In a 1.11 Huffington Post-ing, Lawrence O’Donnell has sided with my view that within the Democratic primary realm, John Edwards has more or less become the new Ralph Nader.
“John Edwards is a loser,” he declares. “He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency.
“Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now. All presidential candidates are egomaniacs but some of them have party status worth preserving that forces them to drop out when they hit the wall. A loser like Edwards has no status or dignity to lose. Campaigning and losing is his life. So, he will continue his simple-minded, losing campaign and deny Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the one-on-one contest they deserve.”
O’Donnell then writes that Edwards voters “would split evenly between Senators Obama and Clinton if Edwards dropped out.” Really? Edwards voters have always struck me as too militant to be content with Clinton, but maybe O’Donnell is right.
“If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.
“The white male monopoly on the Democratic nomination has finally come to an end. Someone has to tell John Edwards.”