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S.C. and N.C. Town Halls today, More News




Sorry I missed the information about the town hall meeting in Reno that happened yesterday, I didn't realize there were going to be two of them on Friday. I wasn't home anyway, off helping family move and again today, but hopefully not all day. The next town hall is in West Columbia, South Carolina, doors open at 1pm EST. Later in the day there will be another in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at 4pm.

There is a blog entry here talking about the Senators use of YouTube for his early campaign activities and a couple of other places that are following the campaign around and vlogging on the town hall meetings. The AP is reporting that Edwards has resigned as the director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity to focus on his run for President. I'm sure they'll miss having what the Senator brought to the table, but they know he can do a heck of a lot more for the cause as President of the United States. Meanwhile, Newsday talks up the differences between Edwards and Hillary Clinton.

In the short run, however, the silver-tongued former senator from North Carolina poses serious tactical challenges for Clinton, especially with the addition of two Edwards-friendly states to the early 2008 primary calendar, analysts say.

Getting Nevada was huge for Edwards chances, and South Carolina definitely helps with a taste of the under appreciated South. It is long past time for Iowa and New Hampshire to stop deciding who our candidate is going to be and return to the fold as an equal voice in the primaries instead of dictating the outcome for the rest of the country.

All that centrist goodwill won't ensure her success in early Democratic primaries - especially Iowa - which tilt left. She finished fourth in a recent Iowa primary poll with 10 percent; Edwards and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama took first with 22 percent each.

I think that Obama figures to be a lot like Howard Dean in that he's popular now because he's unknown to everyone, sadly that is his greatest appeal. When it comes to voting in the primary, people are going to go with who they think can best do the job. Perhaps some day that will be for Obama, but I'm not ready to hand over the keys to the country to a guy that hasn't even served one full term yet.

Clinton's advisers refuse to comment about future match-ups on the record, but privately say polls simply reflect Edwards and Obama have been politicking in Iowa and Clinton hasn't. "Once she's on the ground, those numbers will change in a hurry," a Clinton staffer said on condition of anonymity.

I'm worried about that too. Maybe we'll get lucky and Hillary will stay put for the time being. I like her and all, but people who play coy just piss me off. If she wants me vote, she needs to come out and ask me for it, and convince me that she deserves it. Edwards already did that once so he gets a free pass, she doesn't.

"His message is 'I'm me - take it or leave it,'" said one Democratic operative. "Hillary doesn't have a message yet, except 'I'm the front-runner.' That will have to change if she's going to have a chance."

Pretty good stuff, check it out.

Here is another vlog from a site that supports Edwards in Iowa, and what appears to be an online magazine post about what Edwards will be up against fundraising in New York. If Hillary enters the game, then it shouldn't really matter because she is going to get those bucks anyway, and New York isn't a deciding state in the primaries quite like Iowa and New Hampshire are. Now I'm from New York, and yet I still can't stress how important I think it is that the DNC convention not take place there. There is absolutely nothing to gain in that state that Democrats don't already have or need that amounts to anything but taking small percentages.

Going there will just give ammunition to conservatives who love to cry themselves to sleep about the ultra-liberal Northeast corridor, and we really don't need to be helping them with that. Denver is a plenty good choice amongst the ones out there and we'd be stupid to throw that party at home.

From redstate.com:
Steph was on the offense from the get-go: "Back in 2004, you criticized President Bush for exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 by having his convention in New York City. Aren't you exploiting Katrina by announcing your candidacy in New Orleans?"

Edwards didn't respond directly to the exploitation allegation, asserting only that he was seeking to draw attention to New Orleans's plight. And not to himself? At the risk of reading too much into every jot and tittle, I'd say that Steph's formulation "aren't you exploiting?" is considerably more accusatory than would have been "are you exploiting?"

That's a fair and tough question that the media completely ignored when we wanted them to ask Republicans about it, but one that has an easy answer for us. Bush did exploit 9/11 by having the convention there (the site of a large and disturbing illegal detention of protestors for the RNC deal) because that's the only thing he was actually doing in New York. Edwards has been in and out of New Orleans ever since Katrina ravaged the city, helping out any way he could. That kind of work is a central theme to his campaign and it's natural for him to be there. We should all be there.

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Iowa Town Hall Videos Up




Videos from yesterdays Town Hall meeting with John Edwards are up on YouTube and available on the official site. It's split into three parts and I won't have time to watch it until later tonight, so get there first and comment on happened! Here is part 1, go here for the rest.



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Edwards in New Hampshire, on Hardball, and News




Good morning, afternoon, evening, or whatever suits you when you happen to be reading this update. According to the campaign site blog, Senator Edwards is going to appear on MSNBC's Hardball "tomorrow" at 5pm EST, with a repeat at 7. Unfortunately, that was posted at 1am EST on the 29th, which would mean this episode of Hardball would be airing on Saturday, which it doesn't do. I'm going to tack into the wind and suggest that you hook up with Hardball tonight at 5pm EST, that's Friday the 29th.

The Senator will also be appearing on The Situation Room on CNN sometime during its 4-6pm EST airing, though it doesn't really say when specifically. You can hit up the post here.

I'm looking around the site to see if there will be archives of the town hall meetings the Senator is doing over the next few days, but I'm not finding any. If you want to check them out, you'll either have show up, or tune in live when the site has their stuff setup. The next event is tonight in Portsmouth, NH, with the doors opening at noon. I believe you need to get tickets ahead of time through the page I just linked you to. The town hall meeting in Iowa started at 6pm with the doors opening at 4, so you can probably expect the NH event to get under way sometime around 2pm, but check Edwards main site for updates on this because I'm just guessing here.

For news, there is a new article in The News & Observer that went up early this morning. It centers around the Senators interests in eliminating poverty within the United States.

Edwards, who is the son of a mill worker and who became a millionaire trial lawyer, has linked himself to the issue of poverty. He has made three previous trips to New Orleans to help residents with rebuilding projects. During his 2004 campaign, Edwards emphasized his Two Americas theme, highlighting the inequalities in the nation.

In 2005, Edwards created the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has compared his stance to that of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, who ran for president in 1968. But addressing poverty, rather than the problems of the struggling middle class, can be tricky politically.

"It's clearly not the main mover of most voters," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York. "People are interested in the war in Iraq. The question is whether he can talk about the quality of life for Americans as part of the specialized focus on people who are poor."

Yeah, it's not a huge vote getter issue, but it's still pretty damn important when the richest and most powerful nation in the world has starving children living in the streets. You can turn to the ideologically popular issues that drive the base, and other universally popular issues such as education, but that only goes so far. Everyone wants to improve education and help old people cross the street, but it's the tough issues like poverty that can't be solved with tax cuts or taking away peoples rights to make choices. These are significant societal issues that will take new ways of thinking and new institutions to improve, and it's long past time we got to work on this.

There's another piece pointing out that Edwards voted for the Iraq war, but now regrets it. "It was a mistake and I take responsibility for that," Edwards said. It's nice when people can admit their mistakes, but I'm still not happy that it happened in the first place. Hopefully he's done something the recently disenfranchised GOP hasn't been capable of: learning from those mistakes.

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Edwards Launches 08 Bid




Am I fashionably late? Probably not, but I'm here dug in and ready to fight through the crud to bring you the information you need. Or maybe it's just the information you want. Or maybe I'm talking to myself because this site didn't exist 24 hours ago and nobody knows it exists. Either way, I might as well start off with some hot links to those so-called professional outlets that covered the event, yet managed to tell us pretty much nothing we didn't already know to begin with. Thanks MSM!

The unusual nature of announcing a Presidential bid in place such as New Orleans was not lost on Times writers Adam Nossiter and David Stout.

