Edwards following a speech about trade issues at IBEW Local 405 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Monday. (AP Photo/Cliff Jette, Iowa City Gazette)
by Mark Silva
John Edwards, the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president in 2004, claims that he likes his position in the party's pack of presidential candidates today.
"I like where I am,'' Edwards told NBC's Matt Lauer on MSNBC's Super Tuesday today, showing Edwards seated at Soldier Field in Chicago, site of the AFL-CIO's summer meeting and candidate forum tonight. "I wouldnt trade places with anybody.''
Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina who fought Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts for the party's nomination in 2004, is not talking about his position in national polls today (low). He is talking about his position in Iowa, scene of the first presidential nominating caucuses in January -- a place where he just might have overtaken Kerry in the first caucus of '04 had the calendar given the Democrats another week to play that race out.
A late-July poll taken by ABC News and the Washington Post found Edwards favored among 27 percent of the likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York among 26 percent and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois 26 percent.
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Comments
In the Edwards news the "Swamp" won't tell you about but which is headlined in other cities, South Carolina's largest newspaper has just come out with an editorial calling Edwards a "big phony". See
http://www.thestate.com/editorial-columns/story/139273.html
"MONTHS ago, I observed on my blog that I think John Edwards is a phony — a make-believe Man of The People.
It’s not so much that he’s lying when he says he wants to help One America — the Deserving Poor, whom he wants to vote for him — get what it has coming to it from the Other America (that of the Really Rich, to which he disarmingly admits he belongs). I think he believes it. But I don’t, and here’s why:
Strike One: Sept. 16, 2003. The candidate was supposed to appear on a makeshift stage on Greene Street in front of the Russell House.
He was supposed to arrive at 4 p.m., but it was past 5 before he showed. When his appearance was imminent, his wife appeared on the stage and built expectation in a manner I found appealing and sincere. Then I saw Mr. Edwards step to an offstage position just behind the bleachers to my left. None of the folks in the “good” seats could see him.
His face was impassive, slack, bored: Another crowd, another show. Nothing wrong with that — just a professional at work.
But then, I saw the thing that stuck with me: As his introduction reached its climax, he straightened, and turned on a thousand-watt smile as easily and artificially as flipping a switch. He assumed the look of a man who had just, quite unexpectedly, run into a long-lost best friend. He stepped into view of the crowd at large, and worked his way, Bill Clinton-like, from the back of the crowd toward the stage — a man of the people, coming out from among the people — shaking hands with the humble, grateful enthusiasm of a poor soul who had just won the Irish Sweepstakes.
It was so well done, but so obviously a thing of art, that I was taken aback despite three decades of seeing politicians at work.
Not enough for you? OK...."
Posted by: Bruce | August 7, 2007 1:59 PM
gee Bruce, I'll bet that Edwards learned how to do that from Ronald Reagan. Everybody knows what a phony he was when it came to caring about America's poor.
Posted by: BC | August 8, 2007 11:30 AM