Edwards Is Tubular

I have only seen snippets of last night's debate but Digby's impression sounded spot-on to me.

The emerging roles in these debates look like this to me: Clinton is commanding, Obama is charming, Edwards is earnest, Biden is righteously indignant, Richardson is surprisingly off-beat, Dodd is normal, Kucinich is arrogantly unapologetically liberal, and Gravel is the grumbling curmudgeon. These roles have begun to gel in my mind, although they are likely to change as the list gets smaller and they begin challenging each other more directly.

That sounds about right, and Edwards' earnestness was really in full force on this exchange on health care, where he used anecdote (which I usually don't like) in an extremely powerful way to advocate for universal health care. I think the campaign sensed that Edwards really nailed it last night - and also they appreciated their own work on the Hair video that sought to deflate the B.S. "You can't be rich and talk about the poor" frame. Here's part of a letter from Joe Trippi:

Dear David,

Something happened in last night's CNN/YouTube debate.

A stark difference between the candidates became clear. When John Edwards said what needed to be said, if we want "real change, big change, bold change...we can't trade our insiders for their insiders." And then urged all of us to stand up for what really matters.

That's what it amounted to last night. Edwards continues to be the only one on that stage arguing for big, bold, transformational change.



(By the way, Obama offered a nice batch of populism in that answer... it's from his stump speech, but it's nice.)