John Edwards and the Non-Southern Strategy

At 6 p.m. on New Year's Eve in Times Square, the police are herding revelers into crowd-control pens, and I'm thinking, "These guys are stuck here, and the damned ball isn't coming down for another six hours."

That's how I feel about the 2008 presidential election. The thing isn't going to happen for 22 months, yet the politically obsessed are already standing-room-only, dismembering poll data that will be totally stale by the next full moon. I do not care to join them — just yet.

That said, there's little harm in taking occasional note of a poll number flashing across the presidential track. One comes from a Des Moines Register survey in anticipation of the Iowa Caucuses, which is a year from now. It showed John Edwards supported by 36 percent of Iowa Democrats — well ahead of Hillary Clinton at 16 percent, Barack Obama at 13 percent and Tom Vilsack, Iowa governor, at 11 percent.

This was an impressive showing for a fellow whose name wasn't being chanted in the pundit pens alongside Barack's and Hillary's. It was also notable in that Edwards is a North Carolinian, and many Democrats now see Southerners as less of a must-have for their presidential ticket.

The last point merits discussion. The old thinking goes that the conservative South is a hard sell for Democrats, so the party needs a Southerner for "balance." That's one reason Edwards ran alongside John Kerry in 2004.

The new thinking goes, "The heck with the South." Tom Schaller explains this in his book, "Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South." Democrats can never prevail in the South, he says, where racial politics still run strong and social conservatism trumps economic concerns.

Look instead to the interior West, where Colorado, Arizona and Montana seem ripe for picking.

Make the blue Northeast bluer, and nail down purplish places like Ohio and Wisconsin. Anyplace but the South.

Schaller's views are controversial, but the midterm elections sure vindicated them as a strategy for victory. Democrats made significant gains in the Rockies, smote the Republicans in Ohio and knocked off four of New England's five GOP House members.

A University of Maryland political scientist, Schaller ticks off the score: Of the Democrats' 30 new House seats, 24 are in non-Southern states. And five of the six new Democratic senators are from outside the South.

"What about Heath Shuler, who won a House seat in North Carolina?" I asked. "What about Jim Webb, the new Democratic senator from Virginia?" They are exceptions, Schaller insists.

Some Democrats saw the Senate race in Tennessee — where black Democrat Harold Ford ran surprisingly strong — as a refutation of Schaller's thesis. But Ford did everything possible to position himself as a conservative Southerner, Schaller argues. "He spoke about God. He condemned same-sex marriage in New Jersey — and still couldn't win."

And what about Edwards? Schaller has long held that Southern candidates can be useful to Democrats, not to collect electoral votes in the South, but to win close races elsewhere. Their rural populism sounds culturally authentic in farm belt Iowa or northern New Hampshire.

"John Kerry had to run around and get a goose hunting license," Schaller notes. "Edwards did not."

Edwards was a good running mate for Kerry, Schaller says, because he could help in southwest Ohio, central Missouri or West Virginia. Alabama was never a possibility.

Yes, the Iowa poll is intriguing, but let's step back into the fresh air. The Iowa Caucuses is a year off. Recall that six months before the 2004 Iowa Caucuses, polls showed Howard Dean with a commanding lead.

We can all relax.

To find out more about Froma Harrop, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL CO.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.