Lost amid the hype about Barack Obama’s presidential prospects, and the conventional wisdom that the Democrats’ 2008 nomination is Hillary Clinton’s for the asking, John Edwards has been overlooked.
But the former one-term senator from North Carolina, who was the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2004, is perhaps its best chance to win the White House.
Part of this is merely the accident of his birth. He was born in South Carolina and no Democrat has been elected president since 1960 who wasn’t a southerner. And, that is the case because of more than just the happenstance of history.
Democrats need some electoral votes in Dixie to avoid painting themselves into an uncomfortable corner. It is mathematically possible for them to win without carrying southern states, but as a practical matter it is a very, very uphill undertaking. It will get even more difficult after the 2010 Census shifts additional electoral votes South and West.
Meanwhile, the northerners that the Democrats have been nominating for president in recent decades have been unable to appeal to enough southern voters, who are generally more conservative, to make the region competitive.
– excerpt from recent RealClearPolitics column By Peter Brown