I’m not proud of it,

but I did watch the Democratic presidential debate. No one looked presidential, except maybe Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama looked like he might one day be presidential. John Edwards looked ill-served by his hair stylist.
The point of the debate, I suppose, was for folks to make Clinton look bad on Iraq. I’m not qualified to say whether Edwards and the others succeeded in convincing Democrats on this score. However, I doubt that a critical mass of Dems will get worked up over the difference between a Democrat like Edwards who voted for the war and now apologizes for it and Clinton who voted for the war, says she wants to end it, but declines to apologize for the vote. Similarly, it seems unlikely that Edwards will get much mileage among mainstream Democrats out of the fact that when Clinton and Obama recently voted against funding the war they didn’t give a speech on the subject.
Moreover, though most people probably had tuned-out by this point, Edwards may have undone whatever progress he had made against Clinton on the war with his last answer. Edwards got the first crack at telling the audience what he’d do in his initial 100 days as president. He replied that he would tour the world in order to re-establish America’s moral leadership, by talking about our values such as diversity. That’s a good answer if you’re running for Miss America, but not if you’re running for president as an anti-war candidate. Hillary, who got the question next, was then able to say she would end the war. If Edwards were genuinely more anti-war than Hillary, would he have left her this opportunity?
Edwards did catch one break, though. The “former hair salon owner” who asked a question from the audience inquired about the deficit, not where Edwards got that crappy cut.
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