The End is Near: Donate Now
I think everyone can agree with me that John Edwards really is focused like a laser on the North Carolina 2008 Senate race. The UNC center on poverty, positioning for the 2008 presidential race and his wife's cancer are all just ruses; Edwards, according to Senator Elizabeth Dole, "is conducting meetings throughout our state. Edwards is a multimillionaire who put millions of dollars of his personal wealth into his last campaign for the U.S. Senate and defeated a popular incumbent Republican." (Thanks to Political Wire for the catch.)
It's not fair to make fun of Dole for this; you have to have crazy stuff like this in fundraising letters this far away from the election. I remember the mid-2003 fundraising letters from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, basing their pleas on the assumption that Hillary Clinton was running for the 2004 presidency, irrelevant to senatorial campaigns even if anyone but Craig Crawford still believed she would run. But it's still funny to look at these things, since they're clearly not meant to see the light of day. This is what we'll be seeing next:
- Florida Senate 2006: Bill Nelson is the Democratic incumbent. But former Mets pitcher Al Leiter, widely assumed to be a 2008 New Jersey Republican Senate candidate, just signed with the Marlins. Will Senator Al turn his eyes to the Sunshine State? If not, is Josh Beckett old enough to run?
- California Governor 2006: "Friends, Tom Cruise is the very definition of girlie man. That's fine when he's still making movies, but if he and the liberal special interests have their way, the War of the Worlds we'll be seeing will be between the liberal special interests and my termination of California's problems."
Actually, it might not be that far a leap for Edwards to run for Senate: if, God forbid, Team Edwards 2008 can't get the job done in the presidential primary, he'd still have time to run for Senate if no other Democrat wants it. But isn't Dole running for president in 2008 too? She does have one thing right though: "These Democrats and their liberal special interest allies will stop at nothing to defeat a member of the Republican leadership!"
Well, pretty much.