Much of the punditocracy has been embarassing themselves with ridiculous VP assessments/predictions this week, generally pontificating on what they think would be the most successfuul or likely tickets.
While each have expressed their distinct "considered opinions" on who would be the best choices, so far they have been expressing unanimity on who they think would be a losing ticket. And that is, Obama/Edwards.
They use arguments like well he wasn't that great in 2004, could not even deliver the Carolinas, brings nothing to the ticket yada yada yada.
What they seem to forget is that this is not 2004. The country has moved to the left, conditions have changed and of course, Edwards did beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa.
Well, now Survey USA, that darling of the blogosphere this year and by far one of the most accurate of all pollsters this cycle has been testing the VP waters and guess what. Their polling shows none other than John Edwards to be the strongest VP candidate in none other than the great state of Ohio!
By double digit margins, an Obama/Edwards ticket beats ANY McCain ticket they can come up with. Interestingly enough, they don't even consider an Obama/Clinton ticket to be serious enough to poll on.
+12 Obama/Edwards vs McCain/Huckabee
+12 Obama/Edwards vs McCain/Lieberman
+13 Obama/Edwards vs McCain/Romney
and a whopping +18 Obama/Edwards vs McCain/Pawlenty
This is in that "must have" swing state of Ohio. As far as I can tell, they have not run this poll in Pennsylvania yet, but given the similarity of the demographics between those two states, I doubt that we are looking for much of a difference there.