Centerfield

More important, I think, is that these comments betray an assumption that voters will respond to Edwards as Democratic elites have. If Edwards has a great speech, then surely his great speaking will draw votes in battleground states. If he appeals to Metro Center moderates, he'll appeal to Missoula moderates. It is as if the dictums of bloggers and pundits can substitute for (if not directly dictate) popular sentiment. This is a Washington conceit.

In the world of actual voters, things work differently. To begin with, the 20 percent or so of voters who are still up for grabs have a political constitution that makes them least likely to respond to Edwards's entreaties. They are--as survey research has continually demonstrated--less partisan, less engaged, and less knowledgeable about politics than other voters. They make up their minds in the finals days of the campaign. They get most of their political cues from the local TV news broadcasts and campaign commercials. These are the voters least likely to meet a candidate, read a policy proposal, follow a campaign in the newspapers or on the Internet, or watch a speech.

Washington pundits mistakenly assume these voters are a cogent class with a cute name like "soccer moms" or "NASCAR dads." But in reality they are a loose group of citizens who can barely be reached through the fog of their disinterest in politics. These are not voters who appreciate Edwards's keen stances on patient health. They are voters who will see six seconds of Edwards on the nightly news in Canton, or Des Moines, or Miami as his bus rolls through.

The problem is, this political dynamic doesn't play well to any of Edwards's agreed-upon strengths, like his Clintonian retail politics, his connection with crowds at town halls, his compelling life story, or his smart, moderate policy critiques. This is what we Washington Democrats like about him. But it is not what voters will see about him. Such qualities are far too subtle to make it to the surface of the average local news bubble...

Some Edwards supporters who fancy themselves number crunchers suggest that, regardless, Edwards proved his crossover appeal when he bested Kerry among "moderate" and "independent" voters in a good number of Democratic primaries. They argue that it's Edwards's ability to connect with swing voters--even if only a tiny bit of him makes it through the airwaves--that will matter in November. There are two problems with this analysis.

First, we're not talking about the same groups of voters. "Centrist primary voter" is oxymoronic; primaries feature a self-selecting group of partisans. These are voters committed to the party and politically engaged enough to vote in a low-turnout election. Many hold moderate views, but generally out of ideological conviction. Many call themselves "independent," but research shows that most of these are closet partisans who simply don't like the party nomenclature.

By contrast, general election swing voters are different: less engaged, less committed to any party, with scattered political ideas. They are tagged as moderates not out of a coherent ideology, but because of an adherence to popular policy buzz words (social security, good; welfare, bad). They don't vote as much as partisans. They stay undecided until late in the season. They demonstrate little knowledge about current events. To conflate these primary and general election voters because both are often tagged as "independents" in the exit-polls--and to say that since Edwards did well with one type, he'll do well with the other--is an exercise in intellectual laziness...

The second, more serious problem with the Edwards-as-messiah talk is national security. As Kenneth Baer recently pointed out in the Prospect, Democrats are falling into the dangerous consensus that Kerry has secured his terrorism credentials. In truth, in the vast majority of polling, President Bush has anywhere from a 10-20 point lead on questions of commanding the military, defending America, and winning the war on terrorism.

Edwards adds little on these issues. He never served in the military or made foreign policy an essential part of his Senate career. He has barely a full term in the Senate. He can't discuss national security with the same intensity and eloquence he brings to domestic policy. And his youthful, sunny demeanor--the kind that will necessarily come across in TV spots or a debate with Dick Cheney--doesn't exactly radiate the grim, kick-ass determination the country wants in a political leader charged with killing terrorists...

Who might have been a better vice presidential pick to address the national security gap? I liked Wesley Clark. For the way in which most voters will process the veep pick, he would have been the perfect choice. Indeed, ironically, it's precisely the qualities that were supposed to help him in the primaries but didn't when the media spotlight glared too much--a first name of "general," foreign policy credentials, a Southern golden boy biography--that are perfect for the shallow pass most voters will give the vice presidential nominee. Moreover, all his liabilities--a poor campaign style the Washington elites hated; flip-flopping answers on Iraq; a lack of domestic policy meat--won't matter a bit to disengaged swing voters.

And, by the way, Clark would have made a pretty good vice president. You could imagine him being deployed, Carter-like, to world hot spots. As he liked to say, he looked a dictator in the eye and told him he was going to bomb him. That's the one bit of Bush-style machismo we need in a leader, if only in small doses. But Clark has substance, too. For instance, his ability to talk about how he would deal with North Korea far surpassed that of any other candidate in the race.