50 to DC

Washington Whispers: Bush by a mile (Paul
Bedard , 6/30/03, US News)

If the conventional wisdom holds that presidential candidates can at least expect to win their home states in elections, then maybe the whole Democratic ticket had better give up. That's because local polls show all the leading candidates losing to President Bush. The biggest gap--18 points--is in the home state of Sen. John Edwards, of North Carolina. The smallest is in Massachusetts, where Sen. John Kerry would lose to Bush 43 percent to 49 percent. "It's pretty bad," says a GOP official, "when rank-and-file Dems look at the field and say, `Man, no one excites me; let's bring back Al Gore.' "

It's no secret that John Edwards got serious about his presidential bid when exit polling on Election Day of 2002 showed his re-election to the Senate would be difficult. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 1, 2003 9:32 AM