NY Times: Edwards Advisors Admit He Will Not Win A Single Primary - JRE gave it a great try!

But his aides have said privately that they do not expect Mr. Edwards to win a single primary state. And the results of the Nevada caucuses threw the campaign’s top advisers into hours of strategy meetings Saturday night, debating how the shellshocked campaign could feasibly continue.

In the end, the campaign held onto its longstanding position of simply hanging on. “There’s just no reason not to go to South Carolina, pick up delegates and watch the dynamics of the race play out for a while,” one adviser said.

John C. Moylan, a longtime friend and adviser in South Carolina who ran the Edwards campaign there in 2004, said Mr. Edwards could still win 15 percent of the vote in South Carolina and come away with delegates to add to those he collected in Iowa and New Hampshire.

For now, campaign donations are still trickling in. The campaign, which is accepting federal financing, has gotten used to running on a lean budget. On Friday alone, it also raised roughly $300,000 online, said Mark Kornblau, a spokesman.

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But some political strategists say Mr. Edwards also has another compelling reason to stay in, at least in South Carolina. He could end up sharing the white vote with Mrs. Clinton, thus helping Mr. Obama, whom Mr. Edwards has signaled he favors.

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Yet the crowds in South Carolina have been more tepid than they were in states that have already voted, hardly a reminder of Mr. Edwards’s victory in the state’s 2004 Democratic primary.

At a campaign rally in Myrtle Beach, a man jumped onstage and pleaded into a microphone, “Could you fill the empty space?” He urged the people in the back to cluster around the stage. “This is a rally, people.”

And the press corps following Mr. Edwards has dwindled, with fewer than a half-dozen television producers and reporters on the road with him.

Even Mrs. Edwards, who had been front and center for long stretches in Iowa and New Hampshire, has not been seen on the campaign trail since the New Hampshire primary. It is not clear if she will be in South Carolina this week at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/us/politics/21edwards.html?_r=1&ex=1358571600&en=091cc890c50e529d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin