Edwards hedges on whether he could back Clinton

November 13, 2007

It’s probably safe to assume there won’t be a Clinton/Edwards ticket in 2008.

In any presidential primary, candidates are routinely asked whether they would back their party’s eventual nominee, no matter who gets the nod. As a rule, it should be an easy one — anyone who wants to lead the party’s presidential ticket should obviously want to support the party’s eventual nominee.

But John Edwards apparently isn’t ready to make the leap.

So how is John Edwards feeling about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York these days? So bad, apparently, that in an interview last week he twice refused to say whether he would endorse her should she win the Democratic presidential nomination.

It is a standard political question, which often comes with a standard answer. And it is highly unusual for a candidate to decline to answer whether he would ultimately support the party’s nominee.

When asked the same question last week, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois did not hesitate.

“I am a Democrat, and I would support the Democratic nominee,” he said. With a smile, he added, “I intend it to be me.”

Neither did Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who declared: “Of course. What’s the choice, Rudy Giuliani?”

To be sure, Edwards didn’t say he wouldn’t back the eventual nominee. He said, “I’m not willing to talk about that at this point,” and was unwilling to elaborate.

That’s disappointing.

I suspect this is an extension of Edwards recent criticism of Clinton’s campaign. He’s been going after her quite a bit, and by hedging on this question, Edwards seems to be saying that Clinton is so problematic as a nominee, he may not even be able to endorse her after the primaries.

But that’s really the wrong attitude to take here. At some point, party unity has to mean something. It’s fine to take on your rivals, but at the end of the day, Democrats have to be willing to support Democrats. The alternative is Joe Lieberman.

In my heart of hearts, I suspect Edwards knows better. In 2004, Howard Dean made some similar noises after John Kerry started winning primaries, but it didn’t take long for Dean to come around and do what’s right for the party. Hopefully, Edwards understands that.

Dems have to believe, particularly in this climate, that any Democratic candidate would better serve the nation than any Republican candidate. That Edwards’ hostility for Clinton has reached the point that this is no longer clear is not a good sign.

As for the Republicans, TPM notes that Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul are the only GOP presidential hopefuls who have refused to pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.

Update: Chris Dodd strikes the right note here: “I am surprised at just how angry John has become. This is not the same John Edwards I once knew. Of course, we should all come together to support the nominee. I wonder which of the Republicans John prefers to Hillary?”

Dems have to believe, particularly in this climate, that any Democratic candidate would better serve the nation than any Republican candidate. This Dem doesn’t. Clinton is repulican-lite. There are more of us than you think.

  • The difference is that Howard Dean wanted a career in politics and it was necessary to maintain good relations with the party. He couldn’t very well become party chairman if he hadn’t supported Kerry and showed signs of doing what was good for the party.

    In contrast Edwards is interested in promoting John Edwards and isn’t interested in anything in politics less than becoming president. He may or may not ultimately support the nominee, but he has nothing to lose personally if he does not.

    As for Ron Paul, his views differ so much from the Republican Party that is is understandable that he might not support their nominee. I’ve also heard some grumblings that the Republican Party wasn’t all that supportive of him in the past which might reduce any feelings of obligation he might have to support them. Even if Paul doesn’t run third part himself there might be other candidates who are closer to his views. There’s always the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party candidates. (Paul might actually fall closer to the Constitution Party if the LP goes with a true Libertarian as candidate.)

  • Really, that’s how any candidate has to act to some extent. I’m sure if anyone asked Hillary the same question, she’d hedge as well. With the voting so close, they can’t risk sounding defeatist at any level for fear of demoralizing their supporters. Biden can get away with it because there are so few backing him, it doesn’t hurt. If Edwards still wants to have a chance at Iowa, he can’t risk losing anybody to anyone else for fear that they will think it means Edwards has conceded already.

  • Hmmm, I’m not sure this is a bad move for Edwards yet. He wasn’t asked if he’d support the Democratic nominee but if he’d support Hillary Clinton if SHE’s the nominee.

    I think he has real policy differences with her (probably as well as disliking her) and needs room to express them without weakening his stand by saying he’d support her. I don’t like her myself because of her triangulating and abandoning her base and certainly won’t support her if she wins the nomination. I’m not a party faithful anymore, though it has no effect on the party. I think it’s too early in the game to make anything out of his answer to this particular question right now. Democrats are critiicized for not taking the bull by the horns on issues, and in this small way, I think Edwards has done that by refusing to be crowded into a corner. He’ll quite likely support the nominee, whoever it is, as long as he’s a Democrat.

  • From a purely political standpoint, his answer should have been more like Obama’s – but I think I understand what he’s really saying, or where he might be coming from.

