Iowa First Lady Backing Edwards

Comments (19)

Daniel wrote on December 16, 2007 11:41 PM:

In another major campaign development, Rudy Giuliani is moving out of New Hampshire!

Mike timmons wrote on December 17, 2007 12:30 AM:

Since Rudy is moving his circus train to Florida, is he now a Tampa Bay Devil Rays fan or a Florida Marlins fan?

I like to keep up with the "Hot Stove" league, which in Rudy's case means he is trading in his wife for a new mistress.

kjoe wrote on December 17, 2007 12:33 AM:

I report--you decide. from profusion 123------------------------

Superstar MADONNA will be supporting presidential candidate HILLARY CLINTON in the upcoming U.S. elections, according to reports.

The 49-year-old, who is said to be a distant cousin of the former First Lady, was overhead discussing her plans to endorse the Democratic nominee in the 2008 elections at a premiere for husband Guy Ritchie’s new movie Revolver in New York.

A source tells British newspaper The Mail On Sunday, "She was chatting with guests at the premiere and said she planned to support Hillary. She said she could back her however she could and might even go on a rally." The Material Girl hitmaker’s representative insists the star has no official plans to campaign for the New York senator, but confirms, "She is a fan of Hillary."

CalD wrote on December 17, 2007 12:48 AM:

This is a really interesting development. Definitely an attention-getter for Edwards.

dcshungu wrote on December 17, 2007 1:03 AM:

News that is good for Edwards in IA benefits the Clinton camp, whose main goal is simply to deny Obama a victory in IA, which would position them to win comfortably in NH...

Mixed results before Super Tuesday benefit Hillary.

Johnny2Bad wrote on December 17, 2007 1:22 AM:

"Mixed results before Super Tuesday benefit Hillary."

Q: WTF does that mean?

A: Nothing.

If Edwards wins IA, then everybody plays catch up. Duh.

dcshungu wrote on December 17, 2007 2:12 AM:

Johnny2Bad wrote on December 17, 2007 1:22 AM:

"Mixed results before Super Tuesday benefit Hillary."

Q: WTF does that mean?

A: Nothing.

If Edwards wins IA, then everybody plays catch up. Duh.

Believe me, the Obama Camp knows WTF that means. If Clinton comes out of the early states not seriously wounded, Super Tuesday would be a slaughter house because of her strength in the large deep blue Super Tuesday states (y'know, CA, NY, NJ...). That's WTF. Do some research before your retort because you do not seem to have the big picture yet.

DTM wrote on December 17, 2007 7:37 AM:

It has been obvious for some time that the Clinton campaign would indeed prefer Edwards win in Iowa rather than Obama. In a sense their logic is just a matter of math: Obama is much closer to Clinton in NH than Edwards, so they would rather Edwards come into NH with whatever momentum would go to the Iowa winner. They have also been seeding the notion for quite a while that they started off behind Edwards in Iowa, and generally implying that an Edwards win in Iowa should be discounted. Of course like so much the Clinton campaign has been doing lately, this is a very high risk strategy, and it is getting riskier all the time.

One obvious problem is that Edwards winning NH if he wins Iowa is not out of the question. Indeed, while Obama closing the gap on Clinton in NH has received the most attention, quietly Edwards has also been making up ground on Clinton in NH, and the current gap in the polls is not insurmountable in light of what we saw in 2004. Obama being above Edwards in NH complicates matters, but notably Kerry had slipped behind Clark in NH (in addition to Dean) before his comeback in the 2004 cycle.

A second obvious problem is that it is possible that Clinton will end up third in Iowa, and indeed possible that she will end up a somewhat distant third if the second choice dynamics play out poorly for her. That could lead to Obama claiming victory over Clinton even though Edwards was the overall winner, and then Obama using that fact to win NH.

Of course people like dcshungu like to suggest that Clinton can afford to lose the early states in this fashion, largely by talking about Clinton's Super Tuesday support as if it were immutable (Giuliani is making the same sort of argument, incidentally). But history suggests that Iowa and NH tend to play a field-narrowing function even when the results split. So, it is entirely possible that such a race would evolve into an Obama-Edwards contest with Clinton being effectively out of contention. She would still have money, of course, but that wouldn't do her much good if she is no longer viewed as a viable candidate.

All that said, I think it made sense for the Clinton campaign to take such risks, although that is not to say their strategy has been well-executed. Obama had been gaining share in both Iowa and NH, and Clinton likely calculated he would be very difficult to stop if he swept the early states. So Clinton had to try to do something to change that dynamic, even if it cost her Iowa.

The basic problem for her campaign is that none of what they are trying seems to be working. And that may just be a problem without a solution.

someone wrote on December 17, 2007 8:04 AM:

DMT,

I really enjoy reading your comments here.

DTM wrote on December 17, 2007 8:14 AM:

someone,

Thank you!

DemAC wrote on December 17, 2007 8:38 AM:

kjoe,
Somehow I think the DMR endorsement a bit more powerful than Madonna’s. :-)
But, hey, we’ll take anything coming our way; Hillary is a big tent Democrat.

