Too early, too early.

This poll shows the futility of pandering to the South. Victory will come by solidly taking the industrial states East of the Mississippi and North of the Mason-Dixon line combined with a solid West Coast and peeling off one border state: any one of Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, or Florida. To that extent, Graham or Clark or Landrieu as VP (only) will help. Obviously, Edwards won't help as he can't carry his own state even when at the top of the ticket.

Forget the rest (sorry GaDem).

I agree burbs, and I would say that without Graham on the ticket, throw out FL and replace it with OH on that list.

I really think Edwards has no shot. He can't be the only Southern candidate anymore (Graham), he can't be the insider with the A-team of an organization (Kerry), and he can't be the outsider with fresh ideas (Dean). What's the media narrative that's going to pull up his poll numbers? I dunno, maybe he's angling for something else (raise a ton of money, tell North Carolinians "I listened to you and ended my campaign," then try to hold his seat?). He's a smart guy, and an appealing figure long term, but it's just not his time.

I too agree that Edwards faces a very tough race for the presidential nomination. I also think he would have a very tough Senate re-election bid. His seat always switches parties and he is only polling in the high 40's. With Bush likely to take as much as 55-60 percent on the North Carolina vote in 2004 it makes his re-election campaign that much tougher.

Wow- I agree with what everyone is saying (Chicago and TSE). Its enough already with "panderisng" to the South where our base is not. This would be like the the GOP attermping, year after year, to select a moderate to even liberal San Francisco Republican to lead their souther conservative party.
Although i am not a Dean supporter- i like the Dean slogan- the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party!

I commented on this two weeks ago, but for about 100 years the Republicans hardly took any Southern state and they managed to win national elections. The Democrats need to learn to do the same thing in this day and age.

I will comment on as much of this as I can. Ced, Sen Edwards is not a lock for re-elction, but as I have said before he is a strong favorite. This is the third poll since January that has him running 15 to 20 points ahead of Rep. Burr. Also, Sen Edwards is young healthy has money and is a good campainger, given these reasons it may not change hands. One more thing the continuing GOP saga is going to make it difficult for any Republican candidate at this time.

double d your view of history is true, but it would not work today. The Southern electorial votes are much more than they were a sixty years ago, and the GOP still has there stong hold in the badlands.

Moderate, that may be, but I don't think Bush will be as close as he was in WI, MI, or MN this time. He has no shot at IL - especially with Blago there and Senator Fitzgerald is almost certain to lose. If anything, the self proclaimed great uniter has polarized the country - so the West is the fight now. If the DNC can rebuild the party in Ohio, the Dems win. I think Dean is that candidate. I was skeptical at first, and its still too early though..

Moderate,

Agree that it would be harder to do today. However, I'm not sure the Democrats have much choice. With a Southern moderate in 2000 they took zero Southern states. The fight is in the West and the Industrial Midwest.

I guess what it boils down to is this: Do you feel the Democrats have a better chance to take Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee or Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado?? I think today the answer is the latter.

While some people may think of Former Veep Gore as a southern moderate his campaign was full of flip flop on issues vital to the South. IE pro- tobacco, pro-guns, pro right to work. These are things that Sen. Gore supported, but Veep Gore opposed, I think we felt like we had been had if you will, and being southern will not saye you.

Correct, Double B, and TSE, I'm counting on Ohio. Lots of heavy machining and assembly union jobs there that have gone six feet under. Jobs that remain have little pay and no health benfits. Laid off union workers who used to have health benefits better start thinking about their pocketbooks and not how they would like to have a beer with Bush. PA much the same, except agriculture stronger there than in OH. Dean stand on guns is good in PA because there are lots of avid hunters. If I recall correctly, PA has more deer than people.

There is a desire among Dean people to criticise Edwards now because it's becoming more and more clear that if Kerry falters, the Democratic establishment will have to look to another candidate as a fall-back. With Dean now making trouble for Kerry in New Hampsire polling, Edwards may emmerge as the consensus establishment choice. It's still way early, but I guess the Dean people are looking ahead.

I think Edwards will hang in there this year, but will drop out after his awful showings in Iowa, NH, and South Carolina. I think he will run for re-election in NC, and will likely win. He carried metro Charlotte and won strongly in the research-triangle area, both new south areas, against Lauch Faircloth.

If he decides to stay in the Pres race, I think Bobby Etheridge of Raleigh can beat Richard Burr.

Edwards should just drop out of the presidential race and concentrate on his Senate reelection. I'm expecting he will win, but that seat has a high turnover level so I'm not guarenteeing it. Still, he should beat Burr. Edwards isn't Terry Sanford (who was elected in the Dem landslide of 1986 and was a one-termer from the start) or Lauch Faircloth (the junior Jesse Helms whose face looked like Babe the pig's ass, which was appropriate since he was a hog farmer).

"Its enough already with "panderisng" to the South where our base is not."

What? The most loyal part of the Democratic base is African-Americans, the majority of whom live in the South:http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01cn176.html.

No need to apologize. I agree and I am from Ohio originally :)

"The most loyal part of the Democratic base is African-Americans"

Funny, that. Last year, the president and vice-president of NC's Black Leadership Caucus both vocally rejected the concept of blind Democratic loyalty (scroll down here: http://worldpointe.com/ncblc/letter10.html ). You probably missed the furious reaction of some NC black leaders after business Democrats passed over Dan Blue - a smart, charismatic former House Speaker who was retiring after 20 years in the trenches to run for U.S. Senate - to choose as their standard-bearer a wealthy white investment banker (and weak campaigner) who'd never won an election in his life. We'll leave aside Bowles' past memberships in country clubs that didn't have any black members.

Even worse, former Governor Jim Hunt broke with tradition and publicly endorsed Bowles before the primary vote. Black leaders sure noticed *that* cute little move. Hell, NC's Republican brass had the decency to at least *pretend* to be neutral during their primary, even with Dole so far up Bush's ass she could look out between his front teeth.

Black Leadership Caucus vice-prez N. Carnell Robinson called the primary manipulation "plantation politics" and stated for the record, "I will not support Bowles." The editors of Af-Am papers in both Raleigh and Wilmington wrote scathing attacks on the white Democrat establishment that summer. Blue was so angered he waited until a month after the primary to endorse Bowles, who - surprise - failed to galvanize his party's "loyal base" at the polls. Oops.

The fact that Bowles' name is once again being tossed around - this time as a possible contender for Edwards' Senate seat - is a stunning example of the blindness at work in NC's Democratic Party leadership. Can you tell I think they're in trouble?

Dan Blue was the biggest hyprocrit in NC politics. Becoming speaker by attacking the conservative Democrats who backed the Maveretic allaince in 1989. But ten yers later it was he Dan
Blue who attemted an unsecessful Republican alliance. Dan Blue lost the NC house for the Democrats it took Jim Black to regain it. Why would they reward him with a Senate nomination, beats me.

Double B, I think you may be right about the AZ/NV/CO states providing more opportunity; I imagine Nevada voters might be a bit disappointed by Bush's promise to think about *not* putting nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain and then fairly quickly announcing that it was going to be the nuclear depository that Nevada voters *didn't* want.
I wonder what kind of ticket-splitting you could get in AZ with McCain up for reelection in '04 and a competitive Democrat... If Bush loses, McCain doesn't have to keep watching his back for Karl Rove's knives (OTOH, his maverick streak within the GOP goes from cute and media-friendly to a threat to the GOP)... I wonder if there's sufficient material/motivation for some kind of backdoor alliance against Bush...

The African Americans vote Democrat because they know they will get paid back with more welfare and slave reparations. We gotta makes them crackers pay. But yous all gotta make them votin machines more easier to operaten. Thems h-a-r-d.

I think anyone who sees Edwards on a stage next to Kerry and Dean realizes that this isn't his time. Edwards is running a campaign based on being good-looking and articulate. The campaign rationale (for the little guy!) followed, rather then preceded, his entry. As such, he would only have a chance if the national mood was such that A) a populist campaign would do amazingly well or B) the other candidates were incredibly unappealing. Neither is true. Kerry and Dean are both doing a good job on their ends of the storyline, and Graham will be the serious candidate from the South. Edwards banked on being JFK, and he wasn't...He should remain in the Senate or hope to be Veep...He's not ready for anything else.

"Dan Blue was the biggest hyprocrit in NC politics. Becoming speaker by attacking the conservative Democrats who backed the Maveretic allaince in 1989. But ten yers later it was he Dan Blue who attemted an unsecessful Republican alliance."

If shifting alliances in party power struggles makes a politician a hypocrite, I seriously doubt Dan Blue is anywhere near the top ten. Blue, btw, is the only NC Speaker in recent memory to have been elected to the office without *any* votes from Republicans (he did it twice, as I recall). His calculated gamble was an attempt to wrest control of the Democratic party away from folks like Black. Blue knew what he was doing; he honestly felt he would accomplish more for progressive causes by breaking strict party loyalty (which is over-rated, anyway) to gain the speakership. Given Black's conservative economic policies and unwillingness to challenge the status quo, Blue was almost certainly right in that. He lost by only one vote, dealt with it, but never deserved the shunning he experienced from the Yellow Dogs. That they carried that particular grudge into the 2002 race was insane. Blue would have had a much better chance aginst Dole than Bowles.

And since when was Jim Black ever above making backroom deals with Republicans?

"Dan Blue lost the NC house for the Democrats"

Oh, come on. Blue "lost the NC house" in the 1994 national Republican sweep; he's no more to blame than any other Dem of that year.

"it took Jim Black to regain it."

