So I'd been thinking this thought over the past few days, and then last night I was chatting with some smart people who'd been thinking the same thing: John Kerry should put John Edwards on his ticket right now.
The reasons are simple. Edwards has clearly earned the spot. His message has struck a nerve with primary voters, and he's shown an ability to appeal to groups that Kerry doesn't have nailed down yet -- southerners, blue-collar workers, and independent voters, among whom he actually beat Kerry in several states on Super Tuesday, according to the exit polls.
More: He's a terrific campaigner. I'm not the first to make this observation, but it bears mention because the prospect of it is so delicious. Can you picture him on a debate stage with Dick Cheney? Mr. Closing Argument could well slice Mr. Undisclosed Location to ribbons. Contrast this possibility with Joe Lieberman's lackluster, let's-all-be-pals approach to Cheney in 2000. An Edwards takedown of Cheney could conceivably swing 2 percentage points, and 2 percentage points, as we know, could be decisive.
It's also pretty clear that many rank-and-file Democrats expect a Kerry-Edwards ticket to happen. The expectation was given all the more life by each man's speech on Tuesday night -- Edwards inveighing against the Bushies in what amounted to an audition for the veep slot, Kerry tossing rose petals at Edwards' feet. That rancor blip that emerged in the final two days before the Super Tuesday voting, which led some commentators to suggest that the will between the two men had grown too ill for Kerry to choose Edwards, is now looking pretty ephemeral.
Here's the final reason, the full explanation of which requires that we take a sober, morning-after look at the Kerry phenomenon. Yes, Kerry has swept to victory after glorious victory. But it hasn't happened because Democratic primary voters fell in love with the guy; it happened because Howard Dean, responding poorly to intense and sometimes unfair pressure in the three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, collapsed. There arose a void, and voters cast about, looking for someone to fill it.
Thereupon, they commenced a clinically logical, process-of-elimination search for the candidate most likely to beat George W. Bush. Dick Gephardt just didn't have the mojo that you want your presidential candidate to have. Wesley Clark was tempting, but he was a rookie in a game that required the cool head of a veteran. Edwards had obvious attributes but was a tad green. Kerry had flaws, too, of course -- a somewhat leaden style, the whole Massachusetts liberal thing -- but on balance his positives -- war heroism, experience, intelligence -- made him the man to go with.
The candidate and his handlers need to understand this clearly: John Kerry's overwhelming success in this short primary season was not the result of a sudden inflammation of ardor for John Kerry. Most Democrats I know, insiders and not, still have fairly serious concerns about his ability to wear well on the stump in what is now an eight-month, head-to-head contest against an incumbent who will have piles of money to spend. One thing about Edwards is that he sure seems to wear well. He possesses exactly the attributes that Kerry comes up short on -- charisma, charm, the compelling life story. In other words, he plugs Kerry's holes.
What's the downside? There's only one that people mention with any regularity, which is that Edwards doesn't necessarily deliver a state. This is chiefly based on polls, some old and some new, showing that Edwards (up for re-election this year) wasn't necessarily going to win his own Senate race and that Bush stills leads in North Carolina.
Maybe; North Carolina is a tough state for Democrats. But other states where Edwards' style would play well aren't as tough. West Virginia would be a great place to send Edwards on repeated visits. Kentucky, coming off the Ben Chandler victory in the recent special election, might be ripe. Ditto for Arkansas. Then there are states that are larger and more demographically complex where Edwards could cut into the regions that have typically been GOP strongholds. Ohio, one of the states Edwards won on Super Tuesday among independent voters, is a state in which Kerry could hold down the traditional Democratic bastion of Cleveland while Edwards can pull support in the more Republican-leaning Cincinnati and Columbus. Let Kerry handle Miami-Dade and Broward, but send Edwards to the northern half of Florida; if the Democrats up their vote total in Orlando, they can take the state. Too, have Edwards concentrate on Missouri's smaller cities and towns while Kerry does Kansas City and St. Louis. In Wisconsin, leave Madison and Milwaukee to Kerry, but let Edwards do Green Bay and Appleton.
In sum: Edwards' presence on a ticket may not lock up one single state, but in the 17 battleground states, he's likely to have an appeal that will eat into Republican constituencies and flip several thousand votes in the Democrats' direction.
Kerry selecting Edwards and announcing it soon would be a paradigm-shattering move, the kind the press would call bold and decisive. It would build momentum. I've already seen one poll showing a Kerry-Edwards ticket beating Bush-Cheney by 8 points. If Kerry did this, and if he and Edwards did a quick barnstorming tour, I'd wager that polls two weeks from now would show them up 12 or 15 points.
Granted it's only March, and Bush is just starting to campaign, but 12 points up is a lot better than 12 points back. So do it, and do it now.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.
