An Edwards collapse in Iowa?

November 24, 2007

The Des Moines Register’s David Yepsen, arguably most respected political voice in Iowa’s media, has been closely monitoring the first caucus state’s landscape and noted one surprising trend: John Edwards’ support is collapsing. (via Ron Chusid)

Yepsen: “I think if you’re John Edwards, you’re thankful this is going to be over with on January third. John Edwards has not been doing well lately, he’s slipping a little in these numbers. That’s not a good trend line for him. He’s got to get this thing over with fast.”

Yepsen said he fears Edwards could fall so far that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, currently running fourth, could slip into third place — and would therefore be most thankful for that.

“I think one of the things that could happen is that Edwards could collapse, sag, fall apart, not do well,” Yepsen said. “And that leaves Richardson in real striking distance of third place. Richardson has run a good campaign. He’s got some support here. If I were Edwards I’d be worried about sagging so far it could enable Richardson to take third place.”

I don’t doubt that Yespen knows more about this than I do — he saw John Kerry’s 2004 surge long before most of the national reporters picked up on it — but it’s really surprising to think that Edwards has slipped so badly, he’s more likely to drop to fourth than climb to first.

Indeed, for the first six months of the year, Edwards has a steady lead in practically all of the Iowa polls. And then, sometime over the summer, Clinton passed him. Shortly thereafter, Obama passed him, too.

Given the unpredictable nature of the caucuses, it’s probably silly to dismiss Edwards’ chances; there’s just too much time left. But what happened in the summer that caused Edwards’ support to start dropping? Was it the haircut story? The talk about his huge house?

How does a leading candidate go from first to third in a span of three months without a scandal or something shocking to spur the change?

Of course, if Yespen’s right, and Edwards’ support is slipping badly, the other candidates are going to scramble — to be Edwards’ backers’ second choice.

It’s rarely a good thing to be someone’s second choice. The first runner-up to Miss America hates herself more than the girl who never came close — she will never know if she would have won with another lipstick.

The shame of having to go to your safety school. The shame of being a backup prom date. Salutatorian is pronounced looo-sehr. Finishing second is where your mom comes in, trying to make you feel better. Being second, we are forced to accept our limitations and to consider the lesson of Tour de France cyclist Floyd Landis, a hard-working grunt, a natural second who tried to come in first via synthetic testosterone, it seems, and look what happened to him.

Except.

Except for the Iowa caucuses. There, the bizarre math practiced by the Democratic Party (the Republicans have different rules) means that being a citizen’s second choice can be a very good thing. Follow this for a moment: In most precincts, each candidate must receive support from at least 15 percent of the folks in attendance to remain viable. If a smaller percentage of caucusgoers in a particular precinct supports Sen. Chris Dodd, for example, each Dodd supporter has the option of throwing his or her support to someone else, someone they like second-best.

And that may help the second-best person come in first.

This is why Barack Obama recently asked a Dodd supporter in Iowa if he could please be her second choice.

“Senator Obama was extremely gracious,” Democratic activist Karen Thalacker told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I told him, ‘Absolutely.’ ”

What a strange phenomenon — begging to be someone’s second choice. But it matters so much that pollsters ask Democrats in Iowa not only about their first choices but about their second choices, too. (Obama leads in both categories, according to the new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.)

If Edwards’ backers in Iowa feel the same way about Hillary that their candidate does, and Edwards’ support slips badly, who they pick as their second choice could make a real difference on Jan. 3.

I’m an Edwards supporter, yet I wrote a comment at the Great Orange Satan not too long ago expressing the notion that if my unfailing support of Edwards instead gave Clinton the nomination (due to Clinton’s opponents being mostly divided between Edwards and Obama, and that division being the source of her strength), then I would vote for Obama.

Clinton’s in the lead not because she’s all that popular, but rather because her two main opponents are also good candidates, which dilutes much of the campaign threat against her one of them can individually make. And when your opposition is split pretty much in two, hell, no wonder she sees herself as inevitable. She becomes the winner not by substance, but by default.

  • It figures, in TeeVee-addled America, that the haircut and big house might do in the man who most embodies the values of the Democratic party (sans Dixiecrats) all the way back to FDR.

