Wednesday, January 30, 2008

And Then There were Two. And Three.

Edwards is out. Giuliani too. Not big surprises. Edwards was up against the force of history with the other Democratic candidates; I think he was a fine candidate and would have made a great president, but he's still a white southern male, and there's been rather a lot of those running the country as of late. There will be a lot of babble about how this somehow proves that "Class war" doesn't have traction; the fact remains that to the extent there can be a class war, there IS one. It's just that the wealthiest started it, and are winning it. He didn't lose because of his message.

As for Giuliani, he simply didn't have what it took to be President, and especially didn't have what it took to be a Republican president. He wasn't enough of a winger to attract winger support, and didn't have McCain's (faded) cachet among independents so they weren't an option either. Moderate, committed Republicans don't exist anymore.

So what does this mean? Welp, it means that while the Republican race may go down to the convention, it's kind of unlikely that the Democratic one will. It also means that Hillary is in a far stronger position, which I'm no fan of considering the disgraceful display I saw in Florida last night. Edwards split the white anti-Obama vote with her, and that won't be the case now. Of course, Edwards ALSO split the anti-Clinton vote, but it's hard to tell which is likely to have more traction at this point, even if he does endorse Obama as expected.

What'll be fun to watch is whether Obama will take the endorsement as an invitation to start mopping up the progressive support that both he and Hillary have been ignoring. Will he continue to try to run to Hillary's right, or will he realize that there's a lot of progressive anti-Hillary voters out there, and give them serious consideration? That might be what decides this thing.

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