Why not, everyone else always has. Just like them, you'll be wrong. Yesterday, kos posted a list of all the Rasmussen polls about current candidates running for 2008 - all but those involving John Edwards. Yesterday, MissLaura skipped Edwards on her Presidential roundup, saying "I went back and forth about the Edwards poll thing, and decided not to since it had already been mentioned".
Over at MyDD, the Breaking Blue and Jerome's storiesare apparently a subsidiary of the Obama campaign. Jerome has Edwards listed as a "second-tier" candidate.
Hillary Clinton meets with Republican operatives and their advice, not to worry about "what’s-his-name, Obama". No mention of Edwards.
Go ahead, underestimate him....
just like everyone else always has. I'll give you one guess who comes out on top - every time.
Like, in his FIRST big civil trial.
In fact, Swain had a favor to ask. He had a case in Asheville that the insurance company was offering to settle for $25,000. He wanted a second opinion.
...
Edwards found that a 58-year-old man had been given an overdose of the drug Antabuse at an Asheville hospital, leaving him partially paralyzed and unable to talk. As an alcoholic, the man was not a sympathetic figure; the hospital argued that drinking contributed to his condition.
The defense attorneys for the hospital and their insurance company were expecting an easy settlement. But instead of sitting across the table from the elderly Swain, who had a history of settling cases before trial, they found themselves confronting a young lawyer eager to make his reputation.
Edwards went to trial. The jury awarded $3.7 million in December 1984 -- then the largest personal injury award in state history.
The two law firms split the $1.2 million contingency fee. The insurance industry sent lawyers to figure out what went wrong. They didn't want to be surprised again. Five months later in Greenville, they were.
Or, there was the Jesse Helms machine that was going to steamroll him in his bid to unseat Lauch Faircloth in 1998, as Edwards' himself said:
As the election approached, Edwards told the crowd, "everybody said, 'That young fellow thinks he's going to take on the Helms political machine in North Carolina? Who does he think he is?"
The result?
As always, Edwards aimed high. When he told his mom he was running for the Senate, she asked, "The state senate?" No, said Edwards, the one in Washington. In 1998 Edwards challenged G.O.P. incumbent Lauch Faircloth, then 70, who did his best to portray Edwards as an ambulance chaser. Edwards was prepared for that and worse, according to pollster Harrison Hickman in an interview with the New York Times. When Hickman warned the novice candidate about the ugly nature of politics, Edwards replied, "I appreciate your saying all that to me. But I have to tell you, if you have ever had to climb up on the examining table in the medical examiner's office and tell your son goodbye, there's nothing they can do that's worse."
Edwards won a resounding victory in the primary and survived Faircloth's attacks in the fall, winning 51% of the vote.
Then, of course, there was the 2004 Presidential Election:
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Edwards already at do-or-die stage of presidential campaign
North Carolinian must translate advantages into support
He's doomed.
...at the end of a segment on Edwards' candidacy during ABC News' "This Week" Sunday, host George Stephanopoulos said that several Edwards advisers predicted he would abandon the Senate race by Sept. 16. That's when Edwards has scheduled a formal announcement of his presidential candidacy in his boyhood home of Robbins.
doomed!!!
The result?
The Vice-Presidential nomination, not a drop out.
So, go ahead. Underestimate him. Keep talking about and focusing on Obama and Hillary. Meanwhile...
And the Democratic Frontrunner Is... John Edwards?
Joe Klein scopes out an Iowa poll showing the former vice presidential candidate with a surprising lead among Democratic Presidential hopefuls.
...
The Des Moines Register is reporting these numbers in a poll of Iowa Democrats conducted in October by Harstad Research for a group called Environmental Defense:
- John Edwards 36%
- Hillary Clinton 16%
- Barack Obama 13%
- Tom Vilsack 11%
Among county Democratic Party leaders, the numbers are even more startling:
- Edwards 40%
- Vilsack 15%
- Obama 11%
- Clinton 8%
So, he leads in Iowa, but what about nationally?
McCain leads Clinton by four points (47 to 43 percent) and Obama by five points (43 percent to 38 percent). But — in an interesting twist — the Arizona senator trails Edwards by two points (43 percent to 41 percent).
Great, but what about other primary states?
Edwards criticizes both parties at Las Vegas union meeting
LAS VEGAS - Former Sen. John Edwards criticized Republicans for passing "immoral" tax cuts and Democrats for focusing on the political center at a meeting of mine workers Tuesday in Las Vegas.
"We've got enough politicians, what we need are leaders, " Edwards, the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket in 2004, told a crowd of about 500 members of the United Mine Workers of America, which represents coal mine workers in Canada and the U.S.
For the past year, the former North Carolina senator has been crisscrossing the country as an anti-poverty advocate while laying the groundwork for another presidential bid. On the heels of a sweep through Iowa, Edwards met with two union audiences in the Las Vegas area - miners gathered for their annual convention and a labor-led coalition supporting an increase in the state's minimum wage.
The Primary Schedule?
Iowa - he leads.
Nevada - he is THE union candidate.
New Hampshire - ?
South Carolina - the old home state.
So, please, go ahead, underestimate him. Mock him. Put him down.
I dare you.