    Thanks, John. At least you tried. I’d like to think that “maybe someday,” but I gave up that kind of thinking when RFK had his skull blown open in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. Now all it takes to get rid of such goodness is … nothing. Just let American values take over.

  • If the Democrats are dumb enough to nominate someone other than John Edwards, they will lose in 2008, just like they deserve to.

  • I’ll repeat myself and note that Edwards–if Yepsen’s analysis is true–can win this thing for Obama, or at least go a long way towards doing so.

    Clearly, Obama is a lot closer to Edwards’ vision of economic justice and radical transformation of our currently belligerent presence in the world than is Our Lady of Perpetual Triangulation. Just as clearly, Sen. Clinton will win–with pluralities, not majorities, of Democratic Party support in the early primaries, until all her viable rivals concede–unless the race gets down to Clinton vs. Not-Clinton before the media gets a chance to coronate the candidate they think sells the most papers and commercial slots.

    I admire Edwards; I think he’s a patriot, and as Ed says a great Democrat in the best traditions of the party. But I also think he’s probably pitched himself too far to the left even to win a Democratic primary. It’s very unlikely that he’ll win. But he can play a vital role in wresting the party back from its corporatist faction, and set himself up to be a historically great Attorney General in an Obama administration.

  • Edwards began the year with a major head start in Iowa, by virtue of having never actually left there after coming in second in 2004. His slide roughly coincides with Obama and then Clinton ramping up their Iowa operations; Obama in late spring and Clinton in July. Obama of course has been pumping huge sums of money into the Iowa race all year and Clinton isn’t all that far behind him in spending at this point. I saw somewhere that Obama had spent about $4 million to Clinton’s $3 million on TV ads, whereas Edwards only recently dropped $800k on his first major ad buy of the season.

    Edwards has been relying mostly up to now on good will and an organization built up over nearly six years of almost continuous campaigning to keep him competitive in Iowa, and it’s the only place where he currently is — he isn’t even in double digits in SC, the single state that he actually won in the 2004 primaries. Edwards does have quite a bit of money in the bank though. His 3rd quarter FEC report showed 12.4 million cash on hand. I don’t know why he doesn’t spend some of it.

    As for recent or current events that could conceivably be putting additional pressure on Edwards, I can think of a couple. I read recently that Hillary Clinton was looking to nearly double the size of her Iowa field operation going into the stretch. To whatever extent that expansion may be coming online, it could be starting to cut into Edwards’ grassroots support somewhat. I also tend to think that a lot of Edwards appeal to Iowans was always his positivity, so it’s possible he has hurt himself a little by ramping up his rhetoric recently (I knew he should have run the other way when he saw Joe Trippi coming). But we’re also getting to that time of year now when Iowans finally start to make up their minds, so it could just be a matter of as much as they may like the guy, he just hasn’t made the sale.

  • Episty wrote: “…if my unfailing support of Edwards instead gave Clinton the nomination…, then I would vote for Obama.”

    That’s pretty much where I am too. I was a strong Edwards supporter. But it has become painfully apparent that prolonging his candidacy merely blocks Obama from getting the nomination and does nothing to stop the Hill.

    The first obligation of any true progressive Democrat at this point is to deny Clinton the nomination. Obama is superior to Hillary, significantly enough that true progressives, particularly on foreign policy (like Ted Sorensen and Zbigniew Brzezinski), recognize that fact and are supporting him. No, he doesn’t possess the certain moral or philosophical compass of a Kucinich or even an Edwards. But he’s figured out that something is deeply horribly wrong, and that a fresh start is needed.

    For that reason, it is my hope that Obama wins in Iowa, and follows that up with a convincing knockout punch in New Hampshire.

    And then?

    Maybe the press will look for an Anybody But Obama candidate, at which point John Edwards can stage a comeback for the nomination (I still believe Edwards would be a strong general election candidate than Obama). But, failing that, at least Hill will not be the nominee. All progressives will be grateful for that.

  • Most of us seem in agreement. Edwards has been my favorite. But as much as I think he is smart, compassionate, able, I want Hillary NOT to be the Democratic nominee. I have been wondering if some of Edwards’ attacks on Hillary haven’t been that of a spoiler. Trying to steal some of her steam and help, if not himself, then Obama.