    When you take a position that is contrary to your opponent’s – for example, Edwards’ refusal to take money from the lobbyists, and Hillary continuing to do so – and there hasn’t even been one single vote cast in a primary or caucus, if you come out now and say you would endorse someone else’s candidacy, aren’t you also throwing your own principles out the window? It’s like saying, “well, these are my beliefs, but I’d chuck them out the door in a heartbeat to support the other guy,” isn’t it?

    In some ways, I don’t have a problem with Edwards’ reaction to the question – he’s in a fight that involves matters of principle and isn’t ready to let go of them 7 weeks or so before anyone casts a vote. Doesn’t mean he won’t, eventually, if Clinton is the nominee, but it’s not over yet – even if the media wants to wrap it all up now.

  • Count me as being a little disappointed in Edwards also. I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton, but she’s certainly not a Republican. Not even close.

  • “I don’t like her myself because of her triangulating and abandoning her base and certainly won’t support her if she wins the nomination.”

    what, gonna vote for roo-die instead?

  • of course it’s a bad move for edwards: he’s become the quintessential whiner of the entire campaign (even mccain can take it like a man). were his arms also crossed on his chest during the interview? pursed lips and eyes welled up with angry tears? did he spit on the ground when he walked away? or maybe he just gave it all up and sat down indian-style in the middle of the floor with his hands over his face, til everybody lost interest and got on with their day.

    now he’s ready to reject his own party’s nominee, if it’s clinton? that’s childish behavior. ridiculous and petty, in fact. and i have a hard time seein any relevancy to his political career at all once his campaign goes down in flames by early feb.

    what a disappointment. but not really, i guess…he never had a chance.

  • Dems have to believe, particularly in this climate, that any Democratic candidate would better serve the nation than any Republican candidate.

    Sorry. I’ve been a lifelong Democratic supporter (with the exception of my hideous Ralph Nader vote) and I don’t “have to believe” that. I will act exclusively upon my own prerogative when I exercise my most revered Constitutional right.

    Crucify, belittle, demean, berate, insult or ignore me, but I am supporting Ron Paul for President. If I could, I would also support Dennis Kucinich in the primary.

    I want the end of American Imperialism, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan. I want the end of the Plenipotentiary Executive and the egregious abuses of our civil liberties. I want the Constitution restored. I want the end of unsound monetary policy which enthrones the American Empire (which is to say that I favor the end of the Federal Reserve bankster cabal that privately and secretively manipulates the money which all of our lives depend on daily). I want the end of “representatives” who are corrupted by corporatist and lobbyist money.

    I refuse to support any candidate that endorsed the unconstitutional “Patriot” Act and/or the unconstitutional, “undeclared” “wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the patently ridiculous “war on terror” (how do you wage “war” on a psychological state or a nefarious tactic?).

    And here I thought it was the NeoCons who put party over country. How foolish I was.

  • “In my heart of hearts, I suspect Edwards knows better. In 2004, Howard Dean made some similar noises after John Kerry started winning primaries, but it didn’t take long for Dean to come around and do what’s right for the party. Hopefully, Edwards understands that.”

    I bet he does. He’s no idiot, and if he wants any influence in a hypothetical Clinton administration, he’ll do what it takes to get it, even if he has to be more enthusiastic in public than he is in private.

    I suspect it’s entirely a matter of keeping up appearances with him. He wants to make it seem like he’s got as much of a shot at the nomination as Clinton, even if some polls and other numbers might say otherwise. I still remember Dick Gephardt’s campaign representative a day or two before the Iowa caucuses insisting that his candidate was going to win. We all know how that turned out.

  • just bill

    Nah, I’ll write in the candidate of my choice. I can do that in my state, but some states don’t allow it in general elections.

  • jkap, you totally misrepresented what rick said. not that it matters to me, but i think he agreed with you on principle, no?

    i’m reminded of the cnn/pelosi news deal from yesterday…is the only reason i mention it.

  • The more of this I watch, the more I like Biden and Dodd. They seem to be the only ones saying anything meaningful. Hillary is just playing a game, Edwards seems pissed off (perhaps rightfully so) and Obama, well, I’m still just not sure.

    Biden though, great line: “Of course. What’s the choice, Rudy Giuliani?” And Dodd, the artful dagger, very statesmanlike. It’s a shame that these two men, with their years of experience and the respect that they would engender both in Congress and around the world, are not doing better. IMHO, it’s simply because the press has not seized on some story line about them as they did with Hillary/Edwards/Obama.

    I’m tired of a personality in the White House. I want someone who will roll up their sleeves and work, which is what I think Dodd and Biden would do. Too bad we’ll never know.

