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Not much of a chance for Edwards. Right now Kerry has about 34 percent of the delegates needed to win, Edwards about 11 percent.
Out ot the total number of available delegates, this gives Kerry about 17 percent of all available delegates, Edwards 5.5 percent.
Thats a large amount of delegates to try to catch up. In order to win the covention outright, that means winning 60 percent of all of the remaining delegates (you need 2162 to win the nomination) There are a total of 4335 delegates totally available, 801 are unpledged super-delegates. Leaving 3534 unpledges delegates in total.
1156 of the pledged delegates have already been awarded in the prior primaries and caucuses. This leaves 2378 unpledged delegates remaining. Edwards now has about 200 delegates in total ( Ithink he has about 201, but this doesnt include tuesdays delegates he earned, i think) Which means that in order to win the nomination, Edwards must win 1961 of the remaining delegates. He has very few super-delegates at this point, something like 16. Kerry has around 120.
Which means Edwards must either win all but 418 of the remaining pledged delegates. That means Edwards must win 82 percent of the remaining unpledged delegates to win with unpledged delegates alone. Or must convince the 580 odd remaining super delegates to support him and win 58 percent of the remaining pledged delegates in the primaries and caucuses in order to become the nominee.
Thoseare the extreme cases, and there could be a number of combinations that could occur, but in order to become the nominee Edwards must win a minimum of 58 percent of the unpledged delegates remining between now and the convention, or as many as 82 percent of them depending on hom many more remaining superdelegates he can pick up. Not impossible, but highly improbable, given the polls for super tuesday. Kerry's lead is comfortable, and Edwards could pull within two or three points of him in all of the super tuesday primaries and caucuses, and Kerry would still be comfortably ahead. Edwards could even win in a few states and Kerry would still be ahead. Edwards could even win big in one of the larger supertuesday states, and Kerry would still be in the lead, unless he took abolutelt no delegates in any of the supertuesday states, which is not likely.
I very much support Edwards, and would very much support him in a run against Bush. But the odds greatly favor Kerry, and even more so when the electabilty factor comes in. Kerry is polling nationally as the only candidate who could beat Bush, and in a number of states in which Bush narrowly won in 2000, Kerry is coming out beating Bush by a large margin in recent polls. Edwards does not beat Bush in those states, and beats Bush along with Kerry in California, and the only other state in which he does better than Kerry against Bush is in his own state of North Carolina, where he is seen as being able to beat Bush in the latest SUSA poll or rather, they are in a dead heat with Edwards beating bush by 3 points in a polls with a 3.9 percent margin of Error, but Bush fairly well beats Kerry in that State. But in other areas of the south, polls do not show Edwards beating Bush at all yet. Neither does Kerry, in the deep south, but Kerry is seen beating Bush in a number of border southern states like Maryland. Virginia, and possibly Florida. THe best democratic strategy will be to trounce Bush in the democratic states, and the states meraning Democrat, and take him down in a number of the industrialized Northern Republican states where there has been a great deal of job loss, and indications that Kerry is pulling very close behind Bush.
DOn't get me wrong.I would strngly support Edwards as the nominee. But the reality of him beating Bush in Republican states outside his regional base is slim (in fact I just collected on a bet that I made in 2000 that Edwards would run for president in 2004, while I was watching him in Congress criticizing the Florida Election results that year).Our very best bet would be Kerry as president and Edwards as VP, as a Kerry win in November would assure Edwards a two term presidency after Two terms of Kerry.
First, Edwards states he is a Washinton outsider, but he is a Senator, which doesnt make that quite so. In fact his only politicval experience is as a Washington insider, this being his first political office. Kerry has some executive experience, having served as Lt Governor of a rather large state, as well as having served as a prosecutor (this also falls under the localities executive arm of government). A frew years as VP in as an executice would greatly inprove his electability over any republican to run against him later.
Also, there is not all that much that separates Edwards political platform from Kerry's, even their stances on trade, regardless of the nuances of the voting record there. Outside of that, all Edwards is running on as a difference is the statement that he is not a Washington Insider, which doesnt ring all that soundly coming from a senator. Not untrue if you want to nuance it by talking about this being his first term, but in fact, not true.
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