Edwards Dropping Out Changes Race

January 30th, 2008 By: Michael van der Galien | Tags:
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As Claudia reported earlier today, John Edwards is dropping out. He’ll announce his decision to drop out later today in New Orleans, where he announced a year ago or so that he was running for president. His exist changes the Democratic race: he may not have been a true contender, but overall, he could count on quite some votes and he’s the best Democrat in head-to-head match-up with possible Republican nominees.

Although many people assumed, in the past, that Edwards’ supporters would turn to Barack Obama en masse, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. The more I read about his supporters, and what kind of people vote for him, the more logical it seems to me that the votes will be either evenly divided among Hillary Clinton and Obama, or that most of them will turn to Clinton.

The reason: Clinton is doing better among white blue collar workers than Obama. And white blue collar voters are Edwards’ supporters.

Yes, I could be wrong; perhaps they are anti-Clinton, but the break-downs, thus far, don’t show that. One gets the impression, therefore, that Hillary will embrace the news.

The question will now become, what will happen with Edwards? They say he’s not going to endorse anyone for now. Fine. That’s logical. Logical you ask? Why yes, it’s quite possible that both Hillary and Obama are considering asking him for VP. That would play well with the base, lest we forget, but I think that Clinton would be wiser, from a Democratic unity perspective, to ask Obama to become her running mate were she lucky enough to win the nomination.

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  1. Independent Liberal » Ding Dong
    January 30th, 2008 at 18:40
    #1
  2. Justin Gardner
    January 30th, 2008 at 19:07
    Reply | Quote | #2

    Edwards claimed to be the best in one-to-one matchups, but that was from a poll last year.Annenberg has the facts:http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/clinton-obama_slugfest.html

  3. David
    January 30th, 2008 at 19:14
    Reply | Quote | #3

    Nice article here, which goes into at the end the "Edwards Factor" which sounds like bad news for Obama:

    SuperTuesday Analysis -
    The Democrats Web Battle
    Google Trend & Web Hits Reports

    http://newsusa.myfeedportal.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=43

  4. Tully
    January 30th, 2008 at 19:43
    Reply | Quote | #4

    Kinda depends on who if anyone Edwards endorses. That will swing some votes.

  5. BlogWonks
    January 30th, 2008 at 21:01
    #5

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