http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/21/MNGGUI6BL.DTL,,snip
The mystery as to why Edwards' campaign hasn't drawn more support is simultaneously baffling and simple to explain. His positions on most major issues are similar to Clinton's and Obama's; often he has been the first to state a position only to have them follow with a similar policy.
His health care plan offers universal coverage where Obama's doesn't. Clinton's plan is similar to Edwards', and was released seven months after his.
This month, Edwards called for a quicker and more complete pullout of U.S. troops and training forces from Iraq than either Clinton or Obama. In 2002, then-Sen. Edwards voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, as did Clinton. Obama publicly opposed it.
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Edwards has talked most aggressively about removing the power of corporate influence from politics, but voters have been telling exit pollsters that Obama is the candidate most likely to bring the amorphous concept of "change" to Washington.
Even Edwards' supporters admit that his problems have less to do with policy differences than with Edwards getting overlooked in the media's focus on the historic candidacies of Clinton and Obama, the best-funded woman and African American to run for president. Even after Edwards finished second in the Iowa caucus this month, he received only a fraction of the media coverage that Obama and Clinton did in the following days, and slightly more than former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican who barely competed there, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's campaign coverage index.
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