Kilgore on Edwards
Turns out Ed Kilgoreagrees with me about the limits of Edwards’ approach:
- His message was a remarkably faithful and wholesale adoption of the Crashing the Gates-style netroots analysis of the parties, of Washington, of the Clintonian Democratic tradition, and of galvanizing value of “fighting populist” rhetoric. It was crafted with the help of the maestro of this approach, Joe Trippi. Yet it did not rouse much in the way of support from its intended audiences. In the end, most of the Deanian excitement in the campaign flowed to Obama, who consistently deployed a rhetoric of post-partisanship that is anathema to the point of view advanced by Edwards, as Edwards himself suggested on many occasions. It’s telling that Edwards lost his critical contest, Iowa, where he had every advantage at the beginning, after hoping for a low turnout dominated by older voters and previous caucus participants.
The weird thing about Edwards was how well he did in head-to-head match-ups with Republican candidates. This was supposed to be a vindication of his confrontational, populist strategy — maybe it turned out America really was just one big DailyKos thread. But, why then, couldn’t he catch on with actual Democrats? Probably because his strength in national head-to-head matchups had more to do with him being a known quantity, who due to this whiteness and drawl, was able to trick people into thinking that he was actually a moderate, Southern Democrat. His supporters, like Neil, pointed to his ability to say far-left things in a right-wing accent as his greatest strength.
But it was silly to think that eventually the public wouldn’t find out how far to the left he was. I hope that with Edwards dropping out and most netroot support turning to Obama , there’s some reconsideration of how viable an electoral strategy massive confrontation with corporate interests and Republicans is. Because of his moderate looking skin and moderate sounding voice, people were able to trick themselves into thinking that being farthest to the left would make a candidate the most popular. Too bad it isn’t true.
