Stephanopoulos: Edwards campaign staff had "Doomsday Strategy"

[Adelante]

Now this is very interesting. Stephanopoulos says he's talked to a lot of Edwards '08 staff about it. Did anyone watch this on Stephanopoulos today?

I've talked to a lot of former Edwards staffers about this. Up until December of 2007, most on Edwards' staff didn't believe rumors about the affair.

But by late December, early January of last year, several people in his inner circle began to think the rumors were true.

Several of them had gotten together and devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts.

Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.

They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/05/edwards-staff-h...

I remember reading that the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer said his main source for the first pregnancy story was definitely not Rielle Hunter or a rival campaign, but someone whose information was "above reproach." I wonder if it was some high-up in the Edwards campaign who did the leaking. Not that Edwards ever came close, but maybe one of these people went rogue.

[Occam Bandage]

1. Good to know we had a safety net to keep Edwards out of the nomination. nt

[Adelante]

4. My feeling exactly

At least we weren't completely at the mercy of a cynical coverup, after all, which is what I had been thinking.

[KittyWampus]

15. My Intuition just screamed out the name Joe Trippi upon reading this.

So that's my guess who on Edwards' campaign was lighting a back-fire to suck the oxygen out of his run for POTUS.

Zero evidence, but Trippi's name entered my mind very loudly. I had to look him up on Wiki to confirm he was involved with Edwards' last campaign.

Maybe not.

[XemaSab]

22. Joe Trippi wasn't born yesterday

Even if everyone else in the campaign thought Edwards shit roses, I bet Trippi was no fool.

[karynnj]

49. I would doubt that

Trippi was one of the fiercest Edwards people, who was behind all the attacks on Clinton and Obama being "corporate" and arguing that they were tainted because they raised lots of money --- and people contributing mostly worked for companies - so in industry after industry, they were attacked as having got more money than Edwards.

[Occam Bandage]

52. Trippi was behind many of Edwards' negative attacks.

If he were planning on sabotaging Edwards, he wouldn't have been trying to take Obama and Clinton down with him.

[I Have A Dream]

2. This is sad, but I'm happy to hear it.

(I supported Edwards after Kucinich was out of the picture.)

[Wetzelbill]

3. I did

I was shocked by it. It would have been nice if they would have gotten him to back out before they even felt they had to come up with that.

[Adelante]

5. I'm shocked and relieved, both

But you're right. It never had to go on as long as it did.

[Misskittycat]

6. It would have been nice if they had made him back out before I made contributions.

[Wetzelbill]

7. that too

[Adelante]

9. What do you think he was staying in for?

He'd gone steadily downhill throughout 2007. Was he holding on for VP, either Obama's or Clinton's? In 2004 there was almost as big a campaign by his forces for the second spot as there was for the top spot and he did somewhat better that round than this one.

[Wetzelbill]

10. Partly ego I think

Also I believe he thought he had a slightly different message and he wanted to get it out as much as possible. But mostly ego. I think he convinced himself he could get away with it and not get caught. He may have thought that he could have won South Carolina and gotten on a roll after that. The prospect of being VP or a cabinet position like AG may have kept him in as well. I think after several years of planning for and running for president, once and then a second time, he didn't want to believe that he couldn't achieve it. His star rose fast and he probably felt it was a matter of time before he became president, I imagine it's tough to let that go.

[Adelante]

16. He polled poorly in SC all along

It would be pretty amazing if he thought he would win it. But it could have been that ego thing and, yeah, he had a very big investment in.

[XemaSab]

26. I think there was some bad blood between Edwards and Kerry after 2004

If Kerry had endorsed Edwards, Edwards might have had a better chance, but the lack of an endorsement for Edwards was conspicuous and painful.

[karynnj]

50. Even before that, not one person with Kerry went to edwards when Kerry opted not to run

They ALL were people who were with Kerry in 2004 and many as far back as the 1970s. What was clear is that they were completely unimpressed by Edwards in 2004.

To say there was bad blood suggests equal responsibility. It may well be that Kerry seeing Edwards close up in 2004, was unimpressed. The Edwards were out attacking both Kerrys as early as 2005 - the Kerrys did not respond in kind. If their was any debt between them, Edwards owed Kerry gratitude for giving him a chance to be VP. That should not have translated to endorsing Kerry in 2008, but it should have at least extended to not gratuitously attacking him. (In addition, read Kerry's endorsement of Obama - one thing prominently praised was that Obama was reaching out to heal divides. Edwards was arguing for confrontation. Kerry has been for the former over his entire public life.)

