Try, try again...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/political_wrap/jan-june04/sb_race_01-20.html

JIM LEHRER: Now, the Edwards thing. The conventional wisdom among you pundits is that the reason he did well is that he was upbeat rather than downbeat. He didn't attack anybody. Do you read that, the same...
DAVID BROOKS: Partly. First of all, I don't think the candidates ran this. There's this whole theory that Joe Tripy the Dean campaign manager and all these back room geniuses are manipulating public opinion. They're not that smart. The public is what moved. The candidates basically stayed the same. What John Edwards had going for him is first of all he's the best campaigner I've seen since Bill Clinton. His speech is the most fantastic stump speech. I followed it around four or five times just because it's so much fun.
JIM LEHRER: You heard him say the same thing over and over again.
DAVID BROOKS: You see the crowds. They go crazy.
JIM LEHRER: What does he say; what is the guts of it?
DAVID BROOKS: The best moment in the speech. He's talking about himself as a trial lawyer. He said I was this little trial lawyer and went up against the corporate interests, the corporate lawyers, the best money can buy, dignified people. You can hear them thinking Republicans. Then he says and they looked at me and said what's this guy doing in the courtroom with us? We're the best and the brightest.
Then he turns to the crowd and says, you know I beat them and I beat them and I beat them and I beat them and the crowd is going crazy because they know this is the guy who can beat the corporate Republicans. It's a fantastic, it's the best moment. And that's just ... he's just a fantastic ... the Republican wants to get overconfidence cure, go to a John Edwards rally.
JIM LEHRER: What's your reading --
MARK SHIELDS: John Edwards has perfect pitch as a candidate. Last night in Des Moines, his speech was so much better than anybody else's. I mean, exempting Dick Gephardt who lost and left the race but certainly better than John Kerry's, which was endless. I mean it was too senatorial. It might have been three pretty good eight-minute speeches. It was a pretty mediocre 25-minute speech. Howard Dean's rather animated...
JIM LEHRER: We'll talk about him in a minute.
MARK SHIELDS: But John Edwards stood up there. First of all he acknowledged Gephardt in a beautiful way. He said Dick Gephardt got up everyday of his life and fought for working families. Tonight we have to lift him up and honor him. If you were a Gephardt sympathizer, it was just the perfect moment. The others made a bow and a deference to him. It was just a perfect pitch. Then he went on and instead of talking to the room as the others did to some degree, he talked about exactly what David was talking about. He talked about the two Americas, one for the privileged.
JIM LEHRER: The thing like in our excerpt.
MARK SHIELDS: I have to tell you I agree with David, that is awfully good. But he also has a sense of the possibility of America when he says they told me at every turn that I couldn't do it. They told me that I couldn't go to college. They told me I couldn't be a lawyer. They told me I couldn't ... I'm sure people have told you that in your lives that you weren't qualified for something. You see the heads nod in the room. And David's right. I mean I think he's better than Bill Clinton. I really do.

I'd be happy to support him if he wins the nomination.

the more people will see what these people and I do. This man is electric when he speaks. Can you imagine him debating Bush? And his message is so on-point and he is so smart about being on-message at the critical times.

You need to stop blowing him off and pay attention. This man can beat Bush and beyond that, he will make a great President. John Edwards is on a mission and he has the brains, the charisma, the guts, the determination and the drive to get it done. Kerry has experience, but lacks charisma and he screws up (does anybody remember 'regime change'??). Dean has determination, but there is that screw up thing again. Dean also has way too many places where Karl Rove can get his fingernails under there and start peeling. Lieberman is creepy. Clark is running the weirdest campaign in political history and is, I think, making a major mistake in making an anti-war position central to his campaign. All Rove has to do is spin some of his earlier comments about the war (you know, like the ones where he said that he thought it was a good idea??) and Clark comes off looking like a political opportunist. When you add the whole 'working Republican fundraisers' thing to that and the whole 'I want to play with the Republican party and if they don't play with me, I'll go play with the Dems' also, I am thinking that some people might come up with the unthinkable conclusion that Clark IS a political opportunist (go figure).

And when you consider that none of them know how to run a CLEAN and POSITIVE campaign (something that should surely confound Rove), I am thinking that Edwards is the man to back.

I thought about going over to the Edwards blog and giving a shoutout and wohooo to Renie! Are you just jumping out of your shoes or what!! He is really coming on and I love his Two Americas speech and the way he says "Not In My America!" And I know he'd do a great job as President too.

It has been a pretty amazing week. I dropped back in to see what everybody was saying about Edwards and imagine my surprise when it seems like nothing has changed here. The Dean and Kerry people are still going at it, only now they also have to go after the Clark people, too. The Kucinich people still have their fingers stuck in their ears and are saying 'yah yah yah'. I still cannot figure out if Lieberman even has people. But nobody is talking about Edwards, except Surfermaw and nobody even answered her post. Here is a guy that people OTHER THAN ME are saying is running the smartest campaign and that he is the best speaker and that he has a great platform and wonderful plans and people STILL want to say "Oh, he would be good VP material." It used to offend me, but now I am starting to think its kind of funny. It makes me wonder what he has to do to convince some people that he is DEFINITELY Presidential material? Win the election?? Thank god that is very doable for him.

New section for the primary only. Lots of Edwards supporters over there. They've been getting more and more vocal and getting quite a few switch-overs.

And you can think whatever you want about people going at it, you haven't been here to watch the transformation from Dean/Kerry sniping to Dean/Clark sniping. When Clark broke from Dean on the VP thing, the chumminess was pretty much over. And I really love how Edwards isn't negative when he calls everybody else snipers. You just wait. If he wants to win this thing, he's going to have to differentiate and the only way to do that is to say "he thinks this and I think that." And it can be called an "attack" by the media any time they want to.

Anyway, congratulations! I am really happy people are starting to listen to his message.

I'm actually getting posts over on the Kerry forum that we should elect Edwards because he looks better. That's it, only reason. Edwards looks better. Kerry is gloomy, sullen and ashy. Well they didn't think so in Iowa. January 22, remember the date.

John Kerry and John Edwards should team together sooner rather than later and get the general campaign moving.

I think that they generally try to wait to see who actually wins the nomination before they announce running mates.

we resort to quoting the media when we have nothing to say ourselves.

What will you do now when David Brooks says something you don't like?

Live by the media, die by the media. Some of us are tired of seeing them make rubes out of our fellow citizens, some can't get enough.