Posted on 06/06/2003 10:10:54 PM PDT by LdSentinal
RALEIGH, N.C. -- In the final week of Fox's American Idol, it was hard to find anyone here who wasn't rooting for hometown boy Clay Aiken. But another native talent with outsize ambitions was having a tougher time.
For Sen. John Edwards, there were no celebratory front-page stories or arenas jammed with cheering fans, just the usual commentary and letters to the editor arguing that A, he's an opportunistic novice with no business running for president, or B, he's one of his party's brightest hopes and a credit to his state.
Some Democrats look at Edwards and see ''Bill Clinton without the sleaze,'' as the Wilmington Star-News put it in a Jan. 3 editorial: young, good-looking, smart, articulate and Southern, with a shot at carrying at least part of a region Democrats desperately need to win the White House. Edwards says he has small-town Southern values ''appealing to a lot of Americans.'' With his drawl and geographic advantage, he fits the image of Democrats who have won the presidency in recent decades.
Yet it's unclear at this point that he could win his own state, much less other Southern states. In the first term of his first job in politics, he's having the same trouble Arkansas governor Clinton once had convincing the home folks he's a credible national candidate.
Clinton was encouraging
Even Edwards' first-place showing in first-quarter fundraising -- $7.4 million -- didn't raise North Carolinians' opinions. Polls since then show that most don't think he should run for president and, if he were the Democratic nominee, he would lose his state to President Bush . ''They get it,'' says former congressman Bill Cobey, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. ''This guy's not even served a term in Congress and he thinks he should be president. They don't know why he's doing this.''
But Jim Hunt, a former four-term governor and an Edwards ally, says that will change. ''A lot of people here still don't know John Edwards,'' Hunt says. ''It's hard for many of them to conceive of a young new senator from North Carolina running and being elected president. They're watching to see, is this possible?''
The better Edwards does in other states, Hunt says, the more seriously he'll be viewed in his own. That could take a while. Edwards is polling in single digits in Iowa and New Hampshire, sites of the first contests in January. His pollster, Harrison Hickman, notes that Clinton was at 5% in New Hampshire in the month before the 1992 primary.
Edwards says he talked to Clinton six months ago about the home-state problem and ''he was very reassuring.'' Clinton won Arkansas both times he ran.
One of the worst Democratic humiliations of 2000 was Al Gore losing his home state of Tennessee. Republicans say Edwards would lose his home state, too, as all Democrats have since Jimmy Carter in 1976. But political scientists say home-state pride would kick in and give Edwards a better shot than any other Democrat.
Democrats from North Carolina concede that their culturally conservative state is tough for them. But they insist that the state is within reach and that there's no excuse for Edwards or any other nominee losing at home.
''Two years after Gore, Tennessee elected a Democratic governor,'' says Scott Falmlen of the North Carolina Democratic Party, referring to Phil Bredesen's win in 2002. ''So you have to lay it at Gore's feet. It was absolutely doable.''
Testing Bush on the economy
Edwards, who turns 50 on Tuesday, was a trial lawyer with no political experience when he won his Senate seat. Since taking office, he has visited all 100 North Carolina counties and hosted constituents in his Washington office at ''Tar Heel Thursdays.'' He is hawkish on defense (he supported the war in Iraq and populist on economics (he often refers to his boyhood in Robbins, a declining mill town, and pledges to make government work for ''regular people'').
Voters here will be able to quiz Edwards on Saturday at his first public town hall meeting in North Carolina since he plunged into the presidential race. He says he'll move past Bush in state polls once people start paying attention to the race and other challengers.
''If you apply a performance test to the job he's done'' on the economy, Edwards says in a phone interview, ''he doesn't meet it. The people of North Carolina have to hear that, have to understand why I think this president has failed and what it is I would do differently.''
Editorial writers reacted with a mix of praise and caution when Edwards declared his intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination Jan. 3. ''He is smart, serious and well-spoken, and he knows who he is,'' The Charlotte Observer said. The Wilmington newspaper called him ''presumptuous'' along with ''honorable'' and ''boyishly attractive.'' Several newspapers warned him not to neglect his Senate job. The Winston-Salem Journal wondered whether he could fulfill his 1998 campaign vow to serve his constituents while running for president.
Edwards' office says he has made 11 trips home this year compared with 14 in the same period last year. There is a perception that he's not here much, fueled in part by Republican rhetoric but also by his presidential campaign travels. As Aiken competed for the Idol title, for instance, Edwards was talking about rural policy in Iowa, which holds nominating caucuses on Jan. 19. He observed Memorial Day with veterans in Arizona, which has a primary Feb. 3.
''Can we worry about what's going on here before we move on to other states and other goals?'' Jennifer O'Neill Beard, 32, of Hickory, an independent who leans Republican, asked in a phone interview.
John Atkeson, 73, of Clayton, who usually votes Democratic, says he is annoyed by people who complain about Edwards' presidential race travel. If they had lived in Texas during the 2000 campaign, he asked in an phone interview, ''would they have been complaining about George Bush running around? It's simple hypocrisy.''
Edwards says he moved from law to the Senate to the presidential race because he could ''do more good for people'' in each succeeding job. He calls the opportunism charge silly: ''If all I cared about was my own political career, you could make a great argument that it would make more sense to wait.''
I predict Edwards will be the first to bail out of the race. Many would say it will be Al Sharpton, but I say Sharpton will hang in till the very end because he is just using the debates to get free exposure, I doubt that braindead moron is spending more than $100.00 a day on his campaign. On the other hand John (flinching) Edwards has raised and spent some serious money, My bet is that he raises some more money and bails after the first primary election
This piece of feces is not fit to run the local dog pound, much less national office.
A year and a half ago, I would have said Edwards was the man to beat. The more he opens his mouth, however, the more he proves himself to be the ambulence chaser he truly is. Besides, what's up with the Bruce Jenner haircut and yellow teeth!
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