I haven’t been blogging about the American presidential election, though I’ve been following it as closely as one can. And I notice that no matter how John Edwards does in the early primaries and caucuses, he is not the focus of media attention. When he beats Hillary Clinton into third place in Iowa, the focus is on Obama’s rise and Hillary’s fall. He barely gets a mention. And when he places a poor third in New Hampshire, he doesn’t get mentioned at all.<\/p>\n
I haven’t been blogging about the American presidential election, though I’ve been following it as closely as one can. And I notice that no matter how John Edwards does in the early primaries and caucuses,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-edwards-08"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe conventional wisdom — you know, the type that believed that Clinton was a sure winner in Iowa, and that Obama would sweep New Hampshire — has written off John Edwards.
\nAt the risk of getting everything wrong, let me suggest that there are two reasons why Edwards is still in this race. They are called South Carolina and Nevada.<\/strong>
\nLet’s start with South Carolina, which holds its Democratic primary on 26 January. This is the state where Edwards was born. It’s the only state he won in the 2004 primaries, getting 45% of the vote. And he’s there already, campaigning aggressively and tirelessly, announcing new endorsements.
\nAre the 2004 results in any way relevant to today? They might be. Edwards’ “poor” showing in New Hampshire yesterday — 17% — was actually a big gain for him. In 2004, he only won 12% of the New Hampshire vote following his surprise performance in Iowa. And from that 12%, he went on to win 45% six days later in his home state. This year, he has 17 days to turn things around and to win his first primary victory. No one knows if he can pull this off.
\nThe one thing we can be certain about in this election year is that the polls are completely wrong and cannot be trusted<\/strong>. Ignore what they say. Let’s rely on reason and experience — and those tell us Edwards should do well in, and possibly win, the next primary.
\nAs for Nevada, the media spin — from the people who got it wrong about the first two states — is that the powerful culinary workers union, a part of the UNITE HERE union, will be endorsing Obama. Or maybe Clinton. But not Edwards.
\nBut national union president Bruce Raynor has made it clear publicly that whatever the brothers and sisters in Nevada say, he supports Edwards. And in 2004, UNITE HERE was the main union backing the Edwards campaign. This should come as no surprise, as this is the union of clothing and textile workers (as well as hotel and restaurant workers), and Edwards comes from the family of a mill worker.
\nSo whatever the local union decides, there is going to be a lot of union support for Edwards in Nevada, and Nevada is a union state.
\nOnly 24 hours ago, the Clinton campaign people were tossing around the idea that Hillary might not even campaign in South Carolina and Nevada, though they’re obviously going to change their tune today.
\nThere are still quite a few scenarios where Edwards can still win this race — and the mud-slinging between Obama and Clinton is certainly going to help. Iowa proved that money cannot buy this election, and New Hampshire showed that media pundits will not decide for voters who has “momentum” and who is in decline.
\nThe next few caucuses and primaries will be decided not by pollsters and pundits, but by the ordinary working people in John Edwards’ home state and in one of the few union powerhouses in the U.S. Edwards is still very much in this race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"