Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards will face an uphill climb for the Democratic nomination. He only served one term in the U.S. Senate, as he didn't seek re-election in 2004, the year he was the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He would appear on the surface to be excellent candidate. He is young, good looking, intelligent, and could take large numbers of female primary votes away from Hillary Clinton.
However, his biggest obstacle will be his status as a failed vice presidential nominee. Candidates in both parties who lose in their bid for vice president, without having first won, have great difficulty getting a presidential nomination. For example, Joe Lieberman's primary campaign crashed and burned after the New Hampshire Primary in January 2004. Before that, Sargent Shriver (in 1976) and Edmund Muskie (in 1972) were the last failed vice presidential nominees to seek the Democratic presidential nomination and they were both rejected. On the Republican side, Bob Dole was finally able to capture his party's nomination in 1996 after a failed bid for vice president in 1976. However, even he was turned away in his first two attempts (1980 and 1988).
On the positive side for Edwards, he will have more time to campaign than most of his potential opponents. Only former Virginia Governor Mark Warner might have a similar amount of free time to campaign.
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports.
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