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Mon Aug 11, 2008 at 10:38:02 AM EDT
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Sen. Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee if John Edwards had been caught in his lie about an extramarital affair and forced out of the race last year, insists a top Clinton campaign aide, making a charge that could exacerbate previously existing tensions between the camps of Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.
"I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee," former Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told ABCNews.com.
Clinton finished third in the Iowa caucuses barely behind Edwards in second place and Obama in first. The momentum of the insurgent Obama camaign beating two better-known candidates -- not to mention an African-American winning in sucn an overwhelmingly white state -- changed the dynamics of the race forever.
Obama won 37.6 per cent of the vote. Edwards won 29.7 per cent and Clinton won 29.5 per cent, according to results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party.
"Our voters and Edwards' voters were the same people," Wolfson said the Clinton polls showed. "They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us and we would have barely beaten Obama."
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/...
The cascading effects of the Iowa results leading up to South Carolina are there in the historical record for all to see... after Iowa, Obama became the candidate who could win in popular perception, and his support went from 50% of the black vote to 75-80%. If John Edwards hadn't been in the race, Obama's Iowa results never would have happened. |
| campskunk :: Wolfson: Edwards' Cover-up Cost Hillary the Nomination |
Here's Matt Bai on the effect of the Iowa results...
This point about whether Obama was "black enough," a senseless distinction to most white voters, came up often in my discussions. It referred to the perception among some black leaders that not only had Obama not shared their generational experience, but also that he hadn't shared the African-American experience, period. Obama's father was a Kenyan academic; his family came to America on scholarship, not in chains.
Internally, Clinton's strategists set a goal of receiving half the black vote in the Southern primaries, though they calculated that they needed as little as 30 percent in order to beat back Obama. It seemed like a sure bet. Last fall, as the primaries neared, their own polls had them winning more than 60 percent of black voters.
Within hours of Obama's victory in Iowa, however, Clinton's black support began to crumble. Black voters, young and old, simply hadn't believed that a black man could win in white states; when he did, a wave of pride swept through African-American neighborhoods in the South. Nor did those voters apparently have the deep affection for Hillary Clinton that many of their ministers and local pols did. Carol Willis, a Clinton aide from the Arkansas days who was leading the campaign's outreach to black voters, told me, "I always heard people saying: 'I know Bill Clinton. I don't know Hillary Clinton. So I'll give Barack Obama a closer hearing.' " Internal polling in both campaigns after Iowa showed Obama suddenly garnering closer to 75 or 80 percent of the black vote in primary states. |
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"Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. When you stumble, keep faith. When you?re knocked down, get right back up. And NEVER listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on."
Hillary Clinton - June 7, 2008
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