Edwards, Giuliani Are Out

You take the good with the bad. The good news is that St. Rudy 9iu11iani, the most craven fearmonger in the country, a man who would have bombed any country that looked at him funny, having failed to capitalize on his "lose every race" strategy, decided not to camp out in American Samoa until February 5 and instead will drop out and endorse John McCain. I'm sure he'll say afterwards that it was his plan all along. Seeing a narcissist like this have to admit defeat, have to admit that nobody actually likes him, engenders a great deal of schadenfruede.

The bad news is that John Edwards, my favorite candidate, will leave the race today. His head should be held up high. He drove the policy positions for over a year, and made the 2008 field far more progressive than the 2004 field. He could never break into that media spotlight. Democrats were enthralled by the prospect of the first black candidate or the first female candidate. In another year, Edwards would have been a fantastic nominee. He would have this year, too. It just wasn't to be.

These two events are very different. Democrats like their candidates; Republicans by and large don't. McCain's emergence as the nominee is really because of electability more than anything. Giuliani could have easily cleared that hurdle, but people shuddered at the thought of him being President. Edwards was everybody's second choice.

The end result is that this "Super Tuesday" has ended up becoming a choice between two candidates on the Democratic side, and really one candidate on the Republican side, with Romney and Huckabee as also-rans.

That would be the set of primaries that matter so much.

The primaries are broken, and I really hope that 2012 will be different. It's bad for the country to select a President this way. Here are some good thoughts on how to change that.

(it seems to me that those who voted early for Giuliani or Edwards should be given the oportunity to vote for a separate candidate on Election Day, but that would be a logistical nightmare. Instant Runoff Voting would have been the best option.)