Is there any doubt that the next President of the United States will be John Edwards?   I don't have any.   I awoke this morning with the realization that Democrats will win the Presidency in 2008 provided the US doesn't somehow spin gold out of straw in Iraq and provided the Democrats don't screw it up by putting up the wrong candidate.

First off, I dispense with the Republican party fairly easily.   The only way they can hold the office is by "winning" in Iraq in some way, shape or manner.   The Islamic fundamentalists are right.   We no longer have the intestinal fortitude to wage war in this country.   I guess we lost that ability after the Korean War.   At one point we could take 10,000 casualties in a single battle in a small forest in France.   Now 10 minor injuries in the line of duty wipe out any resolve we laid claim to beforehand.   So, for Republicans, the only task worth accomplishing is winning the war in Iraq, however "winning" is defined.   Absent that unlikely event, Democrats win the presidency.

Next up, I consider that the only way Democrats can lose the race is by nominating someone entirely unacceptable to the American public.   The important likely Democrat candidates, as I see it, are Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore.   You can disagree with my choices of "important candidates" but I don't think anyone else has a realistic shot.   Bill Richardson probably would make a good candidate but the man looks somewhat like a tired father who probably doesn't have the real desire to put himself through such a grueling race.   If he were to run, win and serve two terms, he would look a lot worse in 2016, at the end of his Presidency, approaching the age of 70.   So, I turn my attention to Clinton, Obama, Kerry and Gore.

I dispense with Gore because, well, because he didn't even run a decent campaign against Bush.   You can claim he won the election and it was stolen from him but it was far too close for an incumbent - Vice Presidents constitute incumbents in presidential races - and demonstrated almost complete ineptitude.   Even if you push this major stumbling block aside, Gore is a little too far out there with the lefties, particularly environmentalists, for the American people, especially when you consider other alternatives.   Similarly, Kerry can't be considered a candidate with a serious shot at winning nomination, let alone the office itself.   Not even Democrats are going to be willing to take the chance of a bumbling Kerry gaffe costing them the office they covet.   it is one thing to hold the military in contempt privately and quite another to not have the intelligence to hide the fact.   So this leaves us with Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

Obama, as I've said before, has some serious problems regardless of where he stands in the polls today.   "Mr. Ears" is, to put it bluntly, funny looking.   But that's not an insurmountable handicap.   He could overcome that were it not for the unfortunate middle name of Hussein.   But maybe the PC police could shame the public into voting for him since he isn't Muslim.   All that may be but Obama's drugumentary is a bit hard to swallow.   I believe this unwinds his candidacy.   That leaves us with just Hillary and Edwards.

I believe John Edwards will be the Democrat's choice for a number of reasons.   First off, there is a boy next door sort of air about his slightly southern drawl.   Democrats need a candidate from the South.   Edwards is more ready for primetime as a southerner than Hillary, living as she does in and representing the most northern of northern places, New Yawk.

I'm not particularly good at judging the looks of other men but I have to think that Edwards looks are at worst average.   He isn't homely - he doesn't have any odd features the way Kerry or Obama do.   He seems like the kind of good ole boy any mother or father would be happy to see their daughter come home with.   He doesn't even have the odd country-bumpkin look of a Bill Clinton.   Edwards is the modern southern man, bright, articulate, decent looking, successful and only just barely hides his natural drawl due to good education.

Edwards has the kind of Joe-middle-class upbringing that storybooks are made of.   His parents toiled away at blue-collar jobs while putting their son through college.   He graduated from NC State and then UNC law school, while becoming the first member of his family to attend college.   He's had four kids which, you have to admit, is a lot even considering the circumstances around which he decided to have more than two.   While being professionally very successful, he has not avoided the sort of personal tragedy which make one a sentimental favorite.   He lost his son to a car accident and his wife has breast cancer.   He's as ordinary as thanksgiving turkey.

