Strategy question: Is Edwards playing Old King Log?

[tomreedtoon]

If you don't remember the book/BBC play "I, Claudius," it was about the handicapped, timid Claudius, part of Rome's royal family. While the powerful members of his family engaged in backstabbing and treachery, climbing over each other's dead bodies to get to the top, he played "Old King Log," remaining passive, quiet and inoffensive. He survived to become Emperor.

It suddenly occurred to me that Edwards has not been part of the big media fights between Clinton and Obama. He's been letting them tear each other to pieces, and delivering very little in the way of opinion-making (or very little that's reached the press at all). He even didn't show very much concern with the Coulter attack.

By sitting out these attacks, with both Obama and Clinton looking very bloodied and beaten, Edwards might look like the best possible compromise candidate for 2008. There's only one problem, that was described in "I, Claudius." By playing Old King Log, Claudius allowed the perverse and egotistical Nero to retain power, and by the time Claudius became Emperor, the Roman Empire was so weakened and shattered by Nero's abuse that there simply wasn't much left to rule.

And I'll give you three guesses who Nero is.

[lancdem]

1. I'm sure that's his plan

It makes sense. BTW, the media is the one turning this into a two-person race. I think that's a big reason he's even behind Gore now in the polls - a guy who's not even running.

[rocktivity]

3. DING DING DING! Lancdem, you're our grand prize winner!

...the media is the one turning this into a two-person race...

And they've alredy gone "all in" on Hillary. They're doing their best to tear Obama down--of course they're going to escalate even a hint of conflict between them to gargantuan porportations. And they certainly don't want Edwards in the mix because they don't want him to win at all.

:headbang:
rocknation

[TerdlowSmedley]

2. Considering that if we got rid of Nero, we'd have Caligula waiting

in the wings, it seems a lose-lose situation, 'til '08, anyway.

[NWHarkness]

4. Actually, it's the other way around

Caligula came before Claudius, Nero came after.

[Glorfindel]

5. Yep, Nero succeeded Claudius, his adopted father and

father-in-law (not to mention his great-uncle!) at the ripe old age of 17.