One of the traditional laments during primary season is that the media devotes disproportionate coverage to the two current front runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Dennis Kucinich is probably closer on the issues than the other candidates.
Biden, Dodd, and Richardson are the three most experienced, and the three most often ignored.
The person with, on the surface, the strongest objection to the two-horse narrative is former VP-nominee John Edwards.
But, he too, is destined to be an also-ran. The only question is when it becomes official.
The math below the fold.
I. Money.
Cash, Rules, Everything, Around, Me
C.R.E.A.M.
Get the money
Dollar, dollar bill y'all
--Method Man
Denouncing and decrying the influence of money on the course of elections in this country is reliable applause line. And it does need to be fixed. But, it has not been fixed to anyone's satisfaction. And the reality that faces every candidate today is that campaigns are expensive. Obscenely expensive. The question for this diary, though, is: how expensive must a campaign be for a candidate to win the nomination, from this point forward? Or, more to the point, does the spending cap on Edwards's campaign prevent him from spending enough to be viable?
Let's start rolling the numbers out.
Edwards:
Money spent as of 10/03/07: $18.75 Million. (approximate)
Quarter Three spending: $7.3 Million (approximate)
That $7.3 Million figure is without any television advertising. Given the ramping up ahead of the Iowa caucus, including advertising and increased travel costs due to the closing of the corporate jet loophole,, Edwards is likely to spend at least $11.25 Million-$13.25 Million in Q4. Which takes him up to $30-32 Million, spent as of January 4. He will also spend another $4-6 Million alone in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. That means $34-$38 Million spent before Tsunami Tuesday, just on the early states.
Edwards has a spending cap, all loopholes included, of $53 Million dollars. Even with all loopholes, that would leave $15-19 Million dollars to spend not only for Tsunami Tuesday but also to fund his campaign through August.
To put that in perspective, Edward's current salary expenses are about $2 Million per month. So, if he doesn't have massive layoffs in his campaign ex post February 5, he would need to keep in reserve:
February: $2 Million
March: $ 4 Million
April: $6 Million
May: $8 Million
June: $10 Million
July: $12 Million.
And that is just salaries. It doesn't include advertising, rent, travel expenses, insurance, accountants, polling firms, phone charges, Internet access, and office supplies.
So, even in his best case scenario Edwards would have two choices:
A) Go for broke on Tsunami Tuesday and spend everything in order to overcome the Clinton machine (as well as the Obama organization, which is built with February 5 in mind) and shut down his campaign on February 6; or
B) Pinch his pennies, forgo any field operations and advertising in the February 5 states, and keep his powder dry in case he should become the nominee.
Neither of these is particularly attractive. In fact, they're awful. This is why Markos has written Edwards off, and why Mike Lux of Open Left has also written him off, calling the matching funds gambit "one of the stupidest decisions I've ever seen in modern Presidential politics."
II. February 5 State Polls and Field Organizations
To put things in further perspective, let's examine what's ahead of Edwards on Tsunami Tuesday, with most recent (October-December) polling numbers where available. Note that Edwards has zero offices open in any of these states.
February 5 States:
Alabama: Clinton 46, Obama 25, Edwards 6
Alaska: None
Arizona: Clinton 44, Obama 14, Edwards 11
Arkansas: None since March
California: Clinton 49, Obama 30, Edwards 14
Connecticut: Clinton 45, Obama 19, Edwards 7
Delaware: Clinton 41, Biden 19, Obama 17, Edwards 7
Democrats Abroad: None
Georgia: Clinton 34, Obama 27, Edwards 12
Idaho: None since July
Illinois: Obama 50, Clinton 25, Edwards 7
Kansas: None
Massachusetts: None since April
Minnesota: None since September
Missouri: Clinton 36, Obama 21, Edwards 20
New Jersey: Clinton 51, Obama 17, Edwards 7
New York: Clinton 55, Obama 17, Edwards 7
North Dakota: None
Oklahoma: None since April
Tennessee: None
Utah: None since February (heh, Vilsack was in second place)
*Bonus state--North Carolina: Clinton 31, Edwards 26, Obama 24
How is John Edwards going to field organizations and media campaigns in these 22 states on a shoestring budget, down by 25-45 points in the polls, and realistically get a majority of the delegates?
Note especially that the real issue here is that Clinton's advantages in New York and New Jersey and California are such that Edwards may not even meet the 15% threshold to get delegates. Edwards could conceivably beat Obama one on one. He cannot beat Clinton one on one, let alone with Obama in the race.
Source.
III. Lack of appeal to African-Americans
Edwards faces a further problem: He is virtually locked out of the African-American vote due to the strength of Obama and Clinton with that demographic.
And this is not a case of AA voters being unfamiliar with John Edwards. In North Carolina and South Carolina, African-Americans know who John Edwards is. He's just not part of the conversation. The figures below are for African-American voters:
North Carolina:
Obama: 53
Clinton: 30
Edwards: 3
South Carolina:
Obama: 53.6
Clinton: 21.2
Edwards: 1.7
Can Edwards win the nomination with only white voters behind him?
These structural deficits are simply too overwhelming to overcome. The bottom line is that if it's Edwards vs. Clinton in the end, Clinton will run him over with resources, appeal to African-Americans, a political machine that has been built up over two decades, and overwhelming advantages in support going in. This is especially the case because of Clinton's geographical dominance of New York and New Jersey, the dominance of Clinton and Obama in California, and Obama's domination of Illinois.
IV. Addendum: Edwards's Early State Best Case Scenario is Severely Unlikely
Edwards is a distant, distant, distant third in the non-Iowa Early States. He's behind both Clinton and Obama by double digits in New Hampshire, more than twenty points in South Carolina, and by more than thirty points in Nevada.
Even with a not-so-surprising win in Iowa, it's very, very, very difficult to see him turning that into a win in New Hampshire, a state that does not match up well with his populist themes, and which shrugged its shoulders at his momentum coming out of Iowa in 2004 to the tune of 12%.