The problem of Edwards is not his money, but the way that he spends his money. Kennedy was rich, but he had a tough man image and his discourse wasn´t aimed AT the poor. Not only most people sees Edwards was a sissy, but also as a hypocrite joke. And few people forgets that he flip-flops so much that makes Mitt Romney looks like a principled guy.

The problem of Kerry is that at the time everyone were so blinded by Bush hate that no one noted his deficiencies. Bruce Bartlett(A conservative critic of Bush) complained at the time that no one knew what Kerry had done in more than a decade on the Senate.

Few people remembers 1988, when the country was plagued by recession in rural areas and Michael Dukakis began the race with a 17% advantage on polls.

And you are not getting the problem: if you take the eight divisions defined by the Census, Kerry didn´t won ANY state on three of them, while winning only two(That´s because Maryland and Delaware are not exactly southern states) on another and one on other. And if you take the map by counties, you´ll have a map painted by red and a few dots on blue. Worse, if you take out of the map Black and Latino counties and a few liberal enclaves on the west, there is few things there,

If the Democrats wants to win, they should fight their gap on the less povoated areas. And I don´t think that urban candidates are the best option of doing that.

If the matter is principles, you have Kucinich and Gravel. If the matter is electability, there is Richardson. Obama, Clinton and Edwards have neither.

"They helped elect a Southern Baptist named Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976"

Carter was elected with the votes of Southern Conservatives, not liberals. In fact, liberals tried to avoid him getting his nomination. Not because of religion, but...

1-) I live abroad and I despise Hillary with all my forces. If someone out there thinks that you need Hillary to improve your foreign image you are are plain wrong.

By the way, I sincerely thought that the US was something better than a Banana Republic where two political families dominates the Presidency...

2-) Hillary is the worst of worlds. She is too liberal and urban for moderate voters and too conventional to urban voters. She is the unprincipled politician that would have several vunerabilities in the general election.

Sure, when she loses, they will blame some third party candidate again...

JoeCHI

Shapiro is not pointing that. He is pointing that polls shows that something like 40% to 50% of people polled say that they would never vote for her.

if the democrats want to win the first thing that they should do is to forget issues like abortion and gun control. Abortion is a dangerous issue because no major pro-life or pro-choice organization has the same position of most Americans on the issue: keep the government out of it. Few people wants a total ban on abortion, but no one want eight month fetus being aborted. Democrats should wait to see republicans destroy themselves on the issues. Gun Control also only alienates voters.

Democrats should be worried with things like education, security, transportation, not abortion, gender issues and gun control. That´s how democrats won the governorship of states like Wyoming, Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arizona.

By the way, it´s bizarre to see how democrats ignore their own gold like Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas or Governor Janet Napolitano of Kansas to praise mediocre senators...

"Up until 1964, the South had only one political party, the Democrats. Out of hatred for Lincoln's Republicans and what they had done to the Confederacy, the GOP was almost entirely irrelevant in the region. That all changed when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. All of those loyal Democrats -- including Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and even Ronald Reagan -- shifted allegiances to the GOP. The last vestiges of the traditional southern Democrats, George Wallace voters, came over to the GOP a few years later."

It´s not so easy. Jimmy Carter won almost entirely due to the South, and until some years ago most of the senators and governors in the region were democrats(Some states are facing it first republican governor since Reconstruction now). Arkansas is becoming a solid blue state.

And James Eastland, a notorious racist senator, would keep his democratic affiliation long after the CRA. And most Dixiecrats were more than mere segregationists. Most people forgets that the South was the only region that didn´t fell to Catholic bigotry in 1928 with Al Smith.