Eric Kleefeld crunches the numbers a bit and suggests that John Edwards was the winner of the second choice sweepstakes, which would be in line with pre-caucus polling indicating that he was the most-frequently-named second choice.
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Second Choice
04 Jan 2008 08:25 am
Comments (21)
Petey, you're an Edwards hack. I don't really mind, I suppose, it's just weird-you bring the kind of fanatical mind-bending I've come to expect from the Ron Paul camp to the Edwards campaign. Carry on if you like, just know your perpetual cheerleading is likely to turn more people off of your candidate than on to him.
"Petey, you're an Edwards hack."
Is what I'm saying here somehow wrong, deceptive, untrue, or off-topic?
Is my writing boring?
"Carry on if you like"
Why, thank you. It's not often that we get to pick the face, heart, and brain of the Party. In such rare circumstances, I prefer engagement to cynicism, myself. But carry on with your cynicism if you like.
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And FWIW, I found the details of the entrance poll fucking fascinating. A year of talk, and now there's finally data.
That wasn't cynicism, Petey, that was advice. But keep on telling people who like Obama and Clinton that they're idiots for not lining up behind Edwards and see where that gets your boy. I say, if Edwards had a brain, he'd drop out now and sign up to veep on the O train that'll be rattling its way to victory. Then, if your lucky, eight years from now your man might get elected.
"But keep on telling people who like Obama and Clinton that they're idiots for not lining up behind Edwards"
Is that really what I was doing here? I thought I was talking about the meaning of the second choicers.
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I understand you Obama folks are riding high. Enjoy yourselves. Let's see where you are in a month.
"and suggests that John Edwards was the winner of the second choice sweepstakes"
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
As an Edwards supporter, I'm very heartened at the possibility that Obama helped bring in massive numbers of new voters, particularly under-30 voters (who tripled their turnout, and broke 57% for Obama, according to entrance polls they tell me), because if that holds for outside Iowa, it suggests some pretty nice coat-tails for a real chance at liberal victories throughout Congress.
Republicans and conservatives in general do NOT want a massive increase in Democratic turnout (the Iowa caucus Democratic turnout was 90% greater than 2004 and 290% greater than 2000) and a greater turnout of under-30 liberals.
It is far from time for Edwards to stop fighting. In fact, we may be likely to see a new stage of hell-raising, and I don't think he will miss the fact that a lot of his supporters are also cheering what Obama appears to have done.
But since my beliefs and values and policy desires don't change based on what candidate or politician leads or wins, I see it as a very good omen that there *could* be a much greater Democratic and young Democrat turnout, which is good for all liberals and progressives running, I would think. And that seems good for my preferences for agenda and rhetoric and policies, so that's good.
Or Iowa is some weird exception and doesn't say anything about the rest of the country. That's an empirical question, I supposed to be decided by time and new data.
I could chase down some choice Petey quotes in some other threads, but, ah, what the hell, I'm lazy. Besides, Edwards is my second choice. If he gets elected, I'll be, if not excited, at least tremendously relieved.
"Always the bridesmaid, never the bride."
The funny thing is that if it weren't for the under-30 vote, Edwards was actually nicely positioned to win Iowa by being the bridesmaid.
If he'd walked into the caucus down 4 or 5 points, the bridesmaid would've become the bride because of the second choicers. But instead he walked in down 13 because of the under-30's, and that was too much to make up.
Now he's gotta run Seabiscuit's race.
"particularly under-30 voters (who tripled their turnout, and broke 57% for Obama, according to entrance polls they tell me)"
The 57% figure is one of the damnedest things I've ever seen.
To put it into perspective, it means Obama came in third among the entire over-30 electorate and still won the caucuses comfortably.
Check out Obama's age demographics:
57% 17-29
42% 30-44
27% 45-64
18% 65 & up
Is that weird, or what?
And FWIW, it wasn't so much the under-30 turnout that did it. It was the under-30's voting as a bloc that sealed things.
> ut keep on telling people who like
> Obama and Clinton that they're idiots
> for not lining up behind Edwards and
> see where that gets your boy.
Personally I find Petey's ability to suss out a positive Edwards angle in any happening or blog post to be tiresome at times. But I don't think that he generally attacks other candidates or their supporters - he just uses every opportunity to point out why he thinks Edwards' speeches, policies, etc are superior. I don't see anything wrong with that; neither Obama nor anyone else has been annointed at this point.
Cranky
The funny thing is that if it weren't for the under-30 vote, Edwards was actually nicely positioned to win Iowa by being the bridesmaid.
You're right. If a bunch of voters had voted differently than they actually did, things would look different. Deep.
It was the under-30's voting as a bloc that sealed things.
57% isn't really much of a bloc. More than 4 out of 10 voted for someone other than Obama.
Petey, usually a "consensus candidate" achieves a consensus among the voters and actually wins. Nevertheless Edwards did a good job down the stretch. My guess is that the emotional two-minute spot Edwards ran on Wednesday night was responsible for the overnight results showing him surging as the second-choice candidate, and helped move a lot of people to vote for him on the second round. I wonder if he will come out with a similar spot here in New Hampshire.
