Shorter TNR: 'If you're smart, you best hop off the bandwagon;' or...the stock market theory: TNR's blog analyzes why exit polls showed Kerry winning over poor liberals with no more than high school degrees, while John Edwards struggles among that demographic (who are supposed to be most naturally inclined toward him), but does amazingly well among white-collar voters. Don't huff elitism...its a theory, not a social statement:

My own hunch is that what we're seeing is an important divide between less sophisticated voters and more sophisticated voters. Just about the only thing less sophisticated voters--who, I'm guessing, tend to be poorer and less well-educated--know about John Kerry is that he's been winning, and possibly that he's a longtime Senator and a Vietnam veteran. On the other hand, more sophisticated voters--who, I'm guessing, tend to be more affluent and better educated--have probably paid attention to the campaign long enough to know that, in addition to these things, Kerry's from Massachusetts (not exactly a presidential breeding ground of late), tilts to the liberal end of the ideological spectrum, and tends to be kind of boring and long-winded. Which is to say, less affluent, less educated voters are looking at John Kerry's string of primary victories and concluding from them that he's electable. More affluent, better educated voters are actually watching debates and reading newspapers. And they're concluding from these things that Edwards--who is neither from Massachusetts nor a liberal nor boring--is actually more electable. (Particularly after many of these newspapers endorse Edwards, as the two biggest papers in Wisconsin recently did.)

It's a phenomenon that's actually very similar to what goes on in the stock market. Less sophisticated investors just pick the stocks whose prices they've heard are going up. More sophisticated investors actually do some research about the companies they plan to invest in. Up until yesterday, Kerry was that tech stock that the girlfriend of the cousin of the guy down the street said was a can't-miss opportunity, while Edwards was the unheralded stock of a company with a little-known but solid product.