It's the message folks and the message the Edwards campaign has been hammering all year without explicitly saying so is: he's a real Democrat as opposed to Republican lite. It isn't the personalities involved and that's important to remember.

Clinton and Obama have both been steering a centrist course. These numbers from the heartland keep telling the same story which is that those folks want someone who is different from the Republicans instead of someone who blurs the distinctions between the two parties.

If you claim to want change and you claim you will fight the Republicans, the right wing and all the special interests of wealth and corporate power you need someone who is NOT like them, aka a Democrat: not a centrist.

The most important factor, IMHO, is that in terms of November 08 you need states like Missouri and Ohio and others like them that have just barely been in the Republican column. The states that have been blue in the past will remain so. It's got to be all about expanding our appeal vs getting just a bit more here and there to eek out a close one. Taking the states like the two I just mentioned means numerous others would be put into play and won in November---states we've lost the last two or three Presidential years. The kind of victory that kind of turnaround creates will be a landslide benefiting Democrats running for every office from local to Federal.

That is what we need to destroy Republican power to the point where it will take 10 years or more for them just to get back on their feet. That is time we will need so that we can undo the damage they have done since the mid 90's and put America back on course at home and abroad.

if we elect Edwards we will be playing into the Republican playbook because given Edwards' senate voting record he is the most unelectable of all the democratic candidates. We will get buried. Stop trusting these polls and elect anyone but Edwards.

As I had said in the thread on the Ohio poll, it will be Clinton v. Edwards down the stretch (especially if he takes IA), with Clinton prevailing after Super-Duper Tuesday.

Edwards polls v. the Repubs look fine (overall, they definitely make him look more competitive than Obama), but his problem is how well he would do for the nomination v. Clinton. On Super-Duper Tuesday, when California, New York, NJ, etc, primaries take place, Clinton's win will be so big that the aura of 'inevitability' that will envelope her would easily carry her to the finish line. At least, that is how I see her path to the nomination. It is not as clear to me, using electoral vote calculus, how either Obama or Edwards would win the nomination without carrying virtually every small state...

thank you TPM for not putting up a picture of Hillary with this story as I'm sure you were tempted to do. However,

It would be really nice if you put up the Dem. leaders in the poll first instead of making every poll about Hillary

for that matter obama outpolls hillary there too...

This is not 2004. It is 2008. Edward's role in the Kerry campaign was marginalized by the Kerry "brain" trust.

2008 is a no-brainer looking at the electoral map. Assuming for a moment that Clinton or Obama could carry all the Kerry states (a difficult proposition at best), what other states could they carry? Edwards would most easily hold the Kerry states and be competative in Southern boarder states as well as Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico.

Let me say, I will vote for any Democratic candidate to prevent further damage to the Supreme Court, but I am not relishing going on another suicide mission with Hillary or Barack.

Personally, I don't think I know anyone (R or D) who WANTS Hillary. Here in SW Ohio (The RED Zone) most Dems I know are for Edwards or Obama. A lot of Dems don't like HRC and are against the idea of Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton. We desperately need new DNA in The White House. It is time for a change!

I will NOT vote for a corporate Democrat!