Every poll (and it is early) that puts Dems against Reps has Edwards doing the best, and sometimes it's not even close.

Because the anti-Obmama bias in this piece is glaring?  ;)

That a great deal of Edwards support (in my experience) is focused on Edwards-in-process. That is, there's a notion that Edwards is growing and maturing as a candidate before our very eyes. (Perhaps in some of the same ways that Dean did.) That he's either responding to us and our issues, or is on a somewhat parallel path.

So Edwards supporters and leaners don't find some of his historical errors--even the egregious ones--too deeply alarming, because they see that as an indication that he's come a long way since then, and is still moving forward in the right direction. People who don't respond to him, though, see him--using the same evidence--as flip-flopping or calculating or pandering.

This is mirrored with the Obama campaign, too. A great deal of the Obama support is predicated on the notion of Obama-as-transformer. The idea that Obama is a catalyst who won't merely act for the best within the current political reality, but who can fundamentally alter that reality. He'll transform the landscape so effectively that the current maps (and terms, and frames) aren't some all-important guide.

So Obama supporters and leaners don't find his 'moderate' or 'bipartisan' approach at all alarming, because they see these thing in the light of an altered political landscape which only Obama can full catalyze. People who don't respond to him, though, listen to the same stuff and hear the sounds of so-called 'centrism' and reflexive Democratic caution.

It put American Exceptionalism on full display. And American Fear. As a nation too many of us just went into a crouch and just asked Daddy to make the Bogey Man go away. And then just let Daddy do it however he wanted no matter what the cost. Because 9/11 changed everything.

Except that it didn't. The correct response to horrible tragedy is not to simply close down the thought process to "Please make me safe" which is what simply accepting Afghan and Iraqi and American military troop deaths as simply the price you have to pay for the marginal amounts of perceived safety ended up being.

It didn't have to be this way and in other places it wasn't. The response in Britain to their train bombings?
http://www.werenotafraid.com/about.html

"We are not afraid to ride public transportation.

We are not afraid to walk down a crowded street.

We are not afraid of each other.

We are not afraid to say that terrorism in any form is never the answer.

We're not afraid is an outlet for the global community to speak out against the acts of terror that have struck London, Madrid, New York, Baghdad, Basra, Tikrit, Gaza, Tel-Aviv, Afghanistan, Bali, and against the atrocities occurring in cities around the world each and every day. It is a worldwide action for people not willing to be cowed by terrorism and fear mongering.

The historical response to these types of attacks has been a show of deadly force; we believe that there is a better way. We refuse to respond to aggression and hatred in kind. Instead, we who are not afraid will continue to live our lives the best way we know how. We will work, we will play, we will laugh, we will live. We will not waste one moment, nor sacrifice one bit of our freedom, because of fear."

Not exactly the sentiments of the typical War/Patriot Act supporter. Rather than take any amount of risk they simply surrendered their freedom and abandoned all moral responsibility for the people who would be killed in this war of choice.

(BTW I don't go quite so far as the I Am Not Afraid people. Mass murderers don't get free passes, but people who mocked Kerry for framing the pursuit of al-Qaeda as a Police Action against criminals rather than this amorphous War on Terror need to do some serious self-examination. That would have been the exact frame in which to retain and build confidence in America. If we had focused on the criminals and shown even the slightest real concern for civilian casualties rather than turning Afghanistan and Iraq into effective free-fire zones our position on the ground and around the world would be much more secure. Instead we let 9/11 give all agents licenses to kill.)

The instinct at play may be more political than philosophical. Several months ago, when I just decided to support Edwards, I saw an interview in which he said that Iraq had altered the national secuirty debate, that no longer was pretending to be tough the first and last priority--something like that. This is a fact apparently not grasped by Obama and Clinton, who are still reading from the 2002 playbook. Of course, there are the political dynamics of the race as well. Unlike Obama and Clinton, Edwards doesn't feel the need to cover for potential general election weakness, so he can move left with relative impunity. Cause I've noticed something about presidential candidates: they want to be president and will do the things that they think will achieve that end. The political interests of Obama and Clinton are not aligned with those of progressives.

...skill and guts to run against the conventional wisdom. As Joe Trippi said, you see a lot more transactional candidates than transformational candidates.

First, you have to possess the communication skills -- both natural and refined -- to make your case to the people that the old way of thinking is obsolete (or was never very good in the first place) and it needs to change.

Second, you have to possess the courage to believe that you can successfully communicate a new, better way of thinking, and withstand the inevitable onslaught that will come from the other side, while remaining a viable candidate.

It's impossible to know whether some candidates don't want to run against the "war on terror," or they don't believe they're capable of doing so successfully (perhaps correctly), but neither seems to be a problem for Edwards.

Sorry to nitpick, but hundreds of millions of dollars for education in the third world is not that much in the scheme of things. When he's starts talking about billions and about cutting farm subsidies and tariffs on manufactured goods, then we'll know he's serious. Until then, it's not radically different from anything we've heard before.

That's actually what I like the most, as it assumes a very informed audience. He won't be speaking that way in 9 months, but for right now, he's speaking to the ones listening.

In other ancient news, Mrs. O'Leary's cow was responsible for the Chicago fire.