RALEIGH — With North Carolinians distracted until last Tuesday with far more interesting political goings-on — oh, and there were some municipal races here in the state, too, in case you didn’t hear about them over the recall roar — the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination has faded quite a bit into the background. Get ready to hear a lot about it, including some new attention to North Carolina’s contribution to the fray, John Edwards.
Next Monday evening, Edwards will begin a series of candidate interviews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” show with Chris Matthews. The senator already did an hour with Matthews a few months ago, at a “Hardball College Tour” stop at N.C. Central University in Durham. It didn’t go well. Now Edwards had another chance to show some class, some grace under fire, and perhaps rejuvenate a campaign that has lost some momentum recently due to the entry of Gen. Wesley Clark.
It’s not as thought Edwards hasn’t gotten some good news, too. This week, Florida Sen. Bob Graham got out of the race. He didn’t have much support, among activists or donors, but it stands to reason that fellow Southerner Edwards stands to gain a bit from Graham’s exit. Still, to capitalize on this — and to salvage his longshot bid for the nomination — Edwards still has a lot of work to do in a relatively short period of time.
Recall the “4-3-2-1” strategy for Edwards that I described a while back. My view (confirmed by some Democratic pols I know) is that Edwards must come in at least fourth in the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses (thus pushing Joe Lieberman to the side)and at least third in New Hampshire on Jan. 27 (doing the same to Dick Gephardt, who presumably will be coming off a strong showing in Iowa). Edwards must then come in at least second in the spate of seven primaries held the following week, on Feb. 3 (including South Carolina, where a solid win would help) and first in next batch of five primaries held Feb. 7-10 that include other Southern states such as Virginia and Tennessee. Doing so, he would become the establishment’s consensus candidate against Howard Dean (thus edging out John Kerry and Wesley Clark).
It’s a series of not-very-probable-but-also-not-impossible feats. Right now, he’s actually doing OK in the first contest, running fourth in a recent Iowa poll. He’s also leading in South Carolina. The problem here is New Hampshire. Despite significant and costly efforts in touring events and advertisements, Edwards is still a relative non-entity there. Dean and Kerry are fighting it out for first and second, not surprisingly. Edwards doesn’t have to match them. But he does have to outperform Gephardt and Lieberman to secure a solid third place.
Recognizing the situation, the Edwards campaign is running some new ads statewide in New Hampshire (and in two Iowa markets) that attack the Bush tax cuts and promote health insurance for children. Edwards was already the biggest-spender on New Hampshire’s leading TV station during the month of September, and will likely be near the top for October. He recognizes that it’s crunch time, that he must strengthen his position in New Hampshire soon in order to make a credible pitch to uncommitted donors and activists in the last quarter of 2003. They’ve got to believe that he is the alternative to Dean — not Kerry, not Gephardt, not Lieberman, and not Clark. They’ve got to see Kerry as fading and inarticulate, Gephardt as over-the-hill and too indebted to the labor unions, Lieberman as too moderate to excite Democratic base voters or please Democratic litmus-test groups, and Clark as a neophyte who is barely a Democrat and not even barely a credible candidate.
Can Edwards sell these propositions? Theoretically, yes. But they are many, voters are conflicted, and time is short.
New Hampshire’s motto is “Live Free or Die.” Edwards will certainly have to “live” there for a while, or his ambitions will “die.” But whatever the outcome, the effort certainly won’t be free.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.