While we reel from the shock of the Clinton victory in New Hampshire there will be a lot of hand wringing over what this may mean going forward.
We already have ToqueDeville's diary proclaiming it's time to jump on the Obama bandwagon (something yours truly did right after Iowa) and of course numerous comments by the same deadenders wishing for a miracle who villified those of us who last week saw the handwriting on the wall and made the same pragmatic decision that Toque is suggesting now.
However there is a differnt perspective that I would like to present below the fold.
Edwards is either a fool, or a man on a mission (and I doubt it's the former). At this point, he knows perfectly well that he has about as much chance of being this party's nominee as he does of being elected pope. By any reasonable measure, barring a catastrophic mistake on the part of one of the front runners, he really has virtually no hope of securing a majority of delegates and even less of coming out on top in a brokered convention.
So what is his game plan? What does he have to gain? Prestige? A VP or cabinet spot? The chance to play kingmaker at the convention? Just influencing the dialog? My guess would be a combination of a number of these. But whatever it may be, at this point only a fool would expect him to secure the nomination. So that option clearly is off the table.
Regardless of what his agenda is, this is no time for progressives to panic. The nomination process is not a state by state winner-take-all process as the general is. It's a process by which the candidate with a majority of final delegates get's the nomination. Clearly if Edwards stays in the race to the end as he has promised, we are heading for a brokered convention. In fact, anything else is a mathematical impossiblity assuming he continues at a similar relative strength level in the remaining primaries.
At that point he will have a lot of leverage, but not enough to become the nominee. So what will he do? Well if he really cares about the progressive agenda, he will offer his delegates to Obama, presumably in exchange for either a VP or cabinet spot. If Obama refuses that (very far fetched in my view, Obama is nothing if not pragmatic) then he offer's the same deal to Hillary.
I think it's a foregone conclusion that Hillary will do just about anything to insure a victory so, she would of course accept such an offer.
The Edwards impact will be felt all the way through to the convention and it will impact the winning candidate's platform. But as a former Edwards partisan, I for one am confident that his belief in the progressive agenda outweighs his personal ambition. He is a good man with real and heartfelt convictions. I beleive he will do the right thing when the time comes.
So I for one do not intend to panic, and certainly don't expect to start kissing Hillary's derrier as Kos seems to be suggesting.
This race looks like it will be a horse race right up to the convention, and as long as that remains true, there is reason to have confidence that a fine progressive candidate will be our nominee.