Ummm, yeah...exactly what I've been saying for months to the hand-wringers, diaper-poopers, and bed-wetters...Edwards ain't out of this. Stop panicking. He's fighting an uphill battle against a corporate media that doesn't like him. But, this is far from over...
The Man Who Refused to be Buried
It's amazing how well Edwards is doing. Recent polls of the first three states have Edwards ahead in Iowa and tied with Obama for second in New Hampshire* and Nevada. You can find less favorable polls, of course, but there's no question that he's in the thick of the race--an astounding accomplishment given the effort of the elite media to take him down and the celebrity of his two top rivals. One of the big un-discussed stories of the race is that Edwards is not slipping, a la McCain. On the contrary.
I could write a 10,000-word post on the elite media's distaste for Edwards: it's multi-layered. Elite journalists are in many cases members of the D.C establishment, which didn't take to Edwards even when he was a Senator, and which now hates him. Edwards is running against Washington in a very real way--not just rhetorically. He's winning powerful enemies with his "class warfare," his attacks on lobbyists, his criticism of Dems in Congress for caving in to Bush on Iraq, his call for reform at the D.N.C and Congressional committees. I feel confident saying that in the Giant Secret Conversation, in which elites socialize and leak and gossip, few are raving about Edwards.
My sense is, the dislike for Edwards is more personal than political. It's his earnestness that most offends elite journalists. They prefer irony and knowingness, the Bob Dolesque wit signaling that the political game is just that, a game, nothing too serious. But Edwards is dead serious. He speaks in moral terms. He has grand goals. He understands that political issues are matters of life and death. Jaded and often depressed, scornful of people fortunate enough to have strong beliefs, journalists think Edwards is a moralizer and hope to lay him low with charges of hypocrisy. They want us to think Edwards is as cynical as they are. But he's not.
The media assault was unrelenting from the end of March to the end of June. The Haircut dominated. It found its way to every story about Edwards. Compared to Clinton and Obama, he got almost no coverage and when he did, it was negative. He came very close to losing control of his image and his narrative. In a now infamous, blasé post, Marc Ambinder, formerly of the Note and now of the Atlantic, confirmed what we had lost suspected, that the media were "trying to bury Edwards."
A candidacy with a less solid core would have gone under. His substance kept him above ground.
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