  • Does Fox News have video of Yepsen saying this?

    It could be true, but I don’t believe anything Fox News says until I see it with my own eyes.

    And even then I prefer to see it substantiated by a reputable news source.

  • BTW, one thing to note about second choices is that when you get into smaller numbers, it matters a lot where your support is. There are really only about three solid weeks left in the Iowa campaign — I really can’t imagine the candidates are going to have much luck getting people’s attention from about the week before Christmas through New Year’s day, and the caucuses are two days after that. So this race is probably all but over after the 15th.

    The notion that Edwards might drop from over 20% support to under 15% statewide in the next three weeks seem dubious at best. So even a fairly dramatic last-minute slide would be unlikely to plunge him below the threshold of viability in urban/suburban areas. If he falls below threshold anywhere, it’s likely to be at more lightly attended exurban caucuses where the thresholds may be higher and second choices may tend to differ from those in the more populous areas. But I also seem to recall Edwards doing very well in exurban areas in 2004 so anything short of a fairly catastrophic Edwards slide between now and caucus day might end up having only very minimal impact on the race.

  • My support for Edwards just went upward last week with $ . Not that it is much money…but I decided to give it to Edwards instead of Kucinich who most speaks for me. So am I going against the great Iowa trend by myself or do you think others are going there too?

  • As someone on the ground in Iowa, I do not think it is the haircut or the house. I think it more likely is several factors. As others have noted, Edwards really never stopped running here, which got him off to a good start. But it also made it harder for Iowans (more than those in other states) to accept, or perhaps believe, Edwards 2.0 – angrier, more liberal, more confrontational, more negative. It just isn’t who he has been in Iowa for the past 6 years, so I suspect it left many wondering who he really is. (In this regard Obama really did a nice job of occupying Edwards’ “place” in the campaign and taking it away, forcing Edwards to be something else).

    I also think he is at this point fairly transparently pandering – his health care TV spot, for example, where he claims if there isn’t universal health care in 6 months, he’ll use his “powers as the President” to take away Congress’ health care. Separate your powers much, John? Read up on who has the powers of the purse much?

    All of these things are risky, and look a little desparate. People notice.

    Add to that a slightly damaged goods issue – he wasn’t good enough to win last time – and the mathematics that he not only needs to hold all of his support from 2004, he needs to find some among people who had every opportunity to choose him then but weren’t sold.

    Add to that Obama and Clinton excite crowds by offering something other than another rich white male (i.e. Edwards), that Obama is a “neighbor” to Iowa, that Clinton’s husband was wildly popular here (and most of the party establishment here is behind her), that both Clinton and Obama have spent more money here recently. . .

    Finally, the little noticed part of teh story (and I’m surprised Yepsen hasn’t run this) is that the architects of his surprisingly strong 2004 showing are not involved this time around. Patrick Dillon, one of his Iowa managers, is now Governor Culver’s chief of staff. Rob Bernsen, another of his Iowa managers, was on military duty in Iraq last I knew and in any event has moved to a different state.

    It is all a lot to overcome. I really dont think hair or housing have much to do with it.

  • Obama isn’t anymore progressive than Clinton is. You people all act like we are electing kings and queens here. This is not an election of dictators. These are democrats and represent the democratic “party”. Until we get more progressive candidates in congress no matter who is elected they will still be towing the centrist line of the party which a majority of democrats disapprove of but haven’t found progressive candidates to challenge them in the primaries so we can get them out of congress. Fienstein is there till 2012 voting republican against her party. Jay Rockefellar is being bribed by the telecoms to vote republican. I could go on all day with this.

    Kucinich represents the only real change; Edwards is only slightly “progressive”, Obama will do whatever the party tells him to do; Clinton is the most corporatist. There are 70mil. gun owners and only 40mil voters. Obviously many people still feel it does no good to vote unless of course you threaten to take their gun ownership rights away from them. Why does Iowa matter so much? Who is ahead in Missouri?

