Conventionial Wisdom - North Carolina

Conventionial Wisdom - North Carolina Senatory John Edwards seems more and more a shoe-in to run for president.

Now, I've heard three different, inevitably contradictory, versions of "conventional wisdom" on this:

1. Knowing that, should present conditions hold, running against Bush is a suicide mission, Edwards is really setting himself up for a Vice Presdidential run in '04, to set up name recognition for a run for the presidency for real in '08.
2. Edwards' run is analogous to Nixon's run in '60 against Kennedy - counting on at least building name recognition and a nationwide base, probably on the cheap - rather than spending like he'd have to to make a credible try at winning, he'd scale his effort more toward going nationwide and set up a credible campaign organization for '08.
3. If something seems too good to be true - or, by corollary, too bad to be true - it's probably not. Edwards is counting on some disaster to cut the knees out of under the Bush administration in time for the next election - either a military disaster, or a double-dip economic slump to turn the electorate's attention back toward the domestic matters that the Democrats still feel confidence about (whether justifiable or not).

Any ideas? I personally think #1 is the closest - Edwards has to know that no non-Democrat-activist outside of the Scrapple Belt knows anything about him, and it'd be nice to build the name recognition on someone else's dime.

Of course, I've been wrong before...

Posted by Mitch at January 1, 2003 02:43 PM