has an axe to grind and supposedly likes Biden D-MBNA - one of the only dems to vote for the bankruptcy bill running in 2008.

Yes. no one likes the Edwards response on the blogrrls.

and if you read his blog you'll see that.
http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/2 /7/85346/64070

However, they could have been caught offguard by a non-story story by someone who will never endorse the dem nominee anyway.

Clearly not the response we want but daggering misinformation on Iran (as though he's way different than Obama or Clark) or that wayward episicopalian is the authoritarian source on all thinks NOLA is a bit much.

what have Obama and HIllary done in NOLA?

You know, that entire last paragraph is the exact kind of unsubstantiated allegations that gets bloggers into trouble in the first place.

Bloggers should keep weighing the fate of John Edwards.

I like Edwards okay, but as far as I can tell his popularity is mostly due to his being charming.  Charming is just not enough, as Edwards's pathetic loss to Dick Cheney in the VP debate attests.  As a Senator, he did only one truly memorable thing, which is that he voted for the war.  What gives?

I think first and foremost we Dems should choose someone who will make a good president.  Why should I believe that Edwards would do that?  Likeable is not everything.

In 2004 Edwards struck me as a one speech pony with a nice smile. Perhaps Democrats were doomed in any case with a relatively weak candidate like John Kerry heading the ticket, but Edwards seemed to add little or nothing to the campaign.

Edwards lost me when he failed to respond immediately and forcefully in the Vice Presidential debate after Cheney made the outrageous, false claim that even though he (Cheney) frequently presided over the Senate, he had never met Edwards until that evening's debate. Edwards sat mute and stunned, as though Cheney had just delivered a knockout blow. All of us viewers naturally wondered: "Could that charge actually be true?"

After the debate, networks quickly dug out video to demonstrate that Cheney's claim was a flat-out lie.

Why didn't Edwards have the presence of mind to call out Cheney on the spot? We need someone who can think faster on his feet than can Edwards. And someone who can demonstrate sounder judgment and vision.

Edwards lost 9 points, which was just over a fourth of his blog-specific netroots support.  That's a pretty big chunk, and it looks like those people went to 'other' and 'don't know', not to any specific candidate.

But keep in mind that for the last two months Kos forgot to include "No frickin' clue". It may just be that Edwards support was particularly soft. People who aren't decided, if they were pushed, were choosing Edwards. Now they may just not be being pushed any more. I'm sure that doesn't explain the entirity of the drop (and I'm sure that Edwards Iran comments have had an effect), but it is something else that needs to be considered.

It also just once again emphasizes the importance of the questions in polling.

After reading the previous post/comments and this one I have decided that HRC has set the bar so high that it is nearly impossible for other dems to match.  She has been seriously planning this endeavor for more than a decade and she has access to the best and the brightest and the richest.

That doesn't mean she is a winner. Her negatives are high and 12 months of dem campaigning will likely hurt the front runner.

Campaigning is an art that HRC has mastered.  It is going to be tough for Edwards and Obama to compete in the campaign arena.

But Iraq is here to stay and the war is HRC's weakest link. There is no perfect campaign.  Candidates win and lose for lots of reasons that are out of their control.  

which is the trouble at this late date, four years into his running for president.  He's being very much the old school politician, saying what he thinks people want to hear vs. what he believes.

Edwards has a conservative record, that's OK but run on who and what you are. His "pull back" on his Iran war statement is almost as disturbing as the original statement.  People think his basic instinct is to bomb Iran and he's covering it up.

He's not comfortable in his own political skin.

Edwards basically is running away from everything he did...his conservative voting record, he voted for Iraq before he would have voted against it, he'd bomb Iran before he decided maybe he wouldn't, his Iraq vote was the Clintons fault, Hillary is "too sensitive" aka a woman, Obama smokes cigarettes, the New Orleans problem.

I don't think you can blame the staff, it's Edwards who is making the speeches. It's not organizational (staff), it's personal (Edwards).

It's interesting that the Edwards loss is going into the third tier and "undecided" pool. That's good for Obama.

I think the decisions are going to be made in the debates.

January dKos strawpoll did not include "other" or "no freaking clue"

Not the same poll.

Did you even study political science or are you just making this up as you go along?

never quite understood the rationale.  What services are they selling exactly?

They are going to pretend to be for a candidate because they've been paid?  Who would want to read what they have to say vs. just reading what the candidate says?

In a way it shows a kind of tone deafness to what the online political discussion world is all about.

You either have supporters online or you don't.

If you want to get your message out online, hire in house staff as part of your communications operation and have them respond and reply to online discussions. And those responses are factual such as providing candidate's actual position or policy stuff in an online debate in a situation where a supporter or opponent is misstating the candidates position. Staff acts as fact checkers in online debates vs. participants.

This actually came up way back on the 1992 Clinton campaign which was the first to go online.  It let the independent supporters do the heavy lift in the online debates.  But there was no way they were going to hire any of them since they would be speaking for the candidate and that is a dicey proposition....as Edwards just found out.

Edwards is a phony, why wouldn't phony bloggers be par for the course?

Wait, did I say "phony?"

I meant to say: Edwards is breathtakingly phony.

"Mr. Edwards's spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said Tuesday night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers."

"That's a bad answer.  If a campaign's first instinct is to grant credibility to manufactured complaints, then that campaign simply cannot make it through the right-wing gauntlet."

So says a person who has never been through said gauntlet about someone who has now been through it at least twice.  Has Amanda been fired?  No.

I've spoken to two other knowledgeable individuals about Edwards recently, and what they tell me is similarly discouraging.  Journalists who covered Edwards the first time don't buy this transformation, and there's plenty of oppo out there.

Who wrote this article?  Judith Miller?  

"Two knowledgeable individuals"?  Who are they?  Did they request anonymity?  Why?  Is granting them anonymity consistent with journalistic standards for such practices?  Where is your support for that contention?  If there is non, how do you know you aren't being used by people with an agenda?  More importantly, how do your READERS know you aren';t being used by people with an agenda?

"Journalists" don't buy his "transformation"?  Again, who?  Upon what are you basing this statement?  What transformation?

Damn, Matt, you're becoming a pretty good pundit.

Saying Edward went down nine points is completely unfair without noting the addition of "other" and "no freakin' clue" to this month's poll.  Losing points to a poll's methodology change is hardly a "collapse".  Kos himself said:

"So the trendlines are a bit screwy because of that. And they'll be screwy again next month when I (hopefully) remember to add those answers back in."

(Sorry I don't know how to hyperlink, but it's in the original post's 35 points link.)

Noting this in your original post would give your post much more credibility, I think.

"I've spoken to two other knowledgeable individuals about Edwards recently, and what they tell me is similarly discouraging.  Journalists who covered Edwards the first time don't buy this transformation, and there's plenty of oppo out there.  New Orleans bloggers are now complaining that Edwards just used their city as a photo op.  It's sad.  I'm getting the sense that Edwards is going to have real trouble moving forward unless he seriously tightens up his operation and stops blowing in the wind.  "

Are you aware how much that sounds like the opening paragraph of an Adam Nagourney article?

Strikes again.  Honestly, there should be a drinking game.  

Call me cynical but there is no way Edwards is going to risk the wrath of the blogosphere by firing them.  Further, no candidate is perfect.  There are going to be moments when they embarass you, especially if you've already publically supported them. Deal with it.  If at the end of the day you agree with most of what they stand for, then just roll with the good and the bad.  Take a look at the Hillary supporters on this blog, they have nerves of steel.

than not accepting advice from one's enemies?

I don't particularly like Edwards myself, but if I did like him or another candidate, and that candidate starting taking personnel advice from a concern troll antisemite who will support the Republican opponent loudly, I would conclude the candidate not to be a "wartime consigliere."

You remember Tom Hagen from the Godfather?  The OK consigliere except when challenged in conflict?  The one who let Sonny get massacred on the causeway?  If Edwards fired Marcotte for her abject failure to be loved by a