[quiller4]

35. To push other candidates to deal with issues he raised. n/t

[cali]

65. hahahha. yeah, johny hedge fund really cared about poverty and

healthcare. fucking fraud cared about himself and that's it. And many of us knew he was nothing but a phony taking advantage of those issues for his own benefit. he was a nothing but a corporate centirst war cheering asswipe in the senate. and he never changed.

[jbnow]

18. On another show last week they said staff did go to him

when they first really suspected. They told him if it was (or had?) happening that he had to end his campaign but he absolutely denied it. They weren't sure...

Also said it might have been a campaign aide that triggered probe on his finances because many of them took pay cuts or agreed to work free and later got angry about money going to his mistress.

[Adelante]

19. There was this article last week

In the fall of 2006, John Edwards’ political high command began hearing disturbing reports from aides on the road. The candidate, they were told, was spending too much time with an eccentric filmmaker named Rielle Hunter.

So when Edwards and Hunter returned from his trip to Africa in early October, his former campaign manager Peter Scher confronted him: If Edwards was having an affair, he told the candidate flatly, he couldn’t run for president.

Edwards denied the affair, but Scher and other loyalists from his 2004 campaign doubted his word, made excuses, and stayed out of the 2008 presidential race when Edwards launched his campaign after Christmas.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22127.html

[jbnow]

47. That has to be where they got the info! Thanks, I couldn't

even remember what show they were talking about that on. It says "stayed out of the 2008 presidential race..." and my defective memory had it that they didn't believe him and they left the race....but I didn't write that part since I wasn't sure.

Can't imagine how hard it was for those on the campaign who had worked so hard and believed in the cause...to hear how reckless and dishonest he had been

[dkf]

8. It looks like womanizing has turned into a deal breaker for the Presidency.

Interesting.

[AllentownJake]

11. This wasn't just womanizing

It was cheating on your sick wife with cancer....it was borderline sociopath behavior.

[Bluenorthwest]

17. And for me it was also

the moralistic defender of marriage language he used to explain that he was simply too traditional about his view of marriage as a sacred thing to muster support for equality. His Baptist roots, his Deacon daddy, his small town values. Sociopathic is a very good word for it in my book.

[rucky]

41. and putting the mistress on the campaign payroll. n/t

[Clio the Leo]

20. and it's about time!

As it should be a deal breaker for ANYTHING.

[ecstatic]

30. good. This isn't the '50s anymore nt

[JI7]

38. his campaign was over before the affair came out

[liberalpragmatist]

46. It is if you're being dishonest

Look, we can all debate whether it's appropriate that politicians' private lives are public these days. Certainly, in today's climate neither JFK or FDR could have qualified. I know many cite this as immaturity, but in some ways it's the opposite - basically, it's no longer acceptable for men to treat women like sexual objects and be unfaithful to their wives.

I do think politicians can survive having an imperfect family life - but the key is that there needs to be disclosure. David Paterson, for example, wasn't hurt by admitting he had had affairs in previous years. (Of course, Paterson's ratings are in the toilet now, but for entirely unrelated reasons.)

Had Edwards genuinely stopped having an affair in '06 (highly unlikely), then I suspect that had he acknowledged it before he ran, he would have taken a short-term hit, but would have been able to stay in the race and avoid demonization. The issue was the coverup, and the fact that he knowingly tried to hide the affair throughout the campaign, knowing that if it emerged in the course of a general election, it would doom the Democrats' chances.

Now, we can argue why it was okay for Bill to cheat and not for Edwards to cheat. I'd say that the circumstances were different and, also, Bill Clinton was lucky. Bill wasn't caught cheating in the midst of the campaign, and he did basically acknowledge that he had cheated in the past and that his marriage wasn't perfect (the "I've caused pain in my marriage" comment).

Of course, his cheating in the WH *was* a big deal, and I think very few of us condoned it. The issue was that the bar for removing a president from office is - rightfully - high, given the duties and responsibilities of the office, and most of us felt it was inappropriate to impeach the president over the matter - a censure would have been appropriate. But I think few of us would say it was okay that Bill did it - though he shouldn't have been impeached, his behavior did the Democrats enormous damage those two years and may have cost Al Gore the '00 election. i don't think too many Democrats - as much as they like Bill - want to go through the same thing again.