    -Homer

  • what, gonna vote for roo-die instead? -Just Bill

    I think Dodd is wrong. You don’t have to prefer another candidate not to support someone. If I’m faced with party unity and voting for Clinton, I simply won’t vote. John Edwards should enjoy the same democratic freedom. Voting and supporting isn’t either/or. There’s also neither.

  • oh yeah, jkap….sorry, just noticed that he was also quoting the article.

    no harm, no foul, i’m sure. 🙂

  • Edwards is just making a last-chance dig to get the nomination. He knows his ass is heavy at this point and he really wants to be President. That’s all it means.

    Would he turn down a chance at VP? It would help his chances to become President next time he runs, so probably not, no matter what he says now.

  • I don’t think that any candidate wants to discuss whether they would support someone else “if they lost”. They want to talk about winning, and not set a tone that suggests they have already conceded. I would expect any candidate to dodge and get back to talking themselves up, like Obama did with “I intend it to be me”.

    I’m getting really, really tired of the horserace coverage, the level of scrutiny is difficult to maintain and difficult to care about. I hope we’ll see less campaign minutiae and more substantive discussions, like the candidates’ policy proposals or those still-important national issues like where the telecom amnesty bill now that Feinstein has pulled a Specter.

  • I hear a many of my political colleagues claim that “Clinton is just Republican lite”. That is, of course nonsense, and whoever claims this should read more. You might disagree with some of her policy prescriptions. But they are built on wisdom, intelligence, morality, and compassion.

    The Republican Party has become dangerous… to the future of our economy with their reckless borrowing and spending… to national security by making so many enemies and snubbing of so many friend internationally… and to American morality through their “win at all costs” activities and their acceptance of immoral behavior, such as torture, when it is politically profitable.

    Our nation should be aching for a new second party… and no self respecting, moral, thinking Democrat would even be considering another Republican in any office!

  • I dunno. If you support Clinton then obviously you’re voting against the Republican for good reasons. But if you support Clinton and she does what it looks like she’ll do, then you’ve just supported someone who will do a lot of the things BUSH did.

    Want that on your conscience?

    I can see not voting, maybe.

  • Jim G, please explain how Hillary’s votes in favor of the Patriot Act and AUMF in Iraq reflect wisdom, intelligence, morality, and compassion. Thanks.

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  • I don’t Edwards comments are too different from those of Obama, who is clearly hedging his bets for the VP nominee with Clinton. I could see Edwards becoming the VP, but at this point anyone as the VP would help Hillary and her foot-in-her-mouth volatility that turn so many voters off.

  • JKap and others,

    When those votes came up, there was no particular reason to suspect our administration was tricking us into a war with Iraq. Even among progressives, Colin Powell was someone we all trusted at the time, and it was reasonable to think that our leaders might know better than us what was going on.

    We were a little suspicious, but a wise, intelligent, compassionate progressive could still have thought that those votes were correct at the time.

    One does not have to agree with me on all counts to be considered wise, intelligent, moral, and compassionate.

    Evidence that the Republican Party has lost its soul doesn’t come from the fact that they disagree with me, but from the sum of its craven and immoral behaviors over the last few decades.

    I don’t agree with everything she does, but Mrs. Clinton has these attributes, and would be a fine President.

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  • Ron Paul (a Republican) agrees with you on those counts, Jim G, and I don’t necessarily agree with everything he does.

  • doubtful @ 15:

    I simply won’t vote. John Edwards should enjoy the same democratic freedom.

    There is, of course, a huge difference: you are not seeking to be the leader of your party in a two-party (and largely zero-sum) system. That gives you a lot of freedom that Edwards doesn’t, and really shouldn’t, have. A lot of us here complained loudly when Connecticut Democrats chose Lamont yet party “leaders” would not help him beat JoeLie. We argued the Democratic Party should honor the Democratic voters.

    There is no principled way to add “unless those Democratic voters choose Hillary Clinton.”

    All candidates should pledge to help bring the party together and ensure victory in November. That is not your responsibility, so you can do otherwise.

    Which brings us to. . . JKap @ 9

    And here I thought it was the NeoCons who put party over country. How foolish I was.

    You are setting up a false dichotomy. It is not blind party loyalty versus patriotism; it is a matter of degree. If party loyalty means nothing, then a party has no meaning and is little more than a social club (although people often have loyalty to those) or a nearly randomly shifting group of people with letters after their names. In some dreamy utopia, we might have no parties – just individuals and their merits – but the reality of organizing millions of people to any kind of action is that you need a structure, in this case a party. So should party loyalty automatically trump every other consideration for every person in America? Of course not – but no one was taking that extreme position. On the other hand, a the party is meaningless if there is no loyalty even among its leaders (why would anyone follow the party if the leaders wont?)