While Edwards has been criticized for being a millionaire ambulance chaser and for having "used" his son's death to help him win a case, you have to admit that the man understands the needs of his job and delivers on them regardless of emotional cost to himself.   That is a characteristic Americans admire regardless of any moral analysis applied to it.   We may not personally love that attorney who dredged up something a personal tragedy in order to win a case but we will certainly hire him, if we need an attorney.

Another thing about Edwards his is "good-ole-boy-ness."   He doesn't have the idiotic pomp or arrogance of idiotic John Kerry or Al Gore.   He's strikes you as one of us.   Sure he succeeded and is a multi-millionaire but you can hear the average Joe thinking, "he used to live over there in that shack and I knew his parents once when I worked with his mom at the Post Office.   Good people, those Edwards.   They really cared about their son.   They made sure he did good in school and went to college.   he wasn't born with no silver spoon in his mouth.   Everything he got, he earned."

Edwards liberal bona fides should resonate with the Democrat base.   His law practice mostly benefited the down-trodden.   After the 2004 presidential race, Edwards accepted a position as director of a new "Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity" at UNC.   He's since taken the good ole wall street job but that hasn't proven to hurt other liberals in the past.   And in that capacity, he has continued to speak out for so-called progressive causes.   Also, Edwards is just 53 years old which fits nicely into the generation which made its voice heard in the late 1960s.

Yes, Edwards did vote for the Iraq war but he renounced that vote quite some time ago, while he was no longer in office or involved in any campaign!   He didn't irresponsibly stand up in the Senate and claim to support the troops while expressing the need for immediate "deployment" and threatening to cut off funds.   He just said, "I made a mistake."

Edwards has already announced his platform as "eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, and providing universal health care."   He recently denounced the troop surge in Iraq.   While not being for same-gender marriage, he has been close to being for civil unions, though he believes this should be left up to the states.   Hmm.   These sound remarkably like the most popular positions in this country.   Fight poverty and global warming, advocate for the down-trodden, make money but fight for the poor, provide healthcare for everyone, get out of Iraq, let the states figure out the gay marriage thing, these are all positions which, while they can be argued against, resonate with liberals and most centrists.

If Edwards can be said to have a fault, it is that he sometimes says things which can be spun to be inappropriate.   Yet, while some of these might be questionable, they don't necessarily strike the average person as being all that bad.   During the presidential election he mentioned off handedly that Dick Cheney's daughter was a lesbian.   But the manner in which he said it was more like something slipping from the tongue of one of your neighbors.   It just didn't sound like criticism lodged by one of the political pundits who populate the media.   It caused a "so-what" moment and nothing more.   Some otherwise good people probably said, "holy ... I didn't realize Cheney's daughter was a lesbian."   And that's probably all he wanted out of it.

Edwards also said, in reference to embryonic stem cell research, "If we can do the work that we can do in this country – the work we will do when John Kerry is president – people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk.   Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."   Now that may be over the top but it probably echoes what the average person's hopes with respect to stem cell research are.   It is one thing to go over the top in a mean spirited way but Edwards can't be accused of that in this case.   If anything it solidified his populist attitude.

Now Edwards has a battle ahead of him in that Hillary is a very powerful opponent.   But let;s face some facts here.   Hillary is not well liked throughout the country.   People just don't trust her.   She's not polling very well and hasn't for years.   She's sort of the old style of successful woman.   And she, like Richardson, will be pretty old by the end of a second term.   Edwards, despite his age, comes off as if some 40 something.   He almost seems like a portrait of Dorian Gray.   Did he get younger since the last presidential race?

Now don;t get me wrong.   I don't care for Edwards.   I don't want to see him win.   But I've got to be realistic.   The man's got to be the Democrats' best candidate and Republicans don't match up well against him even before hte Iraq thing prevents them from holding the office.   I'd be willing to bet he is our next President.

There's one other thing I'd be willing to bet on.   That is, when Edwards wins the presidency, it will be a two term night for Democrats.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no,

Yeah!
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.

John Edwards is nobody's fortunate son.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama