Edwards is undercut on both change and experience

by: brklyngrl

Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 00:12


There has been a lot of talk so far this election cycle about both change and experience - much of it surrounding the Obama campaign in one way or another. The debate this morning kicked off with a long discussion about whether Obama is experienced enough to be President, and much of Obama's campaign has centered around his assertion that he will be able to bring about a post-partisanship style of governing that will move the country forward.

For Obama, these twin focuses are probably a wash - according to the latest CBS poll (492 DPV, MOE +/- 3, pdf), when asked whether it was more important for a presidential candidate to have the right experience or to have fresh ideas 40% said  the right experience, and 44% said fresh ideas. 14% said both were important. As you might expect, most voters (80%) think Clinton has the right experience to be President, compared to only 41% who think Obama has the right experience to be President. 67% of Democratic primary voters think Obama will try new ways of solving the country's problems, compared to 42% who think Clinton will.

The CBS results differ, by the way, from last week's CNN poll that found Clinton leading Obama on both experience and change. The format of the CNN poll was different in that voters were asked to name the best candidate rather than rank each candidate individually (as in the CBS poll) and that may account for the difference. Or it may simply indicate sampling variation, or that one of the polls was a statistical fluke. Unfortunately, it's hard to say which poll that is without more data.

What seems clearer is that the focuses on experience and change (as opposed to say, a handful of key issues) may be hurting Edwards (pdf). Experience-wise, voters seem to see him somewhere between Clinton and Obama - 60% say he has the right kind of experience to be President. Change-wise, he is in an even worse position than Clinton - only 34% of Democratic primary voters see him as someone who will try new ways of solving the country's problems. The results of the CNN poll parallel the results here for Edwards. He finishes between Clinton and Obama on experience, and third on change.

This puts Edwards in a tough spot. He can't really challenge Obama on experience without strengthening Hillary Clinton's position in the election, and he can't really push Clinton on change without strengthening Obama's position. But he also can't afford to let Clinton become the experience candidate and Obama become the change candidate if the election will be dominated by issues of change and experience.
brklyngrl :: Edwards is undercut on both change and experience

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Edwards is undercut on both change and experience | 18 comments
Experience? .. (4.00 / 1)
How much experience does a First Lady have?  And in doing what exactly?  Would anyone say that, give Laura Bush seven years in the Senate and that makes her qualified?  How is Obama and Edwards and less qualified than say Abraham Lincoln?  Who is to define experience?  Why do you think only one sitting Senator has been elected President in 150 or so years?
I'm sort of with you on the experience thing. (0.00 / 0)
I tend to think of Clinton, Edwards and Obama as being mostly similar in terms of level of experience - although I think Hillary Clinton is a far cry from Laura Bush. Hillary Clinton was a lawyer, served on her husband's teams, and so forth. From what I understand, Laura Bush was a librarian, and not particularly involved with George Bush's career. Clearly, my opinion is in the minority though.

Looking at these results, I can only speculate that experience is somehow equivalent to time in the public eye.

[ Parent ]
I know ... (0.00 / 0)
Hillary was a lawyer .. but so are a lot of lawmakers .. and Edwards was one as well .. in fact .. what bothers me most .. leaning towards Edwards as I am .. is the fact that for a lawyers .. he's not as quick on his feet as I'd have thought
[ Parent ]
and remember... (0.00 / 0)
Edwards' legal career involved defending the little guy against corporations - while Hlilary's legal career involved defending corporations via the Rose Law Firm.
[ Parent ]
I wonder (0.00 / 0)
What would those numbers look like in early primary states or among high interest voters? Edwards is going to be seen as the least change-oriented candidate because most people only know two things about him: He was Kerry's VP pick and he's a southern white man. American politics has been dominated by white men forever and white, southern men since Clinton. Plus he ran a fairly status quo campaign in 2004.

The John Edwards message of today is extremely change oriented so I wonder if voters haven't heard the new message or don't believe it coming from him.

All good questions. On the last one, there was some (0.00 / 0)
more bad news for Edwards in that poll that I didn't highlight since it didn't quite fit with the topic- they also asked whether voters felt each candidate cared about their needs and problems. 33% said Edwards cared 'a lot' - which sounds great until you compare it to the 51% and 50% that said Clinton and Obama cared a lot.

My unsupportable pet theory about that finding is that it is primarily the result of the smears about Edwards being a hypocrite for caring about poverty while being rich.

