Each week, Chuck Todd and I put our heads together, exchange pre-cortical synapse firings, and rank the candidates on the probability that, all other things being equal, they will get their party's nomination.
People complain that the rankings change weekly. Precisely. Events intervene, and probabilities change.
Nominally, these rankings are ordered by likelihood of winning the Democratic Party primary and are based on a number of factors, including our own reporting, political history, organization, money, press buzz and polling.
The rankings live on National Journal.com, so please check them out.
Tonight, post-debate, Chuck and I will rank the Republicans.
Here's our intro:
Sunday's debate -- featuring an aggressive John Edwards trying to knock Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama off message, and Clinton and Obama settling in to their friendly rival routine -- suggests that we're in for a period of summer stasis. Obama is biding his time before he turns on Clinton.
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In regards to your Edwards ranking:
That's not the full story here.
One of the felicities of the Edwards candidacy is that his region and his TV persona confer an unusual latitude to be able to tell the truth about national security without harming his general election prospects.
Electability will still matter this year. It always does. But saying Bush's GWoT doctrine hasn't made us safer won't harm Edwards' electability one whit.
The most electable Dem this cycle is the Dem on the left. That is a very unusual configuration that is going to take folks quite a while to figure out.
Posted by Petey | June 5, 2007 12:31 PM