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"Does he bring any states, does he change the dynamics?" Rothenberg asked. "If he was a bomb he might have changed the dynamics. If he was John McCain he might have changed the dynamics, but he's still kind of a liberal senator from North Carolina. He beat an incumbent where Republicans have a narrow advantage. I think that John Edwards might have lost the Senate election. Is he as spectacular in an election as he is working a room? The answer is no. It's still about John Kerry and George Bush. I don't anticipate North Carolina being in play."
That seems to be the standard view of the Edwards situation among hardened Washington number crunchers. Statistics have always shown that vice presidential candidates have only a tiny impact, if any at all, on a presidential election, and this race will be no different.
Rothenberg drew the same conclusion in a column in Roll Call last week -- after he spent the first two thirds of it raving about that magical something Edwards has that even veteran political numbers guys like himself are struggling to define -- and to deal with.
"I still remember the first time I saw John Edwards," Rothenberg wrote. "It was in May 1998, and he was seeking the Democratic nomination in North Carolina for the right to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth. Seeing as many candidates as I do, I often forget my initial reactions when I meet and interview someone for the first time. But not with Edwards. In the middle of my interview with the Senate hopeful, I remember thinking, "This guy is going to run for president some day.' As I recall, I thought even then that he would have a decent chance of eventually settling into the Oval Office."
Contact Tara Servatius at tara.servatius@cln.com