February 3, 2004 [LINK]

Edwards wins in South Carolina

John Edwards just won the South Carolina primary, so the race goes on, at least for the moment. Wesley Clark is in a dead heat with Edwards in Oklahoma, so he will stay in the race against Kerry as well. Meanwhile, Howard Dean is running a poor fourth in most races, and appears dead as a doornail. I remember the bitter disillusion of college kids who "went clean for Gene" McCarthy back in 1968, and I hope today's Generation Dean kids don't do likewise. Good old Joe Lieberman has bowed out of the race, which is a shame since he really represents the conscience of the Democratic Party these days. So, we've still got three viable candidates. The press has a deep vested interest in prolonging the Democratic primary season for as long as possible, which is fine with me. I don't mean to get nasty or anything, but I was reading in yesterday's Washington Post about Edwards' meteoric career rise as an aggressive overconfident trial lawyer in the Tarheel State,* and the image of the fresh-faced, hyper-ambitious character played by Keanu Reeves in Devil's Advocate came to mind. Nah, it couldn't be...

* Condolences to Carolina Panthers fans. Their team made a great showing against the Patriots on Sunday, beating the spread and almost winning outright. It occurred to me that the last two versions of Mac OS X (10.2 Jaguar and 10.3 Panther) have been named after feline predators who are also mascots of NFL expansion teams in the southeast. What is the meaning of this?