  • Given this, it’s quite possible that Iowa will be the beginning of the end for Edwards. I think, given the accelerated nature of the primaries, coupled with the candidates’ boycotting of Michigan and Florida, which have been traditional turnaround states in past election cycles, anything lower than second place in Iowa will nail the coffin shut. This time around, a third place finish for someone who’s supposed to be—and has constantly been hyped as—a top-tier candidate will not be a survivable event. Third place for Richardson won’t be so damaging; for the top-shelf trio of edwards/Obama/Clinton, however, it will go over about as well as the after-effects of an all-night binge on sloe gin….

  • Cal D @ 5 said:

    Edwards does have quite a bit of money in the bank though. His 3rd quarter FEC report showed 12.4 million cash on hand. I don’t know why he doesn’t spend some of it.

    Here’s Edwards problem: he took federal matching funds for the primary season. He’s got to work with the money he’s got. He won’t be able to spend any between the end of the primaries and the end of the convention (that’s assuming he picks up enough delegates in the primaries to get the nomination). So if Edwards were to win in the primary season and spend all of his funds in the process, he wouldn’t have any money left to defend himself from Republican attack campaigns. It wouldn’t even be legal for his campaign to coordinate his message with the “527” groups.

    So Edwards is damned if he does (spend his war chest), because he’ll be vulnerable in the summer; he’ll be damned if he doesn’t because he can’t mount an effective campaign durin’ the primaries.

  • to follow on Andy K, the public financing rules have per state caps, so as an absolute matter, Clinton and Obama will be able to seriously outspend Edwards in Iowa no matter how much cash Edwards appears to have in the bank.

  • it’s the media ignoring him entirely lately in favor of a Hillary/Obama catfight, combined with both the entire GOP and every single “Democratic political strategist” on TV pushing Hillary constantly.

    don’t count him out yet–colleges are all on vacation, so Obama can’t win.

  • also, his strong union support will help get people to the caucuses, i think.

    Having NH and Iowa pick our candidates is insane–we must change it for either big states first or regional superprimaries.

  • Edwards would do even worse in a “big states first” regime – he has raised less $$$ than Clinton or Obama, and Iowa and New Hampshire are (a) small and (b) have less expensive media markets than, say, New York City or Los Angeles/San Diego/San Francisco. Leading with Big States would have ended the candidacies of Carter and Bill Clinton, the only two Dem candidates that have won in the past 40 years, and actually helps establishment candidates.

    Regional superprimaries, in addition to this flaw, also will with near certainty result in nominating a regional candidate from the region that goes first. Everytime the Southeast goes first, we’ll have a Dixiecrat. Everytime New England goes first, one of those Rethug and Media cursed “Northeastern Liberals” etc.

    And in Iowa the top 3 candidates all have divided up the union support pretty well (and Dodd, with the fire fighters).

  • Good point about the per state spending caps, zeitgeist. I had forgotten all about those (public campaign financing apparently now being so last century). I suppose he could just bust the cap and take the fines though. If Edwards doesn’t win Iowa outright, I don’t think there is such a thing as what happens later in the race as far as he’s concerned.

  • How does a leading candidate go from first to third in a span of three months without a scandal or something shocking to spur the change?

    The very simple answer is he doesn’t and he isn’t. Edwards is not in third he is in a statistical tie for 1st.

    While you ask a great question, I’d prefer to ask why is the MSM making such a concerted effort to talk down Edwards chances when all the polls show him tied for 1st in Iowa? It’s an interesting question and one that deserves an answer but I don’t think we will ever get a straight answer.

    In Iowa Edwards has either been ahead or locked in a three way tie yet the MSM barely covers him. Indeed the well respected Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center documented how poorly the MSM has covered Edwards campaign.

    “As the major figure in only 4% of the campaign stories in the first five months of the year, Edwards ended up in the middle tier of candidates in terms of coverage. But even that number is in some ways deceptive. Were it not for the month of March, when Edwards’ wife Elizabeth announced that her breast cancer had recurred, the former North Carolina Senator would have been in the third tier of candidate coverage in the outlets studied. That lack of media attention came despite the fact that Edwards had been leading, for much of this time, in the polls in Iowa, and that he has consistently polled in the double digits in the national Gallup surveys”.

    http://www.journalism.org/node/8196

    Anyone who has followed the Edwards campaign has noticed how badly the MSM has covered him. Just recently Richard Wolffe wrote a piece in Newsweek (Karl Rove’s new home) that announced that Edwards campaign was falling apart. The very next day a major poll came out and showed Edwards numbers rising. A coincidence?

