In one of the more laughable comments from a treasure trove of ridiculous statements from supporters of Hillary Clinton, former spokesman Howard Wolfson's suggested that the affair of John Edwards somehow cost her the Presidency. This meme is patently false and it insinuates that Barack Obama failed to earn the Democratic nomination.
The Clinton campaign which hasn't moved past the denial stage of grief has yet to take responsibility for running one of the worst presidential campaigns in recent history. Not only is Wolfson blaming others for Hillary's demise, but he is also playing revisionist historian as he tries to make us drink the sour grape chardonnay that men conspired to prevent her from winning the nomination.
Poll observer extraordinaire Nate Silver blows a hole in Wolfson's absurd theory. Sliver says the opposite is true:
The thing about Iowa, however, is that unlike virtually any other electoral contest, second choices matter, since Democratic caucus rules dictate that a voter may caucus for her second-choice candidate if her first choice does not achieve the 15 percent of the vote required for viability. As such, Iowa pollsters did a lot of work in trying to determine voters' second choices. And in virtually every survey, Clinton did rather poorly as a second choice: an average of several surveys in December showed that she was the second choice of about 20 percent of voters, as compared with 25 percent for Obama and Edwards (an even later version I have sitting on my hard drive showed the second-choice breakdown as Edwards 30, Obama 28.5, Clinton 23.5)
So the odds are that, if John Edwards had dropped out on the morning before the Iowa caucus, Obama would have won by more points rather than fewer.
Look, the Clinton camp can spin this anyway they want. The reality is she ran a horrible campaign that valued loyalty over competence (ask the Bush Administration how well that works) and trying to blame Edwards for her shortcomings as a candidate ignores what a tremendous campaign that Barack Obama ran.
Wolfson is being petty and immature. Get over it. Your boss lost. Blaming John Edwards' lack of fidelity won't change that. All it does is make you and Clinton look like bigger asses since they still believe that the primary campaign was a coronation and the nomination should have been giftwrapped. Elitist. You better your ass.