THE EDWARDS WINDFALL VOTE. Contra the post-debate analyses on MSNBC, I thought John Edwards did just fine last night. (Former CA Speaker Willie Brown, echoing from a San Francisco studio what sour-grapes Joe Biden was saying onstage in Chicago, said Edwards did really poorly. Huh?) But Edwards needs to be crushing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama among these voters.
Let's face it: It's almost Labor Day, and Edwards is slipping in the national polls. He's also now lost the huge Iowa lead he had spent the past two years building up. I know in politics that the standard "a lot can happen between" warning is a good way to season words you may have to eat later, but if I have to swallow hard in January, so be it: Edwards is not going to win the nomination. That could be a shame for Democrats, too, because he'd be a very hard candidate for the GOP to deal with in 2008.
So the next big moment in the race -- even if it comes gradually, rather than in one big pop -- is the answer to this question I ask in my Baltimore Sun column today: Where do the Edwards voters go? My gut says that if these are Anybody-But-Hillary Democrats worried about her electability, Obama is going to have one, good late shot of beating her; if, on the other hand, they are largely centrist Democrats who fear the party's liberal wing, Clinton may be the eventual benefactor, in which case she'll be tough for Obama to catch. In either case, the Edwards windfall voters may decide this nomination, and it's time to start looking a bit closer at who they are.
--Tom Schaller