    In the Des Moines Register last week an article about an Edwards event mentioned several times how Edwards had been tardy to the event. Now as anyone who has ever been around politics knows — All politicians are late to campaign events (remember the press laughing about “Clinton time”). As bad as this story was for singling out Edwards for being tardy the Boston Globe did it one better. They picked up the tardiness comments from the Des Moines Register story and wrote an entire column about it dissing Edwards for being tardy. In addition to the tardy story the Boston Globe also had two other stories that same day that all knocked Edwards for one thing or another.

    I think the reason the MSM is talking down the Edwards campaign is because they have tried everything else to knock him out and nothing has worked yet. They have given him less coverage, written negative pieces on him (haircuts, hedgefund, houses and now tardiness) yet he still remains tied for 1st in Iowa despite having spent less money on TV commercials than the other two frontrunners (they’ve spent millions on ads and he just ran his 1st ad a couple of weeks ago).

    Now why would the MSM want to knock out Edwards? Edwards campaign is all about taking on the special interests and changing how things are run in Washington. It’s not just a political slogan with Edwards. He is dead serious about fighting entrenched interests and those entrenched interests know it and don’t like it one bit. They are very powerful and they are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that Edwards never becomes the nominee. It’s really no more complicated than that.

  • “…Just recently Richard Wolffe wrote a piece in Newsweek (Karl Rove’s new home) that announced that Edwards campaign was falling apart. The very next day a major poll came out and showed Edwards numbers rising. A coincidence?”

    LOL!!!

    But seriously. Yeah, I think I’d have to go with coincidence on that one.

  • Patty Morlan’s points are well taken. That said, Edwards had a clear lead this spring, Hillary had a clear lead early fall, and it is now a statistical tie. The Media has covered this as “Edwards slips” or HRC slips” when I do not think the numbers really say that. I don’t know that Edwards or HRC’s numbers have gone down at all – but there are reasons why with both Edwards and Clinton, if you were likely to like them, you already knew that early. As a result, a lot of the early committments in the polls were for those two. But we may see them close to their natural top in Iowa; those still deciding appear to be deciding Obama (not surprising given my premise that if you liked Edwards or Clinton you knew that already; the converse is that if you didn’t, you’ve likely been looking for someone else and Obama is now the only plausible “else”). So Obama’s numbers are on an upswing. That said, the media piles on frontrunners, and Obama has to hold his peak for 6 weeks. Not an easy task.

    (I just had a nice chat with an Edwards precinct captain tonight – they are already moving into the end game with precinct-level get-togethers to start answering questions about caucus night, etc. One thing still in Edwards’ favor is he knows how Iowa is done. Obama will have the hardest time converting theoretical support to hard caucus results.)

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  • Actually the only candidate who has had a clear lead in the Iowa race all year — as best the polls can tell us — was John Edwards. You have to go back to about May and throw out the ARG polls to even get that. Otherwise there really hasn’t been a point in the race where the underdog or the overdog were consistently leading or trailing the middle dog by more than the MoE of a typical poll.

    It’s true that when you get enough polls telling you the same thing you can maybe loosen up the confidence band a little, assume a slightly smaller MoE and guess that the relative positions really are the relative positions without going too far out on a limb. But even so, it’s been months since anyone enjoyed the kind of lead you couldn’t see evaporate in a day or two. Iowa has basically just been a dog fight all year and that’s pretty much where it is now.

    I would also caution that all recent talk of Clinton and Obama trading positions is based upon a single poll that’s so different from anything else we’ve seen recently, it properly should be considered an outlyer until proven otherwise. (Stuart Rothenberg is livid.) As for assumptions about how undecideds are likely to break, you always kind of make those at your own peril and in any case it’s probably still a little early for that, especially in Iowa. Iowans are notorious for making up or changing their minds in the last week or so before caucus day. We certainly saw that phenomenon in action 2004.

