Edwards Questions Obama’s Masculinity

Mark Halperin reports that John Edwards "has real questions about [Barack] Obama's toughness, his readiness for the office. He has real doubts about Obama, not just as a president, but as a general election candidate." Apparently, Edwards summed this up with a one-word epithet that is also used to describe kitty cats and female sex parts. Halperin has subsequently ...

Who Will Edwards’ Voters Support?

Dana Goldstein has a timely piece in the American Prospect regarding the composition of John Edwards' supporters, which might help to answer the question of whether Obama or Clinton will gain by his depature from the race:Intuitively, it makes sense that Edwards supporters would trend toward Obama. Both candidates ran as the anti-Clinton. Edwards even spoke about his own affinity ...

John Edwards Quitting Presidential Race

John Edwards has been out of the presidential contest for weeks but he's now about to make it official. Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies but never diverted his campaign, The Associated Press has ...

South Carolina Post-Mortem, Democrat Edition

As Chris Lawrence posted last night, Barack Obama handily won the South Carolina Democratic primary and native son John Edwards came in third. The results, with a record turnout, were stunning: Obama has long been projected to win, of course, but the RealClearPolitics average of the recent polls had it much closer: 38.4 to 26.8 to 19.2 As ...

Obama Thumps Clinton in S.C.; Edwards Takes 3rd

Barack Obama has bracketed his Iowa win in one of the whitest states of the Union with a victory in South Carolina, one of the nation's blackest, in what appears to be a 2-to-1 rout over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Despite an apparent late surge by John Edwards in polls in the his home turf, it appears that he trails ...

John Edwards South Carolina Surge

Taegan Goddard notes that the two most recent polls on tomorrow's Democratic primary in South Carolina shows John Edwards surging. Said pollster John Zogby: "The real movement here is by John Edwards, who is the only one who continues to gain ground in our three-day tracking poll. His increase appears to be coming from African American voters who are slowly making ...

Super Tuesday Not So Super?

While nearly two dozen states moved their primaries to February 5th in order to have a say in choosing the party nominees for president, the so-called Super Duper Tuesday will likely not be decisive, an AP analysis suggests. The race for delegates is so close in both parties that it is mathematically impossible for any candidate to lock up the ...

Clinton and Edwards Private Meeting

A report from CNN’s Candy Crowley and Mike Roselli that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards bumped into one another in the green room after last night's debate is the top story on Memeorandum at the moment. What were they talking about? Hillary Clinton and John Edwards met privately backstage following a very contentious Democratic presidential debate in this coastal city, sources ...

South Carolina and Nevada Post-Mortem

I dashed off some quick thoughts last night after John McCain's win in South Carolina but let's look at the race more closely. Democrats Not much has changed, really, aside from a ratcheting up in the bitterness of the Clinton-Obama battle. Both Clinton and Obama are claiming victory in Nevada, with the former winning the popular vote and the latter ...

Nevada and South Carolina Predictions (Updated)

While I've been spectacularly wrong on the Democratic results in New Hampshire and the Republican results in Michigan, I'll nonetheless keep issuing these predictions for my own amusement, if nothing else. Today's Republican primary in South Carolina will get most of the media attention but the voters in Nevada participate today in non-binding caucus that actually awards more ...

Those Awful Polls

Beldar, commenting on my recent analysis of Fred Thompson's chances in tomorrow's South Carolina's primary, observed, "you have far more faith in polls than I do, or than their results (especially recently) would merit." There's certainly reason to suspect the polls, given Hillary Clinton's surprise win in New Hampshire and Mitt Romney's larger-than-projected win in Michigan. But let's look at ...

The Uncommitted Vote (Updated)

One thing worth noting about the results of the Michigan primary was the extremely large Democratic vote for "Uncommitted". Clinton took 55% of the total vote, while "Uncommitted" took 40%. This is actually out of whack with the most recent polls in Michigan, which showed an average of about 53% for Clinton and only about 29% for "Uncommitted". ...

2008 Prediction Games

Michael Medved has a much-linked column assessing the Republican candidates' chances of beating Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in November based on some "trial heat" surveys. He figures Mitt Romney is the worst of the plausible nominees and John McCain the best. Kevin Drum has found survey data which backs up his hunch that Hillary Clinton would be just as ...

McCain and Clinton Get Huge New Hampshire Bounce

The first major national poll since the New Hampshire primaries show huge jumps for John McCain and Hillary Clinton among registered voters in their parties. John McCain's victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary appears to be paying off. The senator from Arizona is the front-runner in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, according to the first national poll taken after ...

Unelectable “Electable” 2004 Candidate to Endorse “Unelectable” 2008 Candidate

That would seem to be the gist of the news that John Kerry, whose sole apparent qualification for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination was his "electability," will endorse Barack Obama today, the latter of whom currently faces the "electable" Hillary Clinton as his major opponent. Presumably the Kerry message is that Obama is the more electable candidate, because Kerry ...