Pollsters Drop John Edwards from Head to Head Match-Ups

So, now, Survey USA, which conducts an influential state-by-state poll, has decided that John Edwards is not sufficiently "viable" to be included in their head-to-head match-ups for the general election.

This is in keeping with a major theme of campaign 2008: our media and political establishments narrowing the field before most Americans get to cast a vote.

Nothing new there -- our electoral choices are always limited to a few candidates whom the Beltway establishment finds "palatable" -- who raise a lot of cash from large donors and who won't disturb the status quo. But this cycle, they appear to be doing so with unusual intensity. Why? Because they're terrified -- this is an election in which voters are pissed off, and many appear ready to reject the anointed front-runners in favor of candidates they believe will shake up Washington's business-as-usual ways.

That volatility scares a lot of people who do quite well under the status quo, thank you, and the attacks on candidates like Mike Huckabee -- a heretic for questioning the GOP's unquestioned fealty to Wall Street's investor class -- have been particularly striking. As have been the efforts to narrow the larger political debates, with Fox sidelining Ron Paul and NBC rewriting its own rules in order to uninvite Dennis Kucinich to Tuesday's Dem show-down in Nevada.

John Edwards, with his explicit and sharp critique of the ways in which corporate power distorts our political discourse, is in a special category. Unlike a Paul or Kucinich, Edwards was the VEEP on the Dems' last ticket, and therefore can't be marginalized as easily. But they've tried to marginalize him nonetheless, both by focusing on his haircuts and failing miserably to engage the actual messages of his campaign.

I think this offers as good a picture of what a lot of the Villagers are feeling as any …

Which brings me back to SurveyUSA, and their 50-state head-to-head polling. Sarah Lane pointed this out at DailyKos …

I just got off the phone with a representative from Survey USA. I was perplexed by a recent poll done by Survey USA in conjunction with local Oregon news affiliate KATU News, where Edwards was left out of the polling. In case you didn't know, Edwards has deep support here in Oregon. Oregonians gave more money to Edwards than they have to Clinton or Obama.

The short version of the story is that SurveyUSA told Lane that they had made a "judgment call" in deciding that Edwards had no shot at the nomination. Lane took issue with the inclusion of Giuliani in the head-to-heads, as Giuliani trails Edwards in both national polls and delegates. But I think that misses a few points.

First, we don't have national primaries, so national polls are meaningless. The next state is all that counts, and that's Nevada. And while several polls show Clinton pulling ahead of Obama and Edwards trailing, others have the race as a virtual three-way tie. The media creates its own self-fulfilling prophesy with their breathless reports about the shifts in "momentum" after each primary. If Edwards were to pull off an (admittedly highly improbable) win in Nevada, the story would be about his resurrection from the ashes, and that would impact the race down the line. Only four states have weighed in on this race, and the rest of us are waiting for our shot, SurveyUSA is making a judgment call that he doesn't have a shot, based on nothing but their own fallible polling.

Secondly -- and I think this is a the bigger issue -- SurveyUSA is stripping the Edwards' campaign of one of its best selling points: the fact that he does better than the other Dem candidates in theoretical match-ups with everyone in the GOP field. In fact, against the GOP's strongest candidate in head-to-heads, John McCain, only Edwards among the top Dems wins comfortably. Here's a graphic that drives home the point, courtesy of Pioneer111 over at Kos: