Edwards Could Have Beat McCain, But The Polls Wouldn't Tell Us Anyway

[dajoki]

Not That It Matters Anymore; But If Edwards Could Have Beat McCain The Polls Wouldn't Tell Us Anyway
Can you imagine? It has come down to exactly the way they (MSM) wanted, didn't it? To us Edwards supporters this should have come as no surprise, the Clinton/Obama matchup was carved in stone right from the very begining, we saw the clues, the writing on the walls, yet we refused to give up, we battled all the way to the bitter end.

You can call me a cry baby, flame away, because it just doesn't matter, this has happened to me before, and I'm sure it will happen again, so I can take whatever you can dish out. But there's something different about this time, it wasn't only about John Edwards, it was and is about his message, his passion for the underprivilaged. Many of us saw him as our only chance to take back our government and return it to whom it belongs, the people.

But that is over, my only hope is that Clinton/Obama where and are listening, I believe Edwards still has the power to swing the outcome of the primary and the GE. Whoever he decides to endorse will recieve a hefty boost in their chances of getting into the White House, and whoever that may be, I only hope that he/she will know why he choose to support him/her and not only use his name, but implement his cause into their platform and take on his issue as if it is their own, it will give us some hope, a reason to become enthusiastic again, I know that I, personally, will back the choice of John Edwards. It could mean the Presidency!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinton vs. Obama on Electability
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/the_elect...

<<snip>>

The electability argument is, at its center, dependent on how Democrats view this nominating fight.

Clinton and her team believe that the party is essentially risk-averse, a position born of the disappointing results of the last two presidential elections in which the party's nominees were negatively defined by a concerted Republican effort.

Obama's claim of electability is based on the idea that the way politics has been conducted over the past several decades need not to be the way it operates going forward. The driving force behind Obama's argument is that unlike the past several elections that have been focused on turning out the base of each party and trying to peel off just enough independents to win, the 2008 contest could well be a transformational choice in which independents and even many Republicans put aside partisanship and cast a vote for him.

Left unsaid, but of course implied, is that Clinton is far too polarizing to change the electoral math and that, if she were able to win, would do so in a squeaker.

Who's right? Well, Republicans have already begun their effort to define Obama for voters. Of late, almost every email out of the Republican National Committee notes that Obama was the most liberal Senator in 2007. (Don't forget just how damaging that same vote rating system was to Kerry in 2004.)

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine Republicans not joyous at the prospect of dredging up all of the old attacks against the Clintons if the New York senator winds up as the nominee.

Either choice represents a risk for Democrats. Obama is less well known and less tested on the national stage but has shown a capacity to reach independents and Republicans that Clinton won't likely be able to match. Clinton is the more polarizing figure of the two, but what else bad could be said about her that voters haven't already heard?

Such is the nature of the choice Democrats face in the next few months.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

washingtonpost.com's Politics Blog
The Fix
BY: Chris Cillizza
John Edwards vs. John McCain Head to Head Matchup Polls
Last Updated: 1/10/08

Leslie Savan
Could Edwards Beat McCain? The Polls Won't Tell Us
Posted January 26, 2008 | 10:26 AM (EST)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-savan/could-edward...

White dude rising? We'll soon find out. But the mainstream media, long determined to ignoreEdwards and keep this a feisty, feuding two-person race http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/where-is-john / , is not letting him show his stuff where it currently counts--against McCain.

Thursday night, Tim Russert was oohing over how close a McCain-Obama or McCain-Hillary race would be: the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal head-to-head match-up poll shows McCain beating Hillary by two points and tying with Obama; Obama and Hillary each clobbered Romney, Giuliani, and Huckabee. When I saw that Edwards wasn't part of the six-pol poll, my jaded jaw almost dropped.

Though I shouldn't have been surprised. CNN also disappeared the former North Carolina senator from its most recent (mid-January) head-to-head poll--even though Edwards was the only Dem to beat McCain in its previous (mid-December) match-up. At the time, CNN polling director Keating Holland wrote, "Edwards is the only Democrat who beats all four Republicans, and McCain is the only Republican who beats any of the three Democrats. Some might argue this shows that they are the most electable candidates in their respective parties."

Why wouldn't CNN include its own previous chart-topper? Don't know. CNN wouldn't return my calls. Granted, a lot has changed in the last month, and other polls have also bumped Edwards from their January match-ups. Granted, too, Edwards is doing poorly in national polls. But so far, Edwards (unlike the shamefully treated Paul and Kucinich) is still deemed debate-worthy. Shouldn't Democrats as well as Republicans have access to information on how all their candidates stand in hypothetical general election contests?

Eviction from "electability" polls is bad enough, but CNN's Bill Schneider and even the esteemed Factcheck.org have called Edwards "misleading" for citing, at the CNN debate last Saturday, his winning performance in the December CNN poll. "It's literally true , but still misleading," Factcheck writes, because, "there is a MORE recent CNN poll, one that shows either Clinton or Obama beating McCain and doesn't include Edwards."

Talk about Chinese finger puzzles, self-fulfilling prophesies, chicken and eggs.

No matter. MSM has moved on. Edwards's new designation is "kingmaker." On Friday, the Wall Street Journal, NBC's polling partner, tsked-tsked that "Mr. Edwards has all but dropped from sight. Generally ignored by the national press and with a campaign bankroll a fraction the size of his rivals," the best Edwards can hope for is to swing his accumulated delegates toward Obama's or Hillary's nomination.

That's no doubt true. By February 6, Democrats are likely to be stuck with the two weakest candidates. As Marc Cooper wrote here, once Hillary locks up the nomination, the rumors about Bill will come fully unzipped, diminishing her chances in November. Meanwhile, Obama's numbers among whites are dropping, largely because of Billary's attacks, whether you consider them to be coded racist appeals or merely color-blind Rove-ian hit jobs.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that by cutting off the race's possibly strongest Democrat--first from media coverage and now from polls--the corporate media could be misleading us toward another Republican administration.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of electoral votes based on the latest polls for each state:

John Edwards - 225
John McCain - 216

January
John Edwards/John McCain
44.3/43.8
http://www.presidentelectionpolls.com/2008/presidential...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Election 2008: Edwards vs. McCain & Romney
Edwards Leads McCain by Nine Points, Romney by 16
Saturday, November 03, 2007
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics...

John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, tops Arizona Senator John McCain 47% to 38% in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey (see crosstabs). The same poll also shows Edwards with the double-digit lead over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney of 50% to 34%.

Over the last ten surveys of the Edwards-McCain match-up, Edwards has always been in front with leads ranging from as little as one percentage point (in February) to as much as 13% (June). The last four Rasmussen Reports polls on this match-up show Edwards with a lead ranging with a more narrow range from four to seven points (see history). In early October Edwards led McCain 47% to 40%.