DonnaG wrote on December 17, 2007 9:00 AM:

Meanwhile, Hillary team's latest rescue-her-highness strategy is to have Bill Clinton jump in and do the heavy lifting which she is too weak to accomplish on her own with respect to generating trust or enthusiasm.

That, at this point, Bill Clinton needs to rescue Hillary from Penn/Co's failures, and then stand in for her with voters is a strategy facing reasonable disbelief and bespeaking desperation:
1] all who already had doubts about her 'strong and experienced' mantra are watching her be unable to handle her own campaign as well as watching her be unable to persuade voters on her own.
2] Bill Clinton has added to the negative vibrations surrounding her campaign ['I was against the Iraq War from the beginning', 'the boys are piling on her', etc] and Bill now has had to acquire his own stump handler to keep him on message.

If, as has been stated, the Hillary campaign is trying to stop Obama by strategizing/supporting Edwards in Iowa, then that too is a symptom of not being able to win on merits; that would be a sympton of trying to win through an intentional 'divide and conquer' politics.

I have been one of those wait and see Democrats who has had some real reservations about Hillary's actual record, but was never to the point of declaring that I would not vote for her in the general. But.....at this point, watching the Hillary team in the past week or so, I have pretty much concluded that I cannot in good conscience ever vote for this team, should those strategies actually bear poisonous fruit in the primary.
Hillary's is the team the one adopting the worst of politicking ala Karl Rove: repeatedly smear Obama through underlings with innuendos [as was McCain smeared by Rove in SC in 2000], deny intent and responsibility, attack to undermine Obama on his strengths while, lol, stealing his messages for themselves.
No one should be rewarded for following that vile playbook, and no Democrat should allow such a surreptitous trashing of our party's future in order to try to recapture old personal power positions.

DemAC wrote on December 17, 2007 9:08 AM:

DTM wrote: It has been obvious for some time that the Clinton campaign would indeed prefer Edwards win in Iowa rather than Obama.

I think it’s obvious that the Clinton campaign would indeed prefer Clinton to win in Iowa rather than Obama. DTM wrote on December 17, 2007 9:59 AM:

DemAC,

Absolutely: obviously, Edwards winning Iowa is Plan B, not Plan A, for the Clinton campaign.

kjoe wrote on December 17, 2007 1:28 PM:

DemAC wrote on December 17, 2007 8:38 AM:
kjoe,
Somehow I think the DMR endorsement a bit more powerful than Madonna’s. :-)
But, hey, we’ll take anything coming our way; Hillary is a big tent Democrat.

I do not know if we can agree on this principle---I think we can. Sometimes you can get a headache from trying to analyze the effects of meaningless stuff. In the case of Madonna's endorsement(it was on a gossip site, so I do not even know that it is real), my first reaction was that it was just funny. Then I thought---wait a minute---it might serve the purpose of cheapening the Oprah thing. Then i thought---well---there has been a backlash to the Oprah thing, so......I took an aspirin and moved on.

CalD wrote on December 17, 2007 3:29 PM:

Clinton seemed perfectly happy to let John Edwards have Iowa until Barack Obama moved in and went all Mitt Romney on Edwards. The danger for Clinton then became that Obama would turn his neighbor-state name ID and massive war chest in to a major upset of Edwards -- who really never stopped campaigning in IA after 2004 -- that would cause her trouble in NH and beyond.

That was when Clinton finally went into Iowa in earnest in mid-summer. By August she had expanded her operation to about the same size as Obama's in terms of in-state paid staffers. I think she may actually have more staff in IA than Obama now but she has also spent substantially less on advertising so far, so they may be about even at this point.

Anyway yes, if Clinton doesn't win Iowa outright herself, my psychic powers tell me she would rather see Edwards come in first than Obama. A squeaker of a three-way finish with no really convincing winner would be her third preference.

Edwards himself is in a much tighter spot though. They usually say there are three tickets out of Iowa but it's hard to make a case that there's really more than one for John Edwards this year. It's harder still to argue for more than two and it's almost a coin toss as to who it would be better for him to come in second against.

I think Edwards' original strategy was to try and knock Clinton back to third place, hoping to turn it into an Edwards-Obama race. But Clinton proved tougher than she looked and Obama had the stronger "not-Clinton" brand at that point, so Obama ended up being the sole beneficiary of Edwards attacks on Clinton as well as his own. My guess would be that had something to do with Edwards reverting back to John Edwards 1.0. I also wouldn't be surprised to see Edwards trying a few swings at Barack Obama just to see what happens. If he doesn't finish at least a fairly close second in IA, there really is no third place for him.

dee-moyne wrote on December 17, 2007 4:49 PM:

Iowa Governor's Mansion Janitor Backing Dodd

phil james wrote on December 17, 2007 5:59 PM:

With luck it will depend on which message Iowans believe is more compelling:
1) Let's take back our Democracy from the corporate pirates and Washington influence peddlars (Edwards)
OR
2) Why can't we all just get along? (Obama)
OR
3) Elect me and we can all return to the wonderful '90s (HRC)

I vote for #1

votenic wrote on December 17, 2007 9:45 PM:

2008 Presidential Election Weekly Poll

http://www.votenic.com

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Results Posted Every Tuesday Evening.

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