I think we can now anticipate a substantial flocking here for Obama and away from Clinton, since a lot of people have remained undecided until the end. The question is will Edwards cut further into Clinton's numbers and help produce a cascading Clinton fall. Clinton's supporters must be extremely demoralized, and Edwards smartly tried to portray the results as a collective victory for the two "change" candidates, and a repudiation of the Clinton machine, which didn't crack 30%.
Edwards speech was much better than Clinton's, and his supporters clearly more enthusiastic. Clinton wasn't even able to draw a modest crowd of true believers - of which there appear to be precious few - to her concession speech, and had to rustle up a gang of pros. Frankly, she looked like she wanted to give up, and the visual elements of the speech were terrible, with the gloomy and ancient-looking Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright framing a tableaux that could have been titled The Passing Generation. She has squandered a massive early national lead, and lead in Iowa. The message of last night and the past several months is that her ceiling has long since been reached, and that she simply can't attract enough independents to win the general election. And I suspect we're going to see a similar result here in New Hampshire, since independents have been polling hugely in Obama's favor. Everyone for whom the winnability is a key issue should conclude that Clinton just doesn't have what it takes to pull her campaign over the top.
And FWIW, it wasn't so much the under-30 turnout that did it. It was the under-30's voting as a bloc that sealed things.
This is true. Youth darlings have come and gone in the past, but usually it turns out that those young enthusiasts don't actually vote. Obama is the first guy I can remember in decades who has actually succeeded in getting young supporters to organize themselves and vote in huge, decisive numbers. This is especially impressive in Iowa, where the organization requires more than just getting people to walk into a voting booth for ten seconds, but also instructing them on how the caucus process works, getting them to caucus locations for an extended deliberative process.
Alright, fine. Lest I be accused of Petey-baiting without adequate textual evidence:
The funny thing is that Obama hasn't gotten to the 50% point yet in the Party he's going to need to get enough delegates for the nomination.
The Obama-bots haven't figured out yet that attacking the principles of the Democratic Party may not be the best strategy going forward.
Posted by Petey | January 4, 2008 8:02 AM
And:
Fuck off and die.
That day will come in a month if Obama is our nominee, but Chairman Dean has set up a nice 4 state system to test our candidates in a variety of settings before we all have to fall in line.
Until then, I'm not going to embrace a triangulating candidate who is trying to gain the White House by distancing himself from the Democratic Party and our shared values and principles.
Posted by Petey | January 4, 2008 7:21 AM
To be fair, he follows this with:
Sure I'll retract.
It was only your call for ignoring Obama lack of progressivism and coming together after only one state voted in praise of Obama's empty campaign of personality that motivated me to tell you to fuck off and die.
I hope you live long and prosper, Matt Weiss.
Posted by Petey | January 4, 2008 8:50 AM
I take the last sentence to be uttered ironically, but he may very well wish Mr. Weiss a long and prosperous life. He may also have pointy ears-I've never seen Petey in photos or real life.
Perhaps this is merely the documentation of a rare spike in Petey aggression resulting from the hormone load his adrenal glands secreted into his bloodstream during the caucuses, and that everything has already returned to normal. If this is true than my Petey reading is derived from an unrepresentative sample, and I apologize for the skewed presentation of his rhetorical habits. They did not come out of nowhere, however.
"The question is will Edwards cut further into Clinton's numbers and help produce a cascading Clinton fall. Clinton's supporters must be extremely demoralized, and Edwards smartly tried to portray the results as a collective victory for the two "change" candidates, and a repudiation of the Clinton machine"
Yup. Edwards needs to beat Clinton for second in NH to live to fight another day. Strategy, tactics, and heart are all aligned in having Edwards go full on at Clinton over the next 5 days.
"Perhaps this is merely the documentation of a rare spike in Petey aggression"
Petey's perfectly willing to be pugnacious when it's proper.
Is it possible that Petey is John Edwards?
Is it possible that Petey is John Edwards?
LOL...Petey just loves his candidate and must instinctively behave as JE does...that being combative and confrontational.
Go on over to Kos or atrios sometime...the comments read like a trial lawyer in a corner convention.
Yes, it's tiresome. Yes, the confrontational combativeness is the ONLY reason some (many?) of us couldn't vote for JE.
But if it makes them feel better it's easy enough to skip over them.
We have serious problems that need to be solved NOW. Going after each other tooth and fang is not going to solve anything. Working as one nation, respecting each other while drawing our boundry lines is the first step to actually solving these problems.
Obama's economic advisers are both big proponents of Social Security privatization. Obama is going to remodel the political landscape of the USA, he can deliver a bipartisan consensus to deliver what Bush could not. It's fascinating.
Comments closed January 18, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
"and suggests that John Edwards was the winner of the second choice sweepstakes"
He was a huge second place winner. Kleefeld is using incorrect data that actually understates how well Edwards performed among second choicers.
And that's all in spite of the Richardson/Obama deal!
Edwards is the consensus candidate, which is what gives him his small but real chance going forward.
Posted by Petey | January 4, 2008 8:37 AM