The coolest AA baseball team around

Of course the Salt Lake Stingers are the coolest AAA team and the Boston Red Sox are my favorite MLB team, but the best AA team is now the New Hampshire Primaries. But I really don't care about baseball, so why am I writing this?

On to my true sport, politics: Clark just nabbed a big endorsement, ex-SC Governor Jim Hodges. This is good news for his strategy of making SC the state he will win in and kill Edwards' campaign.

According to The State reporter Lee Bandy, "It could be an important endorsement, given Hodges’ popularity among black voters, who are expected to make up at least half of the turnout in the first primary state with a substantial black voting population."

Edwards, for his part, poo-pooed the move, by calling Clark an regional candidate without naming him by name, disagreeing "with those who have decided to skip Iowa and de-emphasize New Hampshire. ...If you want to run a national campaign..Then you have to be a candidate for everybody-which is why you can't select where you are going to run," he told The Boston Herald.

Hint to Edwards, if you want to run a national campaign, you have to win in some states, and you have to use your resources effectively. Having spent "roughly" $1.5M in IA and NH but the "investment" hasn't paid off "where it counts most"-- in state polls. His campaign bought $1M worth of commercials in IA and $500K in NH, "which has resulted in only a little movement in the polls." Polls of LVs [likely voters] in both states put Edwards under 10%, "the middle of the pack in both states." Edwards "started out strong in fundraising and popularity, but he has lost momentum" as others like Dean "took off." Edwards is second in overall ad spending behind Dean, who has also spent $1M in IA and $500K in NH but "has the front-runner status to show for his ad buys." '00 Gore manager Donna Brazile: "That's a bad sign to spend that amount of money and not get much traction." Brazile said Edwards' strategy relies on third-place finishes to "catapult" him to wins in SC and other 2/3 primary states, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

Although Edwards' strategy with Clark's is about the same (minus IA), the difference is Edwards has been running for 10 months now, and has very little show for it. After all this fundraising, ad buys, trips, town hall meetings, and speachifying, he is still below double digits in NH in most polls. In IA he is in fourth place, ahead of two guys not participating and the Sharpton trio (funny how now Al Sharpton is now the most electable of all three of them). In NH, he is in either 3rd or 4th depending on which polls you look at.

The point is, Clark hasn't spent a 1/10th of that and he is in the same place Edwards is for the most part, if not better (if you believe those national polls or later state polls which have Clark in top 3-- usually 2nd-- in every poll) than Edwards. Isn't that a sign?

Don't get me wrong, I wish everyone would steal Edwards' message and ideas, he's got some of the best. And his debate performance was the best of any in Boston. But he is just not jazzing up Democrats to vote for him. His good looks make him look too Green and now is not the time for a rookie.