The 'formal' announcement of his candidacy today was, by design, anything but formal. Mr. Edwards wore work boots, blue jeans and a thick blue shirt against the chill. His announcement contrasted sharply with more traditional launchings of White House bids, which have often been made in the United States Capitol. Asked on Wednesday whether he thought enough was being done to help New Orleans recover from the crippling hurricane and floods of 2005, he replied, "Anybody who's not concerned about the rate of recovery is not paying attention." (Times)

New Orleans is still a complete mess. They can't take any more hits from hurricanes without flooding all over again. "Parts of the city most severely damaged still have irregular city services; in some areas, next to nothing has been done in the way of rebuilding. As residents return to the devastated areas, attempts are being made to restore city services; however, there are still well over 200,000 New Orleanians who are unable to return." (Wiki)

I'm not up-to-date on what Edwards has been doing in New Orleans, but I'll get on top that and see what information I can find. I know he's been there for more than just this announcement, and he's proven that New Orleans is still a very serious concern to him, and the cities residents would surely appreciate someone in government that understands that they still need help. Here's an NPR interview from back in March about the work Edwards was doing in New Orleans at the time.

Here is a link to AMERICAblog's post which is really just a quotation from the Times page above, but they get a ton of comments so there might be something worth reading over there. DailyKos is playing it cool since it's been pretty obvious for a while now that Edwards was going to take another shot at this. I'm not sure I like the idea of them using Edwards announcement to take a quick shot at the Iraq war, but it's worth looking at because it also happens to be true.

I found a neat link over at Kos with a blog post by John Edwards himself.

Hello. I'm in New Orleans, and getting ready to head to Iowa for our live town hall this evening.

I wanted to stop by to talk about my announcement this morning and to hear your thoughts and reactions.

Also I wanted to invite you to attend the Iowa townhall online tonight -- go to JohnEdwards.com for more info on that.

I've got til about 11:45. John

Not much there but the town hall should be pretty cool, the information he referenced is right here, and the doors opened four hours ago. There are a series of these events scheduled over the next few days in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and North Carolina. Hit the campaign website and look on the right side under "upcoming events". There are some pictures before things got rolling on BlueNC that you might want to check out. More info as I find it.

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Notes on Site Features




I just claimed this blog on Technorati, so you can add it as a favorite if you wish, or you can subscribe to the sites RSS feed to keep up to date with things.

You can even subscribe to this site via e-mail and get updates in your inbox, just look to the right side of the page for the input box that helpfully says "type your email here". I'll probably miss making a post about Edwards' announcement this afternoon, but I'll round up the news and opinions and let you digest it at your own speed this evening.
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Edwards in New Orleans, Poised to Make Announcment




It can hardly be considered a secret that former Senator John Edwards is going to announce today that he is going to take another shot at running for President, starting now. The truth is though that Edwards isn't starting now, he actually got moving right after he and running mate John Kerry lost out to the lowest polling President in the modern era, George W. Bush.

Edwards has been setting things up with multiple visits to Iowa and New Hampshire over the years, along with trips outside the United States in aid and humanitarian projects. The title photo on this blog has a story to go with it I'm sure, but it's not one I have any knowledge of. It was a photo I found on flickr that was licensed under the Creative Commons "attribution" license, which allows for free use -- even commercial -- so long as proper attribution is given. Consider it so, the link above will take you to the page where I got the picture from.

Perhaps I will fire off an e-mail to the photographer this week and see if he'll share the pictures story. It'd be nice to know, don't you think?

I voted for Kerry and Edwards in the previous election, though they were not my first choice. Because of the silly way we have our primary system setup, the only two people still on the ballot when North Carolina's turn came were Kerry and Edwards. Since they came together in common cause when it was clear that Edwards wasn't going to win, I never even bothered to vote in the primary.

I wasn't happy back then, because of what had happened to my guy, Howard Dean. In the end though I'm proud of what the Governor did. Rather than stewing about his poor showing, he created a new organization to support the party and move us all forward in Congress, eventually coming to chair the DNC and help lead the Democratic party to a new majority in Congress.

Though he wasn't my first choice, and for all I know may not be again this time around, for the time being John Edwards will have my support. Even if I decide to support somebody else when the elections near, that will be with my vote, and not this blog.

I'd like to provide information on the former Senator that will help people decide if he is the right person to lead this country after Bush has left under a cloud of shame and defeat. I'll report the news, find information the average joe might not have time to find, and maybe I'll even harass his campaign to see if I can score some free buttons that I can use to fling at Republicans.

This place is new, and empty, but it won't be that way for long. If Edward's announcement is coming later today like I've heard that it is, then like Edwards, maybe I too can find the best place to serve -- right here.

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