Stupid People

Though I hate to do it, I feel like I should probably throw in my two cents on the whole Edwards affair thing. I can sum it up in one word: stupid. It was stupid to do, it was stupid how the thing got covered, and it's stupid how the media is now talking about it like it may make or break the election. But mainly it was stupid to do. Really stupid.

First of all, the rounds of media covereage now of how this affects Obama's chances or McCain's chances in the general election are pretty silly. I mean, neither of them had an affair. Democrats aren't going to bring this up against Republicans because it was a Democrat who did it. Republicans won't bring it up against Democrats because you know that the Dems would shoot back with Larry Craig/Mark Foley and they were worse. So that's all pretty much a moot point.

And no, it's not covering for a person not to report in the mainstream press everything the National Enquirer prints. So let's get over that right now.

Mainly though, I'm stunned at how stupid Edwards turned out to be. He was generally thought by people (including me) to be a good, decent person. A nice guy. He'd suffered tragedy, but was working to move on. He had two adorable kids and a wife with cancer. He just seemed decent. At least when the Spitzer thing broke we already knew he was kind of a jerk. That helped deal with the shock a little bit. This time, Edwards came out of left field and ruined the reputation and image he'd spent a lifetime building.

Edwards is a smart guy, I'm sure. He's also really dumb.

So Long West Virginia

I really was set to write a post this morning that didn't focus exclusively on the primary race between Clinton and Obama. But sometimes current events intercede and you've got to throw out the old plans.

In case you missed it, last night John Edwards announced that he was endorsing Barack Obama for president. I'll make a bold prediction here and say that the papers and blogs today are going to be simply jam packed with analysis of how this helps Obama/hurts Clinton/doesn't do anything for McCain/who knows what else.

For my part, I don't really know how much this endorsement is really going to help. At this point, Obama has the nomination pretty much sewn up, so it's not like this (or Edwards' 19 delegates) are really going to be what puts him over the top. What this endorsement does (and is brilliant for doing) is makes everyone forget about how badly Obama was shellacked in West Virginia. We went from a week's worth of stories about how white voters didn't want Obama to a week's worth of stories about how much the Edwards endorsement is going to help Obama. Pretty brilliant. It's about time that Obama started taking command of the news narrative again.

In terms of how this actually helps Obama, the main point you'll be seeing a lot of is how this is going to help him win those hardworking white Americans that Hillary talked about. Frankly, I'm not sure how much that's going to be the case. After all, do you really see Mr. $400 Haircut swaying the folks way out in the hills of West Virginia? It's a nice symbol for urban voters that Obama can win the hardworking white vote, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it's going to make when you actually get out to those areas where Obama does so poorly.