  • It’s a PERSONAL endorsement. If Edwards doesn’t want to endorse Clinton, he doesn’t have to.

    Would he endorse a Republican… I doubt it. I suspect he doesn’t see much difference between Hillary and the Republican gang and honestly I don’t either.

  • If John Edwards is not the nominee and Hillary is and he does not support her, I’ll be disappointed. Until then, I am as tired as I suspect he is of the questions that imply Hillary’s inevitability or that Edwards somehow should knock off pointing out the differences he sees between the two of them. Oh please, John, follow St. Ronnie’s 11th Commandment! I would far rather read a critique on the differences he articulates rather than obsessing over the fact that he is articulating them.

    I will vote for Hillary over anyone the Republicans can offer up, if she is in fact the Dem’s nominee. But, it will be with a sense of unease. She is far too “status quo” to excite me. And, like her husband, she sometimes is too clever by half.

  • I admire Edwards for hesitating to support Hillary.

    If you oppose the war, if you oppose the military-industrial complex, if you believe in civil liberties, if you believe in open government, if you want ethical leaders, you oppose Hillary. On principle.

    Do not confuse politics with sports. If we win, but get the same old policies, we have in fact lost. Hillary is indeed Bush lite. Essentially her pitch is: “this election is about competence, not ideology”. Remember how well that went over?

    Is there anyone more cravenly power-mad than Hillary? Only Mr. 911 even comes close. If these are my choices, I stay home.

  • JimG:
    We were a little suspicious, but a wise, intelligent, compassionate progressive could still have thought that those votes were correct at the time.

    Bzzzzt! WRONG! Since the first moment someone breathed the word “Iraq” after the hideous tragedy of 2001, I have been adamant that anything to do with that country was WRONG WRONG WRONG. I got lambasted repeatedly, brutally, by nearly every span of the political spectrum. I heard the speeches, read the essays, watched in horror as the Senate ceded its authority to the Executive. I’m just a guy from ohio, nothing special here: cover your own ass if you wish, but this inexperienced, dumbass hard-core progressive saw right through all that bullshit.

    It concerns me greatly that Senator Clinton might simply be a continuation of same, but I’m still a Dem. Edwards gets my vote in the primary, but if Clinton gets the nod, she gets my vote. Not voting is, in my opinion, akin to voting for one of the seven fascist Dwarves. Hillary ain’t no Snow White, but she sure as hell ain’t the wicked witch, either.

  • Please, I would vote for a duck if it were the Democratic nominee. Those who won’t support Hill if she gets the nomination, well that’s your perogative. Just don’t go complaining if instead of Rupublican lite you get Republican Heavy. If the Rethugs win this time around, with Bush’s approval ratings what they are, they will claim that Bush’s policies were the seed for new eternal Republican majority. Justice Stevens will get replaced with another Alito/Thomas/Roberts and America will never recover. Seriously, you have to think…what would I do to prevent another four years of Rethuglican rule? Do you really believe that Hill would be as bad as Rudeee? Seriously? You want his finger on the button? or Romney’s? McCain? Thompson?

  • To be sure, Edwards didn’t say he wouldn’t back the eventual nominee. He said, “I’m not willing to talk about that at this point,” and was unwilling to elaborate.

    That’s disappointing.

    No it isn’t. As you said — “to be sure” — he didn’t say he wouldn’t back the eventual nominee. He just didn’t want to talk about it, which would be to play along with the “it’s already over” meme. Honestly, Steve, are you bucking for Clinton press secretary or something?

  • When asked the same question last week, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois did not hesitate.

    “I am a Democrat, and I would support the Democratic nominee,” he said. With a smile, he added, “I intend it to be me.”

    Good answer.

  • To GuyFromOhio

    For sure, you guys turned out to be right about the Bush administration and the whole Iraq debacle. But we weren’t “covering our ass” really. Many of us genuinely wanted to believe that our leaders wanted what was best for our country in that regard.

    Naive perhaps. And we fell hard.

    Still, my take on that issue and on Mrs. Clinton still holds.

  • Truthfully, I think many of us felt, back when the US was sane, that it would be inconceivable that the President would lie and start a preemptive war. I was skeptical and thought we shouldn’t go in but at the same time I hedged and said that if we found WMD, I would admit I was wrong. Turns out I was right we shouldn’t have started the war, but the hedge showed that I believed there was a fair possibility that I was wrong and that the President maybe was acting on information the rest of us weren’t privy to.

  • I was thinking the hedging is a method to buy Clinton or other candidates to take his suggestions and plans, which they haven’t, so far.

    That’s what platforms and the primary is for, though. Let him hedge.

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