I think it's very interesting that there seem to be two competing and different stories about John Edwards coming out of Iowa. The first is jubilant that he came second above Hillary Clinton and allows him to plough into New Hampshire with some strength. The second is that he really needed to win the Iowa Caucuses, and that we should soon expect an Edwards withdrawal because he has significantly under-performed.
It's strange - I've rarely seen such competing narratives around one candidate's performance. You see it a lot from the candidates themselves, see Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton spinning their Iowa results - "We were never front-runners" - but rarely does anyone else except their devoted supporters seem to believe that. However, with Edwards it seems that even within the MSM there are these competing narratives about the fortunes of the Edwards campaign.
I think the 'truth' lies somewhere in the middle. Edwards achieved something by coming second and beating Hillary Clinton, but he hurt himself in getting a genuine shot at nomination through not coming first. If coming first allowed him to hope for the nomination, and coming third would end his campaign probably just after South Carolina, second place may allow him to go all the way to Super-Duper Tuesday and hope for the non-existant political 'silver'.
He can definitely see that the 'change' theme is resonating with voters, so that has to give him some confidence, but at the same time if I were Edwards I'd be concerned that the voters seemed to be reacting better to the change proposed by Obama than the change proposed for by Edwards. He always had it tough - two excellent candidates, one African American, one woman, were always going to usurp attention from Edwards.
Is he going to be the nominee? I don't think so. It would require too much of a major upset from Obama's surging popularity and Clinton's previous solid front-runner status.
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