You've got to be kidding me. The Dems regained the House in 1998 due to one reason: the hog industry. Pork money poured into Democratic coffers as "Farmers for Fairness," a front group for a handful of wealthy hog farmers, targeted vulnerable Republicans who'd been pushing for slightly stricter regulation of the industry. Remember Cindy Watson? She and two other Republicans were brought down by a constant bombardment of negative ads and push polls, mostly paid for by hog execs. That was enough to put the Dems back on top in the 1998 election; Black was elected speaker shortly after.

"It took Jim Black to regain it." I love that spin. The only way Black can be said to have "regained" the House is if he was personally responsible for selling out the state to an industry with a truly horrid environmental record, in exchange for campaign cash and a great shot at the Speaker post. I've heard that argument before (it actually fits the data nicely), but I'm surprised you're the one who's making it here.

Todd,

Blue gained power the Speakership by making party loyalty an oath. His retribution to the Maveretic 20 was extremely harsh. Using party loyalty as his reason, to turn around and do what he did in 1999 hypocrit is a kind word to say what I think of him.

His reign as Speaker was equally less than decent. He bottled up popular legislation in committee including Governor Hunt's crime bill as well as the 1994 budget that Democrats wrote. His redisticting was a GOP gift horse forcing Democratic State Rep Walter Jones, Jr into the GOP he now is a GOP Congressman.

In the 1994 campaign several GOP state house challangers ran commercials with Dan Blues picture saying is this who you want your state rep to vote for as speaker.

As for 1998, the biggest factor for the Democratic return was a failed GOP House strategy to hold the budget up.
It backfired on them badly. Farmers for Fairness roll was limted but the reasonalbe measures you spoke of were not out of principle but GOP retribution on Agribusiness for not donating money to the GOP.

Edwards isn't ready for frontrunner status, but neither is Dean. Howard Dean recently polled well in N.H., but he needs more broad-based support. He needs more statewide organizations, more money, and more likely endorsements. For example, what Democratic bretheren governor has endorsed Dean?

"Huge" crowds are a fallacy. Dean gets "huge" crowds, but they are an unreliable measure of support. Huge crowds indicate intensity of support, not breadth.

Nader got the biggest crowds in 2000, but only 2.7% of the vote. Former V.P. Mondale had a good advance team and arranged huge crowds in 1984, particularly in Detroit, Chicago and other union areas. He lost big time.

Likewise, some pundits said that the press "missed" the surging GOP sentiment in the '02 mid-terms because no one noticed the "huge" crowds that turned out for Bush. These pundits claimed that when Bush visited a state on behalf of a GOP candidate, "huge" flag-waving crowds would show up, and that everyone should have noticed it. But the GOP won in '02 because of a lack of a coherent Democratic message, not voter intensity for Bush. The crowds for Bush were, at times, "huge", but huge crowds do not mean anything.

I'm tired of hearing about Dean's "huge" crowds. Sure, they're fun and they're better than small crowds. But Mondale proved that in '84 huge crowds don't mean anything.

A coherent, problem-solving message, grassroots support, a record, a compelling biography, funds, and endorsements matter. Not huge crowds.

"A coherent, problem-solving message, grassroots support, a record, a compelling biography, funds, and endorsements matter."

Dean has all of those, though he needs more endorsements(Jeffords and Reiner are a good start, but only a start) and more fundraising.

Right now the candidate who has the most endorsements of elected Democrats is Sen. Joe Lieberman I woiuld say he beats Gov. Howard Dean in all criteria, including the fact that we are trying to get away from the 1972 crowd not flock back to it.

Lieberman is a DINO who is reviled by the rank and file, and for good reason. He has no coherent, problem-solving message, absolutely no grassroots support, and an execrable record. Good luck.

MODERATE: With all due respect, and contrary to your statement "we are trying to get away from the 1972 crowd," what we're trying to do is identify and nominate the candidate that can best electrify voters as well as folks who are not engaged in the political process. In other words, people who are not like you or me. Dean seems to be a catalyst for some real grassroots optimism, while Lieberman seems to represent the status quo.

I accept that you think Dean is too liberal, and I hope you understand I think your guy Lieberman is repub-lite. Regardless of who triumphs in August(?) 2004, I hope we can all come together and get Bush the hell out.

THE MODERATE:

Which elected Democrats have endorsed Lieberman?

Kerry is the establishment candidate who seems to be racking up the most endorsements.

The Lieberman endorsements are more of a grassroots endorsements such as Democratic Legislatures of Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Louisianna, and Virgina. Also. Sen John Breaux of La, and Atty Gen Drew Edmunds of Ok. To name a few. And even Former Rep Dick Sweat of NH, Rep. Tom Lantos of California.

You've got an interesting definition of "grassroots".

Edwards just announced he has 7.4 million reasons why anyone on this blog who predicted his early demise are dead dead wrong.

As I have been saying since December 13, 2000: He's the guy.