Mother Jones Notices John Edwards

Maybe the real campaign news in the last few days is simply the strong straightforward way that John Edwards is making his case to be the next president of the United States while the other two frontrunners battle it out. Here's the story from Sasha Abramsky of Mother Jones:

Carson City, Nevada, might seem an unlikely placge for the starter-gun to be fired in a presidential race, but that's what happened yesterday. The small state capital, surrounded by the snow-dusted mountains of the eastern Sierra Nevada, the huge western sky specked with gentle white clouds, played host to the first Democratic Party candidates' forum. Eight of the declared runners were there: Senators Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and Hillary Clinton, Representative Dennis Kucinich, Iowa's ex-governor Tom Vilsack, Governor Bill Richardson, and ex-Senators John Edwards and Mike Gravel. The only big name missing was Barack Obama.

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To my mind, there were two things of particular interest about the event. The first was the unabashed liberalism-cum-populism of the candidates. These weren't Democratic Leadership Committee-type speeches. They were fiery speeches, in their economic timbre redolent of New Deal era oratory, full of references to economic injustice, to America's squandered reputation in the world, to the historical urgency of the current moment. "We need to reestablish America as the great moral leader on the planet," Edwards declared. "The world needs to see us as a force for good again. The world needs to see us as the shining light we used to be." Richardson, who arguably has a broader array of experiences in the world of government and diplomacy than any candidate in the field, averred that the country "should not be known for Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and eavesdropping and violating international conventions."

The second revelation was the Bobby Kennedy-esque presence of Edwards. Clinton's body language is supremely confident—but it comes off as somehow forced, almost overacted. John Edwards, by contrast, is a natural performer. In 2004, Edwards seemed charismatic, yet somehow not fully formed. This time around, there is nothing raw or inexperienced in his presentation: he establishes an instant rapport with his audience, his answers are passionate, and he exudes a command of his subject. When he fields questions from the press, his eye contact is almost hypnotic. When he talks about the issues he cares about most—poverty, Iraq, healthcare—he creates the same sincere-yet-not-pontificating aura that Bill Clinton mastered 15 years ago.

None of which is to say Edwards emerged from the forum as the front-runner in Nevada let alone nationwide. Clearly, Clinton and Obama have tremendous momentum behind their campaigns. Richardson, too, is a powerful, smart-as-hell candidate who will benefit from having early Western caucuses and primaries. But in Carson City, Edwards did put the rest of the candidates on notice: his voice this time around is stronger than in 2004, his policies better honed, and his anger at the state of the country today almost incandescent.

It's not something that most voters pay attention to but one thing that I have noticed about John Edwards is that he can handle a steep learning curve. Hillary Clinton is a brilliant politician and a tough campaigner but I don't believe she understands how much the times have changed since her husband ran for president. She doesn't understand how profoundly damaged America's foreign policy is at the moment. She doesn't understand how fundamentally bankrupt the neoconservatives are and she still seems to be listening to the Democratic version of neoconservatives. She doesn't understand how much corporate corruption, globalization, K Street and big money are distorting our politics to the point that the needs of tens of millions of Americans are not getting addressed. And she doesn't understand America's profound energy problem.

Barack Obama, on the other, seems to understand the times but I honestly don't feel that I know him yet; I like what I see but I don't know what he can do or will do. But I'm beginning to feel I know something about Edwards and I find my respect for him deepening. This isn't the same guy who ran in 2004; there's more to him and people are going to be finding that out in the months to come (by the way, an odd thing happened after Kerry lost: I kept encountering people who wish they had voted for Edwards in the primaries). Watch the polls. By early fall, if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have not closed the deal, Edwards' numbers may very well be moving up.