[ Parent ]
the MSM haven't covered his policy ideas (4.00 / 2)
much, so I am not surprised that only a third of Democrats think he has new ideas to offer. That reflects an uninformed (so far) electorate rather than a weakness of Edwards, who actually has the most substantial an innovative policy agenda.

He will need to get this message out, particularly in the early voting states. I think Iowans who have tuned in to the race more are already aware that Edwards has a lot of new ideas.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

[ Parent ]
They haven't - but they haven't covered anyone's policy (0.00 / 0)
ideas. Though thinking about his ideas now, I don't know whether I would describe them so much as new ideas. Good ideas, maybe, well thought through ideas, but he's always struck me as kind of a throw back. That can be a good thing - I sent money to Jon Tester because I thought he was just the right kind of throw back - but I'm less sold on it in a presidential candidate, which is probably one reason I continue to have mixed feelings about Edwards.

But I think he will have trouble getting traction as long as the campaign centers around change and experience. I don't know that those themes are inevitable, and I also don't know whether they will have the same resonance in states like Iowa, where I know he has invested heavily.

[ Parent ]
BGirl - (4.00 / 1)
Hillary's Murdoch machine has mischaracterized Edwards and smeared his character 24/7 - NOT his specific proposals for the working poor and middle class which comprise a majority of viewers.
OTOH - Hillary has produced NO specific policies which is preferable to the corporate media promoting her "inevitability" 24/7.

[ Parent ]
My unsupportable pet theory (4.00 / 1)
Most of the poll respondents aren't nearly as familiar with John Edwards' campaign in 2007 as we are, and know him for being Southern/rich/telegenic more than any particular policy stance, and they may not have known about "Two Americas" at all in 2003-04.
[ Parent ]
Well, hopefully they know him from when he ran for (0.00 / 0)
Vice President. If not, that's its own problem.
[ Parent ]
You'd think that, but... (0.00 / 0)
As of November 2006, before this all got started, only 80% of registered voters felt like they knew him sufficiently to offer an opinion.

The Kerry campaign didn't use Edwards well at all.

[ Parent ]
The Kerry campaign didn't do a lot of things well! (0.00 / 0)
What puzzles me though, is that the same thing is true for Obama (people don't know him or haven't decided about him), but the results are different.

This poll asked a similar question: "Is you opinion of 'X' favorable, not favorable, undecided, or haven't you heard enough?" and Edwards and Obama scored similarly. 39% of voters said they were undecided about Edwards or hadn't heard enough and 36% said the same about Obama. So I don't think that can really explain the difference in whether people feel like each candidate cares a lot.

Edwards has been in the public eye for awhile, and if people are having difficulty forming an impression of him, I'm not sure that's a completely positive thing, even though it gives him more room to maneuver.

[ Parent ]
Don't see a big difference (0.00 / 0)
I think the comment that Elizabeth made about not being able to make him a woman or a minority confirmed in a lot of people's minds exactly why they don't like him.  Someone I know who is pretty liberal and less interested in politics to me called Edwards a Republican after I showed her that remark.
[ Parent ]
Edwards will be fine... (4.00 / 3)
He's right where needs to be...visible enough to be heard, when not being repressed by MSM, substantive enough to be a very serious contender who is driving the issues of the presidential, and not getting into too many fusses with other democratic candidates, jabbing the repugs and not at over exposed, leading to people getting absolutely sick of him, like they will Hillary, and if the doesn't watch himself, Obama.

Edwards is on a winning path.

Polls, polls, polls. (0.00 / 0)
The sport of politics prevails on a blog supposedly about policy.
I'm trying to understand some of the challenges (0.00 / 0)
facing the Edwards campaign. In general, I am interested in using polls (as well as other information) to understand race dynamics. Whether or not early polls actually predict the winner (I would lean toward not particularly well) I think they can tell us a lot about what is happening in a race at this moment in time.

I think its interesting, and potentially problematic for Edwards, that CBS even polled on change versus experience. That's the extent to which those themes are prevalent this election cycle.

That doesn't mean I think Edwards can't win, or is a bad candidate, but I do think it puts him in a tough spot that he will need to fight his way out of, especially if those themes continue to take such a prominent position. 

[ Parent ]
Voting is a Poll (0.00 / 0)
Get over it.

I don't think the point is to exclude polling - or "the sport of politics" from the discussions here, rather to balance those with more substantive policy discussions.

If you don't like polls, don't click on the posts that discuss them.


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

[ Parent ]
Edwards is undercut on both change and experience | 18 comments
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