Operatives Second: Edwards staff has "doomsday strategy" to bring him down if he got close to nomination.

Dhavan Shah Dems First, Operatives Second: Edwards staff has "doomsday strategy" to bring him down if he got close to nomination. http://ping.fm/IF4a0
10:57am · via Ping.fm ·


Rich Cleland at 2:29pm May 10
And accomplish what by keeping him in the race?

Dhavan Shah at 2:31pm May 10
No, to knock him out of the race and save the party and election for Hillary or Obama, knowing the affair information would leak sooner or later.

Rich Cleland at 2:47pm May 10
right. but what did they accomplish by keeping him IN the race? Is this supposed to be some kind of veneration for "Democrats" who enacted a secret policy that kept the truth from public (read: their donors) which, of course, ensured that the public would continue sending in the checks that paid their salaries?

I suppose we can take solace in knowing that ours is a party that, in the absence of any other option, can be counted on to do the right thing. hurray.

Dhavan Shah at 2:51pm May 10
Good points, Rich. There policy was self serving in one respect, though honorable in another. They did not want to sell him out, even though they knew the scrutiny of a general election could undermine the party, unless they absolutely had to. Yes, you are right that they took money from donors (and paid some of it to his mistress) but their professional positions were secondary to their political ideology in the larger calculation

Rich Cleland at 3:24pm May 10
I think there were plenty of ways to get Edwards out of the race without bringing him down on this scandal. For example, he could have been persuaded to forgo his aspirations for the sake of his wife.

I cant see how highly they esteemed their professional positions in a campaign they deemed safely unwinnable already in January and February of the election year.

I'm not trying to just be contrary on this, many aspects of this meme are aggressively bad. Chief among them is the idea that these operatives saw the harm to the Democrats in terms of a the potential for a strategically indefensible national candidacy rather than in supporting a man for the presidency who lacks enough character to remain faithful to his wife. It's not just fidelity to commitments that's important, but also because screwing around under such intense scrutiny is so phenomenally stupid and indicative of a near zero threshold for selling out your goals for a little self-gratifying ego-pumping.