  • I have heard so much of How Rich John Edwards is, how much he paid for a single haircut, and how big his house is. If thats all that the press can find fault with John about , then he must be the best candidate out there. I would like to know more about the other leading candidates expenses and living conditions. Since the press has made such a big deal over John Edwards and his personal grooming and housing expenses, why not shine that perverbial light on to the other candidates. What does Hillary pay for her Doo, what size mansion does she live in, and Obama, how much does he spend on haircuts and his domicile.
    Lets make these issues apply to all candidates, not just the one who is trying his best to run a clean campaign and help change this country for the better.
    And yes you guessed, I SUPPORT JOHN EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT 2008.

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  • Thanks for the link to the Rosenberg piece. Stu is absolutely correct. I was watching MSNBC the day the new poll came out. They actually flashed “breaking news” on the screen. I couldn’t believe it.

    Chris Cilliza in the Wash. Post took the poll and ran with it (maybe he’s been hanging out with Chris Matthews too much) but Dan Balz of the Post gave a much better analysis.

  • Riggs @ 6
    The ABObama candidate you’ll get is Richardson.
    He’s a current governor rather than an ex-senator. SERIOUS “electability” chops there as long as the squeamish must-pick-a-white-moderate-male crowd forget he’s part Latino.

    Jen @ 7
    The Hil attacks are because her supporters split 50-50 Edwards Obama, while Obama supporters opt for Hilary 2:1. It’s suicide to target Obama.

    Zeitgeist @ 11
    Edwards 2.0 got called out as a moderate by Hil and she’d locked up the “electability” voters already, forcing him to switch gears. The sudden passion for free health care and college tuition screams of Trippi. (Not that I dislike the ideas.) You lose the moderates whop are afraid of liberal ideas and you don’t get the liberals you didn’t have already because they don’t believe you in the 9th inning of the game.

    Patty @ 20
    I’m trying to muster sympathy for how little press Edwards gets when I hear next to nothing about Biden, Dodd, or Kucinich. Hell, they even threw Gravel out of the last two debates because he hadn’t raised one million bucks but Kucinich squeaked in at 1.1. Where was the concern for fair coverage then? The sword of money cuts both ways, Johnnie.. Guess which America the MSM decided you were in?

  • toowearyforoutrage @ 27. Patty @ 20

    I’m trying to muster sympathy for how little press Edwards gets when I hear next to nothing about Biden, Dodd, or Kucinich. Hell, they even threw Gravel out of the last two debates because he hadn’t raised one million bucks but Kucinich squeaked in at 1.1. Where was the concern for fair coverage then? The sword of money cuts both ways, Johnnie.. Guess which America the MSM decided you were in?

    I feel your pain too. I’ve supported plenty of candidates in my time who were not among the “frontrunners” and I was just as ticked as you are that they didn’t get covered. And I protested then just like I’ve protested in this election. I also protested when Russert tried to make fun of Kucinich about the UFOs. It was the tackiest thing I’ve seen yet in the debates. The whole question was designed to make Kucinich look silly.

    When the media first started covering only those candidates with name recognition (higher poll numbers) not enough of us protested. Those whose candidates were being covered didn’t protest because their candidate was benefiting. Others figured it wouldn’t do any good. It was short sighted thinking. And because of that shortsighted thinking the MSM has escalated their exclusion of candidates. In addition to not covering candidates who are polling lower they are now beginning to “weed” out a candidate like Edwards who is tied for first in Iowa just because they don’t want him nominated. So I think even those who don’t support Edwards should be ticked off that the media is doing this because it impacts all of us. And we darn well better figure out how to fix this process before the next presidential election or we may just find that the media is only covering one candidate (their pick).

  • This country always gets the president it deserves.

    Always.

    America, the land of the shallow, the ignorant, the myth-lugging pack animal, the utterly, sadly, prehistorically stupid; does not deserve a populist candidate like John Edwards because it is ill-equipped to understand what he is all about and not informed enough to figure it out.

    Instead, America prefers to elect ultra-political hacks like Sen. Clinton, whose every moment is spent scheming how to walk with the rich and powerful and avoid soiling her raiment with the grime of the common folks, or the soft bigotry and substance-free stylings of Sen “Flash” Obama.

    After playing out this sad and silly ritual every four years, the voters (along with those too lazy to rouse themselves and exercise the franchise) can sit on their obese asses and complain about “the way things are” … in between segments of “American Idol” or “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

    ‘Tis a comfort, I suppose.

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