Unelectable “Electable” 2004 Candidate to Endorse “Unelectable” 2008 Candidate

That would seem to be the gist of the news that John Kerry, whose sole apparent qualification for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination was his “electability,” will endorse Barack Obama today, the latter of whom currently faces the “electable” Hillary Clinton as his major opponent. Presumably the Kerry message is that Obama is the more electable candidate, because Kerry was the most electable candidate in 2004, even though he lost by a wider margin than Al Gore did in 2000. The endorsement is expected to come in Charleston, South Carolina, begging the question of who exactly is likely to be swayed by the endorsement in a state John Edwards won handily in 2004, which repudiated the Kerry-Edwards ticket 58-40 in the general election, and which has a Democratic primary electorate that one would think has nothing in common with the patrician New England constituency Kerry represents.

Don’t think about this one too hard, or your head will pop right off your shoulders.

FILED UNDER: 2008 Election, , , , , , , ,
Chris Lawrence
About Chris Lawrence
Chris teaches political science at Middle Georgia State University in Macon, Georgia. He has a Ph.D. in political science (with concentrations in American politics and political methodology) from the University of Mississippi. He began writing for OTB in June 2006. Follow him on Twitter @lordsutch.

Comments

  1. INDENPENDENT VOTER says:

    Chris

    SO YOU A CLINTON FAN I TAKE FROM YOUR ARTICLE BECAUSE IT STATES ONLY YOUR OPINION NO FACTS AND YOUR ARTICLE IS THE SIXTH I HAVE READ FROM VARIOUS COMMENTATOR OR REPORTERS.GOOD LUCK TO YOU AND HILLARY IN THE GENERAL ELECTION WHERE SHE WILL FALL FLAT ON HER FACE.

  2. Oh, the irony.

  3. markm says:

    Jeeze, INDEPENDENT VOTER comes in here typing in all caps in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.

  4. Ldywldkat says:

    Huh? Genghis Khan could type?

    *smile*

  5. Michael says:

    Jeeze, INDEPENDENT VOTER comes in here typing in all caps in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.

    Hey, those Ron Paul supports have to do something when there are no Ron Paul articles.

  6. yetanotherjohn says:

    John Kerry is showing his keen political insight by deigning to add his immense political gravitas to Obama. Now some might question why he would not support the man that four years ago he deemed to be the best person to be president after JFK (That’s John F Kerry for you peons), namely John Edwards. But that is part of Kerry’s keen political insight. Edwards was weighed and found wanting in the political scales (by about 3 million votes nationally and 118 thousand votes in Ohio). Because when you have Kerry’s keen political insight you can see that the voters were really rejecting Edwards and not Kerry.

    And why would the keen political insight of Kerry not lead him to support the only candidate who is supported by the only living democrat to win two presidential terms? Because Bill Clinton keeps holding his index and thumb up against his forehead in an upside down 7 form every time he sees Kerry.

  7. SDM says:

    Eh, Obama happens to be in S.C. right now because it’s where he has to be. Kerry doesn’t have any special S.C. significance.

  8. markm says:

    “Huh? Genghis Khan could type?”

    Apparently…real crude though….

  9. Hmm.., could teh INDENPENDENT VOTER be Genghis Khan? I mean, have you ever seen them together, or at all?

  10. Ldywldkat says:

    I think they pronounce it differently though…

  11. Tlaloc says:

    Huh? Genghis Khan could type?

    You are apparently forgetting the famous Mongol war-text message: URH0M0

    When the chinese saw that on their blackberries they knew a red day was dawning.

    IMN UR ASIAZ, STEELIN UR COUNTRYZ

  12. Ryan says:

    Tialoc’s post FTW.

  13. Paul says:

    Kerry might not equal Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton but he did just win the Presidential nomination (ever tried that, it doesn’t look like an easy feat) from basically the very same people who will decide Hillary v. Obama. So I think it counts for something.

    On the issue of electability, one thing is for sure — the median activist voter in the Democratic party has no clue, no clue whatsoever, at how to gauge it. That is plainly evident from the reader comments on sites like mydd or kos (as for the authors of the sites, kos seems more attuned than mydd, but I haven’t read enough to claim expertise), or from the Democratic primaries over the last 30 years, with the exception of Bill Clinton. How they decided that Kerry was more electable than Wes Clark is a mystery to me. How they could think Hillary is more electable than Obama seems even crazier. They clearly need more layovers in flyover land.

  14. Tano says:

    What a silly post Chris.

    First for the logic. Why does Kerry losing to Bush somehow refute the notion that he was the most “electable” Democrat in the race? That makes no sense. You would have to somehow demonstrate that Howard Dean would have won the race, or at least come closer than 3 points, in order to refute the contention. Do you really think Dean would have done better than Kerry?
    And what is the sense of trying to make a comparison to the 2000 election? That Gore would have been more electable in ’04? Maybe so, but he wasnt running.

    And what is with the “electable” Clinton? Both candidates have now won a primary, Gallup shows them tied nationally, and although the partisans on each side can muster arguments for their candidate and against the other, any objective observer would have to conclude that they probably are equally electable, albeit in different ways and for different reasons.

    I realize you were just trying to be snarky, but that is not an excuse for being incoherent.