John Edwards Moving Steadily Towards Presidential Bid

Step by step, Edwards seems to be moving closer to making his bid for 2008 presidential nomination official. I'll be very surprised if he doesn't run. He now seems to doing the kind of hiring that suggests a run (from The News-Observer):

During his decade as the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. House, David Bonior earned a reputation as a pit bull -- the Democrat most likely to take on Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Bonior, 61, will probably soon take on another difficult task: leading former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards to the Democratic nomination for president.

It was announced last week that Bonior, a former congressman from Michigan, has been hired as a senior adviser to Edwards' One America Committee, his leadership political action committee. But that is expected to be a temporary post. Bonior is likely to be campaign manager for Edwards if, as expected, he announces a second run for the White House.

Here's a story by Linda D. Campbell in the Belleville News Democrat about a recent speech by Edwards:

The only thing missing was the announcement that he's running. The grand themes were there. America's diminishing clout as the only superpower. The imperatives of collectively engaging in addressing crises around the world. The inherent decency of the American people.

"When America doesn't lead, the world is a dangerous and chaotic place," John Edwards told a room full of lawyers and journalists in Dallas.

Confidently, persuasively, he built that message to a crescendo: "There is such a hunger across American today to be part of something big and important," he said. "There's a hunger to be inspired again."

(snip)

Edwards' foreign policy studies are shoring up what was considered a weakness when he ran for the nomination in 2004 after just one term in the Senate. What he's hearing when he goes abroad isn't pretty. No surprise there.

The Chinese, he said, made clear that they "don't want to be lectured by the country that's responsible for Abu Ghraib ... that owns Guantanamo."

(snip)

"The United States of America is better than this, and the world needs to see us for who we really are."

There's word that Edwards need to start raising some serious money for his campaign if he's running. It should be noted that unlike other prominent Democrats who were reluctant to release money that had been donated to them, John Edwards spent a considerable amount from his campaign war chest in the 2006 midterm election; he also made many appearances around the country. Let's see if he gets rewarded for helping his party.