Joe Trippi's Gut-Check Failure

Nick Gillespie | May 1, 2008

From the current issue of Politics (formerly Campaigns & Elections and outlet for two damn fine cover stories by reasoners [about Mike Huckabee and the coming libertarian era]), Joe Trippi turns on the waterworks thinking about his experience with presidential washout John Edwards:

For the first time in thirty years of political work, I didn't go with my gut.

I didn't tell him what I should have told him: That I had this feeling that if he stayed in the race he would win 300 or so delegates by Super Tuesday and have maybe a one-in-five chance of forcing a brokered convention. That there was a path ahead that would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda. And that in politics anything can happen-even the possibility that in an open convention with multiple ballots an embattled and exhausted party would turn to him as their nominee. I should have closed my eyes to the pain I saw around me on the campaign bus, including my own. I should have told him emphatically that he should stay in. My regret that I did not do so-that I let John Edwards down—grows with every day that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continues....

My mistake was not seeing more clearly then what is so obvious to me now: He could have kept his agenda in the forefront by staying in the race and forcing Obama and Clinton to focus on those issues because he, John Edwards, would hold the key to the convention deadlock. And maybe, just maybe, a brokered convention would have stunned the political world and led to an Edwards nomination.

Whole thing, worth reading for many reasons (including real insight into campaign guys' heads), here.

Me, I'm glad John Edwards is out of the race—he's the Mountain Dew of phoney-baloney pols (to the extreme!) and while a brokered convention would be a good deal of fun (whether it'll ever happen is a very different question), Edwards' dumb Big Gummint ideas were cutting edge back when LBJ was taking craps in front of his cabinet members. Do we really need another moneybagged populist egging Obama and Clinton to go Ralph Nader on an already-flagging economy?

reason on Joe Trippi here.

Comments

|5.1.08 @ 5:03PM|#

Well, at least in trippi/Edwards's case a brokered convention fantasy might just have some basis in reality. Unlike, say, some of Ron Paul's more fringe supporters.

|5.1.08 @ 5:25PM|#

I know a guy whose bitterness over the departure of John Edwards from the electoral circus is quite intense; he thinks Edwards would have saved us from the "Rollerball" style Corporate Perdition which will soon be upon us.

He is an ex-Marine, with lots of guns, so I dasn't display my jubilation too conspicuously.

jj|5.1.08 @ 5:28PM|#

Unlike, say, some of Ron Paul's more fringe supporters.

Ah yes, those fringe supporters. Why we can't all be balanced, moderate, sensible people like johjackson3rd.

|5.1.08 @ 5:48PM|#

Do we really need another moneybagged populist egging Obama and Clinton to go Ralph Nader on an already-flagging economy?

I don't get this line of thinking?

Is the implication that the economy doing poorly because of over-regulation?

I think the banking industries are ripe for some regulation and forcing some lending standards....since they are getting bailed out by the taxpayers.

|5.1.08 @ 6:39PM|#

I think the democrats will be looking a white male candidates from here on out if the vitriol in the current primary is any indication.

I think that the lefts tactic of educating voters to automatically the candidate that shares their innate characteristics of gender, race, orientation etc backfires badly when they have an field of innately diverse candidates. Everybody wants their innate guy to win and feels oppressed and cheated if they don't.

A white male candidate might be the only way to find a compromise candidate between competing groups based on innate characteristics.

|5.1.08 @ 7:09PM|#

I just can't imagine the kind of mentality that would get emotionally attached to Fluffy the Trial Lawyer.

-jcr

|5.1.08 @ 7:11PM|#

Is the implication that the economy doing poorly because of over-regulation?

I think the banking industries are ripe for some regulation and forcing some lending standards...

What you're missing is that the banks were able to do what they did because ALL of us are regulated: we have to accept the fiat currency. The bubble is made possible by regulations that interfere with financial markets.

-jcr

Guy Montag|5.1.08 @ 10:07PM|#

Wow, Joe Trippi sounds like Ezra Klein of 18 months ago.

LarryA|5.1.08 @ 10:44PM|#

I bet there's a staffer in every former candidate's crew that thinks the same. Certainly in every Democratic campaign.

He is an ex-Marine, with lots of guns,

All of the remaining three candidates are anxious to fix that little problem. I hate this election.

|5.2.08 @ 12:53AM|#

That there was a path ahead that would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda.

Ha! The only thing that would have accomplished would have been making it easier to vote for McCain!

Abdul|5.2.08 @ 7:09AM|#

And maybe, just maybe, a brokered convention would have stunned the political world and led to an Edwards nomination.

And maybe unicorns will poop rainbows in Joe Trippi's wonderful, wonderful dreamland.

Taktix®|5.2.08 @ 10:34AM|#

So, with all the advisers and handlers and consultants, etc., what exactly do politicians actually do?

Bizzaro Edward|5.2.08 @ 10:40AM|#

You loony democrats think Edwards could win a brokered convention?

You all are retarded.

Fuck you.

|5.2.08 @ 12:00PM|#

I think the democrats will be looking a white male candidates from here on out if the vitriol in the current primary is any indication.

I think that everyone thinks the primary currenty being fought is the most vitriolic evah, dependably, every four years.

Sort of like how the Republicans of yesteryear were always more genteel (you even see this written about the Gingrich-ear Congress these days), and the Democratic presidential candidates are always the most radical, left-wing pacifists ever nominated, every four years.