I think you've narrowed the field to the null set. Unless he recycled Perot's running mate.
Posted on 06/13/2004 6:26:33 AM PDT by demlosers
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Sen. John Edwards, the smooth-talking populist who emerged from the nominating campaign as John Kerry's chief rival, is favored among registered voters to be the Democratic vice presidential candidate, according to an Associated Press poll.
But his name on the ticket does not automatically boost Democratic prospects.
A Kerry-Edwards pairing ties with the GOP team of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, which is no better than Kerry's current showing in head-to-head matchups against Bush, according to the AP poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
Kerry has made overtures to at least one potential candidate, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who rejected the offer to forge a bipartisan alliance against Bush, The Associated Press reported Friday. Two officials familiar with the conversations said Kerry stopped short of formally offering McCain the job, sparing the Massachusetts senator an outright rejection that would make his eventual running mate look like a second choice.
A hypothetical Kerry-McCain ticket had a 14-point advantage over Bush-Cheney among registered voters, 53 percent to 39 percent, according to a recent CBS News poll.
Democratic strategists cautioned against reading too much into any poll before Kerry selects a running mate.
"Polling information on potential running mates is soft and unreliable because it's all about name identification and hypothetical," said Doug Sosnik, a top adviser in the Clinton White House. "Eventually, we'll have a campaign when people will get to know them. Right now, it's just mush."
The AP poll showed that more than one-third of registered voters -- 36 percent -- said they would most like to see Kerry choose Edwards.
Among Democrats surveyed, Edwards fared even better: 43 percent preferred him over three other Democrats.
The first-term senator from North Carolina remained in the primaries longer than any other major candidate and won over thousands of Democratic voters with the positive tone of his campaign.
The poll showed that 19 percent of registered voters wanted Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the longtime Democratic leader who is retiring from the House. Eighteen percent chose retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, a political newcomer from Arkansas, and 4 percent picked Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, a relative unknown on the national scene.
About 23 percent said they were not sure or they offered another name.
When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York was added to the mix, one-fourth of the respondents supported her while Edwards' backing remained strong at 34 percent. She picked up one-half of the black vote, drawing support from Gephardt, Vilsack and the "not sure" category. She repeatedly has ruled out accepting the vice presidential nomination, and Kerry has not offered it.
Is there anything besides socialized health care, appeasment of totalitarians, and killing babies that could get 50% or better support in the Democrat party?
Other than a Southern accent, what would Edwards add to the Kerry ticket? Edwards couldn't even win re-election to his Senate seat in his home state.
"Other than a Southern accent, what would Edwards add to the Kerry ticket?"
Well charm & personality, he would add those. And some good family values. But it would, I'm afraid, just make Kerry look worse by comparison. This is why I don't think he'll chose Edwards.
Richardson seems the best pick to me all around, but I hear he's a no-go. I wonder why that is.
I never understood how anyone having core beliefs and campaigns against someone could turn around and support the same guy he just fought. After spending month trying to convince people your core differs from the other guy and bam (or should I say "flop".)
I'm with you. Don't forget that he only won one primary against an extraordinarily weak field. The only thing more overrated than Edwards' charisma is Kerry's intelligence.
Yp. Edwards would the be the star and Kerry can't have that. You have to admit that Edwards is a "I feel your pain" politician. We is lucky that Kerry won.
John Edwards was a "textile mill worker" (daddy's mill), and a personal injury attorney; his bio shows no record of military service. His political career to date consists of one election to the Senate over a weak candidate; his actual service in that body went almost unnoticed. And yet, he is widely viewed as an exciting and well-qualified choice.
"We is lucky that Kerry won."
Not sure if you meant to say We or W, but I kinda wish Dean had got the nom. I think he would have cleaned out the Clinton/McAuliffe junta. Kerry is just so, so deadly. And watching the media trying to shill for him is just painful. And worrying that Hillary! may steal it all at the convention is anxiety producing.
All that remains to put the final nail in the dems coffin is the release of the Sink-emperor's Book of Lies
I agree
First of all, anything that Ron Fournier writes is not worth the paper it is written on. He is nothing but a shrill for the Democrat "traitor"Party. Here's the "skinny"! John Kerry and John Edward are both empty suits! Al Gore is now certifiably insane and Bill and Hillary Clinton need more sleep at night! And....by the way, Michael Moore needs another 300 chicken wings! What a group of losers!
You are so right. It is beginning to look like Al Sharpton may be the dems. best...hope.......(suppressing laughter)....
It wouldn't be the first time.
If Kerry picks Michael Moore as his VP, heck, he'll get 100% support from DEMs!!!
Here's a question for folks with a little more historical perspective than I, I"m in my twenties and have only voted for President in the 2000 election....
Has there ever before been so much emphasis put on a candidate's VP choice? There seems to be almost as much media attention on who will be Kerry's running mate as there is on Kerry himself. This seems absurd to me, because we're not actually voting for the VP. Why would there be so much focus on the second-in-command, unless everybody knows that the Presidential candidate is a dud?
"What a group of losers!"
I agree totally, but don't you think it's frightening that at least 40%+ of our fellow Americans will be voting for that party in November. Creepy to say the least.
Rich Trial Lawyer = "populist"
"Has there ever before been so much emphasis put on a candidate's VP choice?"Yes. Results were mixed, however.
"Why would there be so much focus on the second-in-command, unless everybody knows that the Presidential candidate is a dud?"This is strictly media manufactured focus. The media want focus of attention on themselves as real political broker.
You owe me a keyboard LOL
Just a hunch, but I think Richardson is reading the tea leaves. I think he sees Kerry as a losing ticket, and being part of that ticket would hurt any future ambitions. I think he sees himself as potential VP material, but thinks it would be better to get involved with someone who could possbily win.
Dean never stood a chance once the Dims got serious. I mean we are lucky, I tried to say something else and made a mistake when I changed it.
Once again, the Democrats are arranging their Presidential candidates exactly backwards. A Lieberman-Gore ticket in 2000 would have been so much better than a Gore-Lieberman ticket. Going back to 1988, Lloyd Bentsen as President and Michael Dukakis as Vice-President would surely have done better than the final vote count that year showed.
The elections of 1992 and 1996 were just flawed. If being a combat veteran meant anything when in an election contest against someone who never served in ANY branch of the military, the Republicans should have won both those elections handily. Don't be trotting out John Kerry as a comparison to either George H.W. Bush or Robert Dole.
"Unless he recycled Perot's running mate."
You mean the "who am I and why am I here?" fellow? Stockdale, Stockman, something like that, an Admiral IIRC.
Jcon: Hillary doesn't look like much of a threat if she as VP only drops Edwards' share of the VP stakes by 2 points. I don't think a convention change to Hillary is likely with numbers like that.
Yankeereb: The problem is that they know things are turning around in Iraq. The evil opposition is getting weaker and weaker by the hour. Even Sadir was checkmated by the early change of the guard. By November, Iraq's going to look like a pretty decent place, and with the economy improving, that will KILL Kerry's chances.
southernnorthcarolina: Edwards may have no substance, but he does bring a much-needed charisma to the Democratic side. I'm surprised he didn't win the nomination; I think he'd make a far stronger candidate than Kerry because he's optimistic and likable. I don't remember Quayle as having much charisma. People will forgive a lot from someone with flair; take Bill Clinton as a nice example.
D
You noticed that too? I was just telling my wife those exact words just the other day......
Just a hunch, but I think Richardson is reading the tea leaves. I think he sees Kerry as a losing ticket, and being part of that ticket would hurt any future ambitions. I think he sees himself as potential VP material"
Waiting for shrillary in 2008...or perhaps if shrillary boots John F,n "Biker" Kerry at the Boston love fest Richardson will be her VP pick........?
What a great campaign slogan that would make. Vote for the Empty Suit and the Empty Set.
To answer your question on the importance of the VP choice - only one serious case comes to mind. It was 1960, Kennedy picking Johnson of Texas. The reason was the "Landslide Lyndon" phenomenon several years earlier, when LBJ was elected in a South Texas primary (no Republicans in Texas then) by some voters who "mysteriously" appeared on the poll list in one county, and put Lyndon over the top. If LBJ was so good ar manipulating election results, that was the fellow old man Joe Kennedy wanted on the ticket, because Joe wasn't going to pay for one more damned vote than he had to.
Illinois could be depended on to deliver the graveyard vote in Cook County.
Democrats like to claim the Supreme Court "selected" Bush in 2000, but Nixon won a larger popular vote over Kennedy in the 1960 election. Nixon, unlike Gore, did not contest the results.
Not sure how well Edward's 'two America's' vision would mesh with Kerry's pile of ketchup cash.
It seems to happen every presidential election. This year it seems more apparent because the head of the ticket is such a dud. The guy looks like a funeral director. It's very rare that a VP canidate really helps the ticket outside of bringing in the VP's home state. In Kerry's case there's no real help because NY, & Calif are already his, Texas is solid Bush and there's no real big name to help him in Fla. To my knowledge those are the biggest states. This year the choice of VP will either have no effect or will hurt Kerry.
| Kerry / Hillary '04 ....Republican dream ticket... |
Yes, but he has good hair.
The John John ticket
Oh God, I love it. An east coast Brahmin and a trial lawyer, the perfect example of the democrats.
Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? So typical of candidate Kerry, too. To be all things to all people, to fool all of the people all of the time. But I suspect that candidate Kerry DOES, in fact, have a real agenda ready to unleash upon "the people" should he win election 2004.
I do know that we at freerepublic are going to make every day a holiday, so to speak, if Kerry does win! We'll see how his mental stability and moral fiber holds out against unrelenting pressure and criticism, because it will be magnified a thousandfold at that point.
Personally, I'd love to see Edwards Vs. Cheney in a vice-presidential debate. They'd send the little weasel home in a bucket.
LOL. Very well said.
Kerry was in Vietnam??
I agree with you. It frightens me to see how many folks do not really have a clue as to where the Democrat Party will lead them! But, face the facts, if either Adolf Hitler or Osama bin Laden were at the head of the Democrat ticket, they would still get at least 40% of the vote! And....you know which group would be Hitler's biggest supporters, American Jews! Heard today another American Jew was beheaded last week in Saudi Arabia! Poor, foolish Jewish souls here in the USA just don't get it! Go figure! The good news is that the IDF and Israeli's get it, loud and clear!
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