When I was Bronx political reporter half a lifetime ago, I sometimes saw longshot candidates for local office who refused to give up, believing their own aura and energy were enough to push them past better-funded, better-connected politicians. To a person, they were all stunned by their defeats and I was left with one of the great lessons of politics - once engaged in the race, every candidate thinks he has a date with destiny.
Some turn to desperation, simply denying reality when faced with their own worthiness for the post, their own superior ideas, their own plans and destiny. Such a man is John Edwards, former nominee for Vice President of the United States, and the most desperate candidate in the Democratic race for President.
Edwards trails very badly in the polls, and has turned to ever-hotter and more personal attacks on the frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. The national pundits goaded him into going negative, to be sure. But the collision of reality with the candidate's view of himself and his destiny - that's what pushed him over the top, and into behavior that no top tier Republican candidate would ever engage in, lest the ghost of Ronald Reagan smite them for violating his cherished 11th Commandment.
These attacks help Edwards not at all - he's a flat line tilting toward the floor. They may have improved the odds of a real horse race between Clinton and Barack Obama. And, of course, they merely drive up the negatives of those he attacks and benefit the Republicans, a party he professes to despise.
Some believe it's a conspiracy. At the Left Coaster, Jeff Dinelli says that Edwards adviser Joe Trippi - the man behind Howard Dean in 2004 - joined the campaign only six months ago and is "close friends with Obama adviser David Axlerod."
The theory goes something like this: Axlerod and Trippi decide Edwards can't possibly win, so Axlerod sends Trippi to Edwards' campaign to put on a full-blown attack, and like a suicide bomber, Edwards blows up his own campaign, dragging Hillary down in the process with a rallying cry of "Hillary Must Not Win." Hey, stranger things have happened.
So Trippi convinces Edwards - fully in the poll-disbelieving, locked-and-loaded destiny mode I've seen so many times before - to go on and blast Senator Clinton, and then moves over to Obama later on? "Talk about your triangulation,” quips Pamela Leavey.
I liked John Edwards and thought he was a great addition to the Kerry ticket four years ago, and I think some of his populist vision of the country's political arena is much-needed and along the lines of where Jim Webb has gone in Virginia. Maybe he turns it around with a surprising victory in Iowa and New Hampshire, but at this stage, I wouldn't feel very good about that - not in light of how desperate he's acted in the last few weeks. Right now he's lost it, and I agree with Taylor Marsh:
The thing is that John Edwards is a smart man and came to the '08 campaign with a full arsenal, plus experience in Iowa. That's why I never understood when his campaign decided to take a sharp negative turn against Clinton, which includes an ad that is factually incorrect. Iowans hate this type of politics, and Edwards needs Iowa or his presidential hopes are toast. The reviews are in and it's not helping him.
Finally, any Democratic whooping it up over the attacks on the frontrunning Clinton and her slight slippage in the polls should read Chris Bowers' post from OpenLeft:
In short, Clinton is now down a bit because the press told everyone for several days that, because of the attacks, poor debate performance and by "playing the gender card," she should be down. And so, they can move on from the boring, played-out inevitability narrative.
I imagine most people reading this blog are either happy that Clinton is somewhat down, or at least not disappointed. However, they should be careful what they wish for. In this case, what appears to be a Clinton drop in the polls was largely fueled by the same media machine that, most of the time, happily reinforces Republican narratives as conventional wisdom. The lesson here, I think, is to remember that the corporate, established media is still very good at creating national convention wisdom as they see fit. While in this case that conventional wisdom might make many people in the netroots happy, most of the time it won't. It is still a powerful institution that Republicans and conservatives are better able to control than Democrats and progressives, and we shouldn't forget that. After the fact re-branding of debates remains of the biggest reasons George Bush is President instead of Al Gore, for example. Their after the fact coverage of Howard Dean's concession speech in Iowa, or General Petraeus's rosy portrayal of Iraq are even more gratuitous examples. Most of the time, it feels as though the conventional wisdom machine works against us, and even in instances where we might enjoy the conventional wisdom that is being created (and I admit that I enjoy it simply because a blowout campaign is a boring campaign), we shouldn't forget that.
It's true, of course, though I was blasted here for suggesting the media had "colluded" with Clinton's rivals last week. It may have been more accurate to suggest those rivals were manipulated by the media - which has a financial interest in a closer race - and that the leading sucker (I'm sad to say) was former Senator John Edwards.
UPDATE: Today, Edwards compared Senator Clinton to George W. Bush - a foolish thing to do to another Democrat. He did this because Clinton's campaign staffers stupidly tried to plant a question in an audience in Iowa. So Clinton equals Bush, who never faces an unfriendly audience? Who never goes before a non-canned group of people? By that logic, Edwards is another Dick Cheney. After all, they're both super-rich and they both ran for Vice President.
