Regards, Ivan
Posted on 07/10/2004 4:17:49 PM PDT by MadIvan
AFTER the most dramatic week of his short political career, Senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, returned to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina, yesterday to begin the crucial but forbidding task of wresting control of the American South from President George W Bush.
A tumultuous welcome awaited the senator and his presidential partner, Senator John Kerry, as thousands of Democrats gathered for a rally in the quiet southern city where Edwards built his career as a lawyer before setting his sights on the Senate.
It was Edwards’s first trip home since Kerry chose him as his running mate last Tuesday. “This is a fabulous day for North Carolina,” declared Bill Fryar, a lawyer from nearby Durham.
Not everyone in Raleigh agreed. Outside the university hall where Kerry and Edwards were to speak, a group of Bush supporters waved signs that read: “Flush the Johns.”
After a cross-country cheerleading tour that reignited Democratic enthusiasm for the battle against Bush, the new running mates were planning to spend the weekend together in a state that has suddenly become one of the most intriguing contests of the presidential poll in November. It may be Edwards’s home but it is far from a safe haven for Kerry.
Having swept every state in the South four years ago, the Republicans have long been confident of repeating the trick in a region that has become a conservative bastion. As one of the Democratic party’s most appealing southerners Edwards should, in theory, help Kerry break Bush’s stranglehold.
Yet the early indications from opinion polls and other sources last week were that not even Edwards’s local appeal will change many minds in the South. Kerry failed to register a significant “bounce” in the first polls since he announced his running mate and still trails Bush in North Carolina.
Even as Democrats around the country hailed the new ticket as a “dream team”, combining the authority of a Vietnam war hero with the charm of a millionaire lawyer, Edwards’s awkward experience in his home state provided a reminder of the challenge Kerry faces.
It was during the early Democratic primary campaign that Edwards first attracted national attention for his childhood tales of North Carolina, where his father worked in a mill that was eventually forced to close by foreign competition.
In Iowa and New Hampshire, the story of Edwards’s rise from blue-collar grime became almost as well-known as Kerry’s life on a Navy patrol boat cruising the Mekong Delta. While Kerry turned to politics more than 30 years ago as a logical extension of his opposition to the Vietnam war, Edwards came late to the Senate, after the death of his son in a 1996 car crash caused him to re-evaluate his life.
Many North Carolina eyebrows were raised when the state’s boyish senator decided to run for president before he had finished his first term.
“There was a sense of, ‘Who does he think he is?’, said Andrew Taylor, a political scientist at North Carolina State University. “No one knew much about his record because he hadn’t been there long. There was a sense that he had a pretty smile and not much else.”
There was also a strong suspicion in Raleigh that Edwards ran for president mainly because he feared being beaten in a Senate election this year.
In North Carolina’s other senate race two years ago, Liddy Dole, the Republican wife of former senator Bob Dole, comfortably beat her Democratic opponent.
Edwards’s upbeat performance in the primaries restored his standing in North Carolina, however, and made him the popular favourite to become Kerry’s number two.
“The way he conducted himself in the primary engendered a lot of hometown pride,” said Ferrel Guillory, director of the southern politics programme at the University of North Carolina. “But this is a very divided state and most Republicans are going to stick with Bush regardless of Edwards.”
Even in Edwards’s former home town of Robbins, there was little sign of enthusiasm for the local boy’s success. At the Captain Snipper Salon and Day Spa, someone put up a sign that read: “Congratulations John Edwards.” But it was taken down the next day.
No Democrat has won North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Guillory and other analysts believe Edwards’s involvement may force the Republicans to pay more attention to a state they had taken for granted, forcing them to divert resources from other battlegrounds. But few expect the pattern of the past 25 years to change. “It won’t be a walkover for Bush but the South is still going to be very difficult ground for the Democrats,” said Guillory.
Yet if Edwards can’t deliver his own state to Kerry, why is he on the ticket? Republicans are already mocking the 51- year-old for his inexperience. Kerry’s cause was hardly helped at a fundraising gala in New York when Whoopi Goldberg, the comedian, declared: “He looks like he is about 18.”
A hint of an answer came at a campaign stop in the wilds of West Virginia, one of America’s poorest states. En route from New York to New Mexico, the Kerry-Edwards campaign Boeing briefly touched down at a remote municipal airport where 6,000 local Democrats had gathered.
Often overlooked by presidential campaigners, West Virginia has, like New Mexico and other outposts, acquired a new importance because of the closeness of the race. Bush’s victory in 2000 showed that a shift of power in the smallest of states could alter the outcome.
With his small-town roots and populist theme of two Americas — the haves and have-nots — Edwards comes across as a more appealing and approachable campaigner than Kerry, whose ponderous speaking style sends many in his audiences home early.
Almost the first thing Edwards said in West Virginia was: “I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina, like the towns you have around here.”
The crowd was soon eating out of his hand. Edwards may not ultimately make much of a dent in the South but he connects with parts of small-town America in a way that Kerry, with his aristocratic air, could not hope to do on his own.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
"This is a fabulous day for North Carolina,” declared Bill Fryar, a lawyer from nearby Durham.
Ah,the humble,simple folk greet their hero.
The Democrats are dreaming all right. Their "Vietnam war hero" is a gigolo and an opportunist. Their "millionaire lawyer" is exactly that--a trial lawyer. Both have the authority of a snakeoil salesman, and each has charmed is way into great riches.
The dreamworld, of course, is the venue of the Left, the world of delusion, fabrication, distortions, and mendacity. They are either delusional themselves or know exactly what they're up to and hope that you can be deluded. They seem to have selected a very effective pair for deluding you!
The day for North Carolina is going to be even more fabulous when Edwards duplicates Algore's performance in Tennessee and goes down in flames in his own home state!
That'll be fun.
Will Edwards bring Whoopi along with him?
Quite a coup!
Here's the coverage of the trip to Raleigh from a local tv station:
My tables--meet it is I set it down That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at I, v)
What do these elitists have to do with small town America?
You know what johns are full of, right?
Not to mention that they've been acting like they bat for the other team with all their touchy feely stuff. I'm waiting for Barney Frank to join them.
Whoopie. Imagine, having a name that is a euphemism for a 4 letter curse word.
Pong!
Apparently Whoopie is a nickname for her because she used to fart a lot.
I am not making this up.
Whoopi Loves Bush. I was one of those protesters. I actually came up with that slogan, but it wasn't on a sign.
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