>>>Edwards has an ability to connect to voters on an emotional level, to make them feel like they know him.<<<
Indeed, Edwards has a folksy populist appeal and he makes a nice connection to voters. I especially like the way he sets his table for audience understanding by asking a series of questions related to an issue and then delivers a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am and stunning logical conclusion in answer.
In effect, he brings his listeners along with him, rather than subjugating them to what he has to say. And all of this is done on a positive front, from a focal point of primarily attacking the Bush Administration, not his Democratic opponents. I think voters are perceiving this as a fresh new approach to politics. He's certainly convinced more than a few editorial boards of large daily newspapers.
My thinking on this election is that the Democrats this time need to firmly deliver GOPwingers a defeat on the level of the one McGovern experienced. Although Carter eventually took out Ford for a brief one term, that McGovern defeat was like a red meat feeding frenzy for Republican strategists who used it to hit every single Democratic weak spot over the ensuing decades, giving them not only a lock on the presidency but eventually gaining control of Congress during the Clinton presidency.
It's my opinion that the time has come for GOPwingers to go back to the planning rooms so they can figure out how to become real Republicans again, instead of the GOPwingers they are today.
Toward this end, I don't see the Kerry candidacy accomplishing this. I see Kerry vs. Bush as yet another close presidential election with GOPwingers still able to employ the same tactics and strategies that have been so successful for them in the past, since Nixon. To them, Dukakis was McGovern and Kerry is both of them wrapped into one.
The Kerry strategy for winning is to win the same Gore states, plus one. For me, that's too close for comfort. I want to blow the GOPwingers out of the water. I want them to experience a defeat so stunning that it'll shake up their identity for the next three decades!
Edwards, an outsider with no baggage and beholden to none, with his populist appeal on the right-button issues, together with the demographics of where he's from, in my humble opinion, is the one who is best able to do this.
Let a Sam Nunn, Alexander Hamilton, George Mitchell or someone of an experienced-in-government stature become Edwards' Cheneymate. With this combo the Democrats could roll victoriously throughout most of the South, gain a mid-western state here or there, take back Ohio and West Virginia and keep all of the Gore states intact and, thus, deliver a stunning defeat to the GOPwingers.
Well, that's how I see it February 24, 2004! |