And, frankly, Bill was also lucky with his enemies. Had his affair with Monica been uncovered by an internal leak or by the press and not by overzealous prosecutors, I suspect that congressional Dems may have pressured him to resign. Bill was helped by the - correct - impression that his opponents were on a witch hunt determined to bring him down by any means possible.

[BeyondGeography]

57. You left out the parts about campaign funds and the elaborate lies about the baby

Interesting.

[dkf]

60. Doesn't sound like the staffers knew that at the time.

No?

[BeyondGeography]

63. The point is this is a lot more than simple womanizing of the one-night stand variety

To reassure you on your original point, if it weren't, there wouldn't be such a stink about it.

[Enrique]

12. wasn't he in the running for VP?

these guys didn't execute their doomsday plan, and Obama could have picked Edwards and then we'd have been in trouble.

[AllentownJake]

13. This came out before the VP was picked

For all you know they executed the plan.

[karynnj]

68. The media mentioned Edwards, but it never seemed likely to me

Many on Obama's team came from Kerry and it seemed clear they were not impressed with him as a 2004 VP.

[Adelante]

14. Edwards dropped out January 30, 2008

The right time frame. Maybe they told him what they were planning to do? The Doomsday plan was if it appeared he could be the nominee, but perhaps they feared VP as well and let him know it was not on.

[Drunken Irishman]

31. But it became clear after NH Edwards wasn't going to win the nomination.

He flirted with making some noise after Iowa, but that quickly fizzled with Hillary's win in New Hampshire. The NH primary results were the worst possible outcome for him because it signaled that it was a two-man (well one woman) race between Obama and Clinton. Had Clinton, like in Iowa, finished 3rd, it would've been down to Obama and Edwards and he most likely would have become the anti-Obama, but it didn't work out that way.

So when he bowed out, it was abrupt (I remember many on here wondering why he did so), but I don't think it was because of this scenario, since he was already done. What IS interesting is that Edwards announced he was having the affair shortly after his name kept popping up for the VP.

[PresidentObama]

48. I do think it's weird he dropped out so quickly and shockingly.

I didn't understand why he stayed in that long, but as a supporter I planned on supporting him in the Missouri primary. I knew he was poised to pick up a few delegates from Super Tuesday, and he convinced his supporters that he was in for the long haul. I saw him at a rally in Springfield, MO like two days before he dropped out and he again pushed home the point he was in for the long haul. Granted, politicians always say that because they want to convey confidence. But he seemed so passionate about staying in, so it was weird.

I wonder if his staff came to him and told him to step aside and let Hillary/Obama fight it out, or else they'd come out with his affair story and quit on him.

I guess we'll never really know why he dropped out so abruptly.

[CTyankee]

56. I supported Edwards but even as besotted as I was with his and Elizabeth's personal narrative,

my antenna went up a bit after his abrupt dropping out. But I pushed that antenna right back down again and I shouldn't have...

Lesson learned...

[Drunken Irishman]

28. There were talks about Edwards being Obama's VP.

Especially after he endorsed him in Michigan, I believe, during mid-2008. Then, about a month passed -- if my memory is correct -- and the news broke about the affair.

I wonder if it's just a coincidence that this news broke during the height of the VP speculation?

[PresidentObama]

29. I just don't think Edwards ever had a shot at VP. But it's probably a good thing it happened n/t

[Drunken Irishman]

32. I agree on both fronts.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if he admitted the affair to essentially take his name off the list, however high up it may have been.

[PresidentObama]

42. I just can't believe he ran. It's tough for someone like me who supported him to understand.

Knowing this, that his staff were going to purposely sabotage his campaign if he got close.....it makes me feel stupid for donating large amounts of money to him and campaigning for him.

[Adelante]

33. August 2008 was the hotel incident

The first really big story was late December 2007 (the affair story broke that October, but at that point was easily dismissed) when the NE found Rielle in Chapel Hill and six months preggers. I don't think anybody much believed the Andrew Young farce, least of all campaign people who knew him, and I think that really turned things around in the political world. By the time he was hiding in the basement bathroom and had to confess to the affair, nobody was surprised except the supporters who had believed in him, and I think even most of them had moved to Obama pretty smoothly. I don't think Edwards ever had a shot at VP, because the oppo on this had to have been on file with both Obama and Clinton campaigns. It would never have been missed, imo.

[tritsofme]

44. Only in his own mind, and the delusions of his supporters.

I think I can say with pretty good certainty that Edwards was never seriously considered for the VP position in 2008.

[CTyankee]

54. I guess I was one of the delusional on Edwards. I refused to believe the Enquirer

story when it first came out and I defended him strenuously on DU and elsewhere.

We should have known better when that video came out of him primping in front of a mirror and they played "I feel pretty."

I think I was so infatuated by his and Elizabeth's story of marital devotion and love and family values that I was completely won over. Also, we had had so many years of abuse by the Bush Administration we desperately needed the persona of John Edwards. But it was a total sham.

I'm still pretty steamed about it...

[karynnj]

51. Obama had Kerry as one of his advisors

and many many Kerry people on his team. Do you think Edwards was a good VP nominee in 2004, when he wouldn't even use the campaign slogan and refused to defend the nominee for fear of harming his image? In addition, his behavior in the 2008 campaign made him very unlikely. (Did you notice that not one Senator endorsed him - many likely thought what Feingold said.

[PresidentObama]

21. I supported Edwards, and still like Edwards. But this was smart.

It's nothing personal, just business.

Like it or not, Edwards would have been hurt if he was the nominee by this. They did what they had to, to prevent this scenario.

[ecstatic]

23. Am I the only one not buying this?

"They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign."

In the meanwhile, they continued to collect paychecks (from the contributions of unsuspecting democrats)? Why not quit the campaign the moment you realized Edwards was a lying SOS.

[PresidentObama]

24. Good point. I think it's an uncomfortable situation to be in.

But you have a point about collecting a check while planning to bring down his campaign.

[CTyankee]

55. We don't know that some of them didn't jump ship or at least try.

It's difficult if you are trying to support a family or putting a kid thru college.

But in an ideal world, yes, they should all have marched out, job or no job, in righteous indignation...

[Adelante]

34. They were taking pay cuts and going without pay, too

I do appreciate your point about the contributions, that really does suck. But maybe they were pissed off about all the money that went out to Hunter, too. I agree they should have walked out. Some of his top campaign staff from 2004 didn't even come onboard in 2008 because of the affair.

[JI7]

39. they still need money to pay off campaign bills

[nsd]

43. Excellent point.

Those Edwards people should have spoken up right away and quit the campaign. Sabotaging it only if Edwards took off not only meant deceiving his grassroots supporters but potentially weakening the eventual Democratic nominee. If Obama or Clinton had gotten the nomination only because Edwards had been "stabbed in the back" as it were, he or she would have been in a much weaker position going into the general election.

[Catchawave]

64. "They" need to have names.

And if "They" were leaking this info, why the NE and not the NYT or WaPo who were calling for JRE to drop out long before he did?

(Perhaps because the NE pays well for their info? If that's the case, then money is thicker than their allegiance to the Dem Party !)

[Cha]

25. What a way to have to

run a campaign..Thank Goodness Obama won Iowa.

[PresidentObama]

27. You know, I supported Edwards..and I agree.

Thank god, Obama won and went onto be President.

[cwydro]

36. I'd like to know more about this...

This is interesting.

[Arkana]

37. So...Edwards' top advisor was Professor Hubert Farnsworth?

"Good news, everyone! The DOOMSDAY DEVICE is ready!"

[JI7]

40. i heard somewhere that it was Edwards campaign people who leaked to media the affair

plus Rielle Hunter.

but the campaign people were angry about having their pay cut while he paid Rielle Hunter.

[Arugula Latte]

45. What the heck was he thinking? ... Glad the staff had an "out" for the rest of us. nt

[slick8790]

53. WTF is this? This is utter bullshit, in my opinion.

Maybe if these people had any spine, they would have done something about it and not worked for him. Meanwhile, Edwards supporters continue to donate to something they believe still is possible, while this insider baseball bullshit prevents any possibility of our donated dollars going to use. I want my donations back, assholes! If he would have been sabotaged if he even got close, then why was I wasting my money?

[karynnj]

58. Exactly - I suspect this is all spin, and stupid spin, from some Edwards' aides

Think about this - what were their goals if this were true? How do you spend the hours and the energy working for Edwards, if you had already mentally decided that if he seemed to succeed, you already planned to sabotage it. It doesn't make sense. In addition, as Edwards never really was that close, they never were placed in that situation. Even when the first hint of a story came out, Edwards was a badly trailing third place.

This seems more like CYA for some aides, who worked for Edwards even as they had suspicions.

[Adelante]

59. John Edwards lied to you and took your money

Knowing the whole thing could blow up in his face at any moment, knowing his campaign was going absolutely nowhere, even if it didn't. Some campaign staff knew since Fall 2006 there was an affair and joined in the denials, while others refused to join the 2008 campaign because of what they knew.

This particular set of staff, however, claims not to have believed the lies before December 2007, and much of the Edwards 2008 staff hadn't been around in 2006 to know for themselves. If that's true, that they only understood by December 2007, then John Edwards was lying to them, too, while taking your money. And some of them, at least were taking pay cuts or going without salaries, so John Edwards was lying to them and taking their money.

We'll have to see down the road what the details are, but the only thing we know right now is John Edwards lied and took people's money, with the witting help of some of his campaign staff, and unwitting help of others of his staff, who had concluded he wouldn't be the nominee under any circumstances. As he dropped out of the race a month later, and assuming you didn't continue sending money, then these people with this plan probably didn't have too much to do with your money being wasted on John Edwards. As far as campaign staff goes, those who participated in the year long coverup with John Edwards, while taking your money, are far more culpable, in my opinion.

[cwydro]

61. Yup.

What you said.

[Adelante]

62. Joe Trippi: "complete BS — fantasyland — not true."

Trippi dismissed Edwards report

The notion, reported by ABC over the weekend, that Edwards aides had secretly planned to scuttle his campaign over the Rielle Hunter story, was news to me.

Joe Trippi isn't buying, calling it "complete BS — fantasyland — not true."

The plan may well have occurred to a staffer or two, but given that some of his top aides had declined to work for him in 2006, in part over concern that it was true, and many of the rest had spent the latter half of 2007 frantically beating the story back, it's an odd report.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0509/Trippi_dism...

[jsamuel]

66. ...

ugh

[Adelante]

67. Debunking the Edwards "Doomsday" Conspiracy

For a defrocked politician, John Edwards remains the journalistic gift that keeps on giving. Just as the Oprah-ratic debates over Elizabeth Edwards new book were beginning to grow stale, George Stephanopoulos jumped into the fray Sunday with his jaw-dropping claim that unnamed Edwards' campaign staffers had devised a "doomsday strategy...to sabotage his campaign" if the candidate with an explosive adulterous secret ever looked like he would win the nomination.

Okay, it isn't the Black Sox throwing the 1919 World Series or Soviet agents stealing nuclear secrets from Los Alamos. But the notion of some vast Edwards conspiracy has the makings of the best political novel since "Advice and Consent." As reality, however, it seems somewhere between implausible and absurd.

-snip

Part of the problem with imagining such an "In case of impending victory, break glass" strategy is that it is difficult to figure out who the anti-Edwards conspirators might have been. Pollster Harrison Hickman and 2004 press secretary Jennifer Palmieri were so loyal to Edwards that they helped him prepare for his ham-handed confession on "Nightline" last summer. Top campaign strategists Joe Trippi and Jonathan Prince were still so committed to the cause that they were on the road for the last-gasp South Carolina primary at a time when Edwards' chances of winning the Democratic nomination were only a tad better than Rush Limbaugh's. Trippi, by the way, told CNN Monday, "I wasn't involved in a plan like that. It didn't exist. It's a fantasy."

There were, to be sure, some ranking Edwards staffers who by December 2007 were stricken with the gnawing fear that the initial unsubstantiated National Enquirer reports of an affair with Rielle Hunter were true. But their response was not to figure out how to torpedo the campaign, but rather to work out their own personal exit strategies. It was much easier to slip away after Iowa (as Elizabeth Edwards, for the most part, did) than to purportedly plot about how to destroy the candidate to save the Democratic Party.

It did not take many calls to the Edwards alumni association to pick up off-the-record speculation about who might have peddled the self-aggrandizing conspiracy story to Stephanopoulos. In fact, in back-to-back interviews, two Edwards campaign veterans fingered each other as the likely leaker. The whole thing is a diverting parlor game in memory of a disgraced presidential candidate who won exactly one contested primary during his two tries for the White House.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05/11/debunking-the-e...