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Opinion: Edwards is running against a ghost

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Deep inside the data mined by The Times’ Michael Finnegan for his presidential poll story this morning are some numbers that seem to spell trouble for John Edwards. He gets only 8% of likely voters in a Democratic primary or caucus. That puts him fourth behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and that name from the past, Al Gore.

Both Gore and Republican Fred Thompson have done pretty well in the polls by not being candidates. And Gore keeps saying he still is ‘not a candidate’ and ‘not looking for a set of circumstances that would open the door for me to get back into politics.’ But then he’ll add another little something like, ‘Look, we’re a year and a half away from this election. (I) see no need to say, ‘OK, I’m not ever going to even think about that in the future.’’

The trouble for Edwards is that without being a candidate Gore draws almost twice as much support, 15%, as Edwards.

But when Times pollsters removed Gore from the hypothetical question, Edwards’ support shot up to 20%, still third behind Clinton (42%) and Obama (32%) but much stronger. Edwards’ salvation may be that these are national polling numbers, not necessarily representative of feelings in individual states.

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Edwards is counting on his strong local organization on the ground in Iowa to give him momentum early in the voting process next January, long after the currently sprouting corn crop there has been harvested. And these poll numbers are ancient history.

And while you’re at it, go here to vote in your own preliminary presidential primary and see how thousands of others have picked among the candidates of both parties, including Edwards.

— Andrew Malcolm

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