December 5, 2007

From Hawaii to Maine, Dennis Kucinich won state after state in the Progressive Democrats of America poll, leaving John Edwards, Barack Obama and the other candidates in the dust.  Kucinich had landslide victories in most of the 46 states he won outright.  Edwards was wiped out in Washington, the only state Edwards won in the Democracy for America poll, that included ten times as many voters as the PDA poll.  Edwards' dismal second place showing was much closer to 3rd place Obama in votes than to the runaway front runner, Dennis Kucinich. 

Kucinich won big in all states with the most electoral votes.  He frequently won by receiving a multiple of the number of votes received by John Edwards.  An example is Hawaii, where Kucinich received over eight times as many votes as Edwards.

In the four states Edwards won, he almost lost.  In Utah, he got 1 vote more than Kucinich.  In Georgia, Edwards' best showing, Edwards only got 7 votes more than Kucinich.  Georgia was one of the eleven states where Hillary Clinton beat Obama for third place.  Clinton's surprising third place showing, in eleven states, in a poll conducted by a group that has spent extensive time and webspace attacking her, shows that she has considerable support in the progressive community.  This is no surprise to the analysts who have stated that her voting record is to the left of those of Edwards and Obama.

Almost ties in a progressive poll in four states is the best that Edwards is likely to get in this election season.  Most Kucinich supporters do not trust John Edwards, the member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who misled the Senate Democrats about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in an effort to get them to vote for war.  With poll after poll showing that Kucinich is more electable than Edwards, Edwards might as well give up on convincing Kucinich supporters that Edwards' pro-war stance equals peace.

The Edwards campaign was given every opporturnity to promote John Edwards to PDA members.  All this year, PDA has allowed the Edwards campaign to stump for Edwards all over its front page, to openly promote his campaign and to attempt to remake his image while disagreeing members posted negative comments about the pro-Edwards articles.  Writers of these pro-Edwards articles included PDA National Field Director Laura Bonham and Edwards promoters Jo Olson, Brad Parker and Ahjamu Makalani, all of whom tried to convince readers to give up their dreams and goals and settle for John Edwards.  These writers sometimes used racism and sexism to promote Edwards.  PDA members, by a landslide, showed they were not willing to settle for John Edwards.   Edwards was given his best shot by PDA and he established himself as unelectable - even among friends.

So why did Edwards find defeat in the PDA poll?  Perhaps the PDA members saw what the Biden campaign did when they ran a campaign ad showing the unity of all the Democratic candidates - with the exception of Kucinich and Gravel.  This ad can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbOa989IRYw

The Creative Youth News Team hopes that that Edwards' job with his former employer, which specialized in predatory loan practices, will still be available when the primary results are announced next year.