http://www.tnr.com/blog/the_plank?pid=146891 In the "spin room" after tonight's debate, Elizabeth Edwards suggested her husband offers Democrats a rare opportunity: the chance to nominate someone who is both the most progressive and the most electable candidate running. (At least among the plausible candidates.) It's an intriguing notion, one that would play well among the notoriously liberal and notoriously strategic-minded Democrats of Iowa. The only question is whether it's actually possible. That is, in moving aggressively to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, does John Edwards invariably undercut the general-election appeal that almost won him the caucuses in 2004?
I think Edwards took a significant step toward answering that question tonight. He came out of the gate taking issue with what he described as Clinton's willingness to leave combat troops in Iraq for the indefinite future. And, in perhaps his best moment of the debate, he warned that Clinton's vote on a Joe Lieberman-sponsored Senate resolution targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guard represented a serious lapse in judgment.
But, despite his forcefulness, Edwards came off as controlled and reasonable. The Clinton campaign has taken to dismissing Edwards's increasingly strident attacks as acts of desperation. "Usually people have an aggressive attack strategy because they're falling rather than gaining" in the polls, was how Clinton strategist Mark Penn explained it during the post-game session. But there wasn't much trace of desperation in Edwards strikes tonight. On the Iran vote, for example, he didn't trash Hillary as a Lieberman-style war-monger. He acknowledged that the resolution was substantively limited, but suggested that even a limited measure was risky given the administration it would empower. "I voted for this war in Iraq," Edwards said. "Senator Clinton also voted for this war. We learned a very different lesson from that. ...
hat I learned in my vote on Iraq was you cannot give this president the authority and you can't even give him the first step in that authority because he cannot be trusted."
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