On January 30, four days after earning an embarrassing bronze in his birth state of South Carolina, former North Carolina senator and Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards returned to the ravaged city of New Orleans, where he’d launched his 2008 presidential campaign 13 months earlier, and announced that he was abandoning his bid for the White House. ““We do not know who will take the final steps to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said, “but what we do know is that our Democratic Party will make history.” For the record, that was 105 days ago.
Apparently, 26,181 West Virginians are either unaware of that fact–or don’t really care.
When the Mountain State primary returns rolled in last night, no one was surprised to see Hillary Clinton carrying 67 percent of the vote, or Barack Obama finishing a distant second with 26. That’s precisely what the polls predicted. But John Edwards with seven percent–more than a quarter of Obama’s vote? This was a guy who hadn’t been a living, breathing candidate for president for three-and-a-half months, and had only drawn four percent in Nevada when he still was. It’s worth noting that Edwards’ name has remained on most post-Jan. 30 ballots, and in the early stages of his electoral afterlife, he scrounged up some support: 10 percent in Oklahoma, five percent in Arizona and four percent in Tennessee on Super Tuesday. But since then, he’s only managed to snag two percent (Ohio), one percent (Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Mississippi) or zero percent (everywhere else) of the vote. Which makes his seven-percent finish in West Virginia all the more surprising–and significant.
Most pundits are interpreting the Edwards resurrection as a bad omen for Obama. It “presage[s] problems for him in a general election match-up with [John] McCain, particularly in rural states such as West Virginia,” writes the Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel. And insofar as Obama will inevitably face McCain in November–unless, of course, a sperm whale slides onshore and swallows him whole–that much is true; you can lump these Edwards voters with the 47 percent of West Virginia Democrats who told exit pollsters they’d vote for McCain over Obama, or simply refrain from voting. But it’s worth remembering that Edwards is not only white–he’s a guy. Plenty of Mountain State Democrats–okay, most–dissed Obama by voting for Clinton. The 26,181 who went out of their way to cast useless ballots for a white, male non-candidate were voicing their opposition to Clinton, too. Making history? they thought. I’ll pass. All of which goes to show that neither of the remaining Democrats–despite Clinton’s claims to the contrary–would stand a particularly strong chance of winning West Virginia in the fall. If a full seven percent of Democratic primary voters (the most loyal of party loyalists, mind you) are so repulsed by both viable Dems that they’d vote for the nonexistent Edwards instead, just imagine how the other half of the electorate–i.e. the half that doesn’t like any Democrats, and that carried Bush to a 13 point victory there in 2004–will break on Election Day. Almost heaven? Try a little lower.
If his strong showing basically proves that his beloved Democratic party will lose the Mountain State to McCain, why did I joke earlier that Edwards is smiling at home in Chapel Hill this morning? Call it the “I Told You So” factor. Before Clinton’s recent populist transformation, Edwards occupied the post of pugilistic people’s candidate. (He wore jeans; she wears pantsuits. Enough said.) And last fall, his campaign’s main argument was–surprise, surprise–electability. “It’s not just a question of who you like,” he said in Iowa. “It’s not just a question of whose vision you are impressed with. It’s also a question of who is most likely to win the general election.” Like Clinton, Edwards’ logic relied on the implicit notion that some swing voters aren’t ready to elect an African-American; unlike Clinton, it also relied on the implicit notion that some swing voters aren’t ready to elect a woman. “Obama’s drawback is obvious,” Cliff Ferguson, an Edwards supporter from Hamburg, Iowa, told me last October. “If he gets the nomination… all kinds of people will crawl out from under their rocks and throw mud. Boy, it’ll be ugly. And it’s the same with Hillary, ‘cause she’s a woman. Attacks are all they have, the Republicans.”
If Clinton loses the Democratic nomination, and Obama loses the general election, it may look, in the end, like the white dude was right all along.
