Edwards Campaign: “Hey, We’re Still Here!”

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


john-edwards-campaigning.jpg The Edwards camp shot a campaign memo around to reporters today explaining Edwards’ “path to the nomination.”

“Ultimately, we expect the race to narrow to one of the two celebrity candidates and us,” it says, “and when that happens, we are confident that the remaining contests will break in our direction as voters are finally offered the choice the national media has ignored all year—the most progressive, most electable candidate in the race, John Edwards.”

That last phrase—”the most progressive, most electable candidate”—is used throughout the memo.

The campaign goes on to mention that only a handful of delegates have actually been awarded (counts vary, but the Edwards people identify about 130), while there are over 4,000 total to be awarded in primaries nationwide. That means that a candidate needs to take over 2,000 delegates to win. The point is, Edwards has time to make a comeback.

So that’s the plan (or, that’s the plan they’ll make public)—stick around and hope that one of the “celebrity” candidates stumbles so badly that he or she has to get out of the race. Not a great bet, but the only one Edwards can make.

The problem is, there isn’t a whole lot of retail politics from here on out. As the Edwards people point out, “once people have a chance to hear directly from John Edwards, the numbers move.” But on Super Tuesday, Edwards will not be able to work the small towns of any particular state, the way he did in Iowa and South Carolina. He has to rely on big ad buys and free media (aka press coverage). Neither of those things are really within Edwards’ reach right now.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate