Re-Thinking Obama vs. Edwards

1. Obama has American Idol appeal. The story I heard from the woman I shared a cab to the airport from Yearly Kos with is typical. (She's not affillitated with the campaign.) She's got a friend who votes based on personal appeal, who always ends up voting for the winner: Bush twice, Democratic Governor Kaine (they're from Virginia), etc. The friend, like so many others I'm hearing of and occasionally running into, is supporting Obama.
2. A new poll in Iowa shows Obama running third among Republicans. Granted, that's at under 10% and is partly because the Republican field is so unappetizing.
3. I am 98% sure that Obama's general outlook is as he presents it to be. I'm only 70% sure Edwards' is. Edwards has dissembled about how he supposedly told Kerry not to concede. His voting record in the Senate was OK, but not nearly as good as he now presents himself to be. Granted, you some playing toward the middle is to be expected when you're from the Carolinas and Edwards has been walking the walk (despite the stupid haircut story) on economic issues for two years. I'm not saying Edwards is bad, just that against the stiff competition of Obama, I may have judged too quickly.
4. Speaking of Virginia governors, Obama will run into the Wilder Effect. That's where African-American politicians do less well on election day than they do in preceding polls. But the size of the Wilder Effect has shrunk over the years since Wilder did manage to squeak out a victory as chief executive of a southern state. On the one hand, the effect in a presidential race may be bigger. But on the other, Obama, with his polyglot roots, presents a chance for voters to 'prove' to themselves that they're not racist, without actually having to approve of someone who has too many African-American cultural markers. To assume the effect is bigger than it is, and to select candidates on an exaggerated sense of how bigotry will affect the candidates, is to strongly contribute to sustaining that bigotry. (But to ignore the effect to the extent that it does exist is not doing favors to anyone except the Republicans.)
5. In 2004, we ended up with Kerry, largely because a lot of early primary/caucus voters who didn't especially like Kerry thought he was the most electable. He may have been no less inept than Dean would have been in the fishbowl, but we wouldn't have done any worse if people had trusted their own instincts and not so strongly assumed that they were too different from the voting population as a whole. That seems to be the message that Democrats most need to learn, in general, to get over our Political Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And my personal instinct is that Edwards would be very good and Obama would be fantastic!

So I'm not sure which of the two of them I want to be nominated. If when New Jersey votes, the race is basically down to either of them and Clinton, I'd happily support whichever of them is still standing. But if I had to vote today, I think I'd vote for Obama.

Another meme I've inserted into the zeitgeist

It looks like my concept of Political Post-traumatic Stress Disorder has made its way to Andrew Sullivan, or perhaps he thought of it independently sometime in the 3 years since I wrote about it.