Reply #14: Here is your reply [View All]

[Tom Rinaldo]

First, however, may I say that the tone of your post was not welcome. In general I fail to be impressed by put down oriented loaded words like "chicken out" and "pathetic" as a substitute for real discussion.

If I remember correctly, Edwards made his first trip to New Hampshire to lay the ground work for his campaign there in the Summer of 2002. Heard that recently on the radio from a reporter who attended Edward's first NH event. Don't know the date for Edward's first campaign trip to Iowa, but I feel pretty sure it was prior to September of 2003 when Clark entered the Presidential race. At the same time that pundits were talking about how Wes Clark "had NH to himself" for 3 weeks (ignoring Lieberman of course who was there also and attacking Clark) I heard some of the same pundits mention that Edwards had already held over 100 NH Town Hall Meetings.

In September 2003 Clark didn't even have a National campaign office, and Edwards had already been working NH for over a year, I expect Iowa also. Good for Edwards. One can have the opinion that Clark should not have run for President if he was unable to decide earlier to enter the race, though Clark has already outlasted Richard Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, and Bob Graham, who all got into the race a lot earlier than Clark. One can have the opinion that it was a strategic error for Clark to not contest Iowa. That is essentially unknowable, because it is possible that Clark's start up campaign, stretched thin between two "retail politics" states, would not have gotten traction anywhere against a strong field who had boots on the ground in both places a lot earlier. Had Clark attempted to run in both Iowa and NH he might have ended up an early casualty.

I think it is a foolish statement, given all that is obvious about Wesley Clark's life, to suggest that he lacked the courage to run in Iowa.

As for Clark's fall from 25% to 13% in NH, well I would say that all Kerry and Edwards fans owe a debt of gratitude to Clark. For almost a month Clark was the only candidate able to show increasing strength against what was then being viewed as an invincible Dean candidacy. Kerry always had a strong reservoir of support in NH, he was the early favorite, but he couldn't find a way to compete against Dean. Clark did. You may recall that Clark did not start his rise to 25% in NH from 13%, he started out at 7% or 8% at best. Clark gained a lot of supporters in NH, even with two New England favorite sons, and he kept many of them. A good deal of Clark's support when he shot to 25% were voters "borrowed" from Kerry. Those were voters who always liked Kerry but who had given up hope on him as Kerry kept plunging in the National and local polls. It got so bad that Kerry picked up his tent and moved to Iowa where, among other things, he could avoid Clark.

Clark was the first candidate to show that Dean was vulnerable, even in his native New England. What that did was open up the Iowa race. And the candidates who were best positioned to benefit were Kerry and Edwards, since Clark wasn't running there. When Kerry picked up momentum in Iowa, that gave Kerry's natural base of supporters in NH a reason to regain hope, and that allowed them to go back to their original man. And Edwards, of course got the non stop full "golden boy" treatment heading into NH. Hey, they both waged good campaigns in NH, to their credit, but Clark firmed up his support in the last few days and still came in first among the non New Englanders.

As to the debates, we obviously don't see eye to eye on them. However if you saw that last Fox debate ambush you might have a clue as to how they have been stage managed.

I expect Clark's ability and integrity and experience to get him into the White House. I suppose you expect Edwards to win the White House with a great speech?