Talk Elections

http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/05/edwards-staff-h.html

"Several of them had gotten together and devised a 'doomsday' strategy of sorts. Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me. They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign."

So were they aware of his affair? And if that was the reason they were going to prevent him from being the nominee, why not just leak the affair right away and nip the whole thing.

Exactly.  Why not sabotage immediately, just to be safe?

I loved this reply in the comments section:


(And Reagan, of course)

I don't and never would have supported Edwards, even before the affair, but all of this prying is the province of moralistic busybodies who really ought to mind their own business.

What was there to leak?  The Enquirer printed this story around October of 2007.  It was already known.  Just not being widely reported by the MSM.  The only question was whether one believed it was true or not.  Sounds like Edwards staffers had a gut feeling that it was true, but didn't really have any hard evidence.

Another possibility for the trajectory of the Edwards campaign, of course, was not as the eventual nominee but as a power broker.  As it was, Edwards was in the unfortunate position of hovering just below 15% in a lot of states in late January---so, if he had stayed in the race, he mainly would have played spoiler (hurting Clinton in the South and Obama elsewhere), while only picking up a few CD delegates here and there where he got lucky enough to break 15%.  Certainly <100 delegates, total.  If Edwards had done just a bit better (a more convincing second place in Iowa over Clinton, any organization at all in Nevada, and/or close to a tie with Clinton in SC), he might have had the chance to pick up a rather sizeable chunk of delegates, maybe on the order of a couple hundred, by breaking 15% in the South and maybe a few other places.  Having a hefty number of delegates (though no more than 1/3 of the total superdelegate count), would make him a rather powerful player if the race dragged on until May.

So, if his campaign staff would still have liked Edwards playing kingmaker (as long as he didn't get made VP as a result), there was reason for them to wait on the sabotage front.  Not to mention they probably weren't too eager to confront him / actually leak the story and effectively fire themselves by killing the campaign.

In any event, if there was any "sabotage plan," it couldn't have been in existence for much more than a week, if not just a few days...once Edwards lost Iowa, it was pretty clear he wasn't going to win the nomination---and the door was firmly closed after NH 5 days later.

Why did this guy have to affiliate himself with the Democratic party to begin with?

He was a horrible VP pick in 2004 and a dreadful candidate in both of the last two elections.

After thinking about this some more, I realize that this is just transparent butt-covering on the part of Edwards staffers.  Elizabeth now says that she doesn't know if the baby is John's or not, which suggests that the affair likely continued well into 2007, when the Edwards campaign was in full swing.  That means that Edwards's closest aides are either 1) complicit in the affair, or 2) dupes, for not having noticed that the boss was having an affair.

Now they're trying to argue "Oh, don't worry, we knew about it, and we would have sabotaged the campaign if it looked like he was going to win the nomination."  Right....I'm sure the fact that they didn't either resign or blow the whistle has nothing to do with the fact that they wanted to keep collecting paychecks.  I wonder what they would tell the Edwards volunteers in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other early primary states today?  "Yeah, we knew you were wasting your time.  We knew you were working your butts off for a candidate who was doomed, but we didn't say anything, because we wanted to keep getting paid."

Yeah, that's what I really don't get.  If they knew about this and hoped to sabotage the campaign, they should have quit from the get-go.

I find it hard to say that these folks are any better than Edwards himself.

That's exactly how I read this: what they're claiming is that they wanted to soak the Edwards Campaign treasury for every cent they could, then torpedo the candidate.

I would like to propose that we all vow that if anyone in this forum ever attains any success in life...ever amounts to anything, and gains any power, money, or influence, that everyone else here vows to sabotage that person by leaking scandalous details about that person's life to the media.

I think we can all agree that that would be in the world's best interests.

How about we blackmail them instead?  This forum gets breaking news leaks, exit poll info, and...say, our own private jet [each senior member gets to use it 1 week out of the year].

Am I a senior member?  I can has Edwardz private jet?  I gots places to go!

One person already has (Muon, who is an Illinois State Representative). Though he seems to be about as scandal free as you can get. :)

We should inform the Illinois press that Muon provides thoughtful, polite and informed commentary on a semi-regular basis to people on the Internet! That's sure to sink him :D

It'd be pretty funny if they tried to sabotage his campaign by a series of pranks.  Butter the bottom of he shoes so he slips on stage.  Put blue hair dye in his shampoo bottle.  Itchy powder in his underwear.  Links to pornography sites "accidentally" included in press releases. etc.

That would be the perfect plot for a Rob Schneider movie.

We'll take you up on that offer in ten years. You'll hear from us. Don't contact us, we'll contact you.

The first set of pranks would have to be fumbled such that they end up, by accident, improving Edward's image.  "Can't we do anything right?!" Then by the mid-point in the movie they start figuring out how to successfully sabotage him. 

Yes - the slipping on stage thing means that an assassin misses him or something, and the attempted assassination raises his credibility (sort of like "they wouldn't try to silence him if he didn't stand for something").