sure if that piece of information has been discussed here, but it should be. Each southern state, like each and every other state in this wonderful country of ours, is uniquely itself. It seems to me to be rather insulting to many who live in the southern states to suggest they all think alike or will vote alike or are all of them so narrow in their interests and world view that they will only vote for a national ticket that contains someone viewed as One Of Their Own.

How I wish there were more of a genuine discussion of the issues, rather than so much energy spent trashing one candidate after another.

[prodigal_green]

3. job losses

Manufacturing jobs in the South have hemmorhaged out of the country. Southerners have been hit particularly hard by the crap economy. Their sons and daughters have been dragged off to Iraq needlessly. They're just as pissed as the rest of us.

[aldian159]

5. Good call

No group is monolithic, not the south, north, minority votes, white people. Everyone thinks and votes using their own criteria.

That's why I liked it when Dean said "Southerners will vote for us cause their kids are uninsured and they don't have jobs" or something to that affect.

[Bombtrack]

8. Please explain where I trashed anybody

I explicetly asked my fellow Clark supporters to be fair when discussing other candidates. Because many have posted "Edwards can't win" "Kerry is unelectable type posts" which I think are nonsense

My post is about who has a BETTER chance than who.

Kerry isn't just a New Englander. He's from both the Massachusetts establishment, and the Eastern Establishment, and he's an easy target for the golddigger/unrelatable charge, as he's married 2 different women worth over 300 million dollars each, and he inherited 8 figures himself

[HFishbine]

6. Help me out on this

Bush might try to inspire the south by running more to the right and we would appeal to the south how exactly? If the south is some monolithic, homogonized entity that would cause independents to be turned off by appealing to it, how is it that Bush loses by appealing to the south but we gain by appealing to the south?

[Bombtrack]

7. The south isn't some "monolithic, homogonized entity"

and I never said it was. But Southern republicans in the south are as a whole more socially conservative and more concerned with social issues that attract them to the republican party, because they aren't as affluent as republicans in other parts of the country.

In comparison, republicans in New England, New York or The west coast tend to be alot more of the libertine variety, and Bush wouldn't be able to run a campaign that appeals more to the libertine, affluent republicans or republican-leaning independants, if he was worried about the democratic nominee winning Arkansas or Louisiana or North Carolina, because he would need to excite the right in those states

It's amazing how easy people resort to calling me bigoted towards southernors when I try to discuss political trends that oppose the defenses they have for there candidates

[Dhalgren]

11. I understand what you are saying.

But it all depends on whether or not the "Independants" who have formerly voted almost exclusively for Repbulican candidates for President (just look at the Red and Blue states for the last 10 presidential elections) will this time vote Democratic. We can pretty much count on the Southern Democrats to vote for our guy - whoever he is - (but don't forget the Zel Millers down here, there are quite a few), and the Repubs will vote repub, even if Ralph Nader were the nominee. So how do you focus on Southern Independants without skewing the whole campaign too far right?

[Bombtrack]

14. You don't have to, Clark and Edwards naturally have a "moderate"

image in the abstract because they grew up to great positions of power from humble beginnings out of the rural south. They are to the right of Kerry in the abstract, and that is what will make alot of difference.

Even though they have pretty darn similar platforms as Kerry, they could run as populists rather than leftys

[JVS]

10. This did fail in 2000

[Bombtrack]

12. actually making Bush Work harder for Tennessee and Florida

which we probably should have won if it wasn't for dirty tricks
http://www.nashvilleinsanity.com/NPbreakingnews.html
allowed us to secure the upper midwest and split the western swingstates(OR, NM)

Look at the margins of Victory in those states. It wasn't by much in alot of them. McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis never got anywhere close to how much Gore got, and the fact that the republicans facing them wrote the south off early on, they were able to win all the other swingstates. Look at Dukakis in particular.

He was crushed in the electoral vote but not in the popular. The same thing is very possible with a Kerry candidacy.

Bush1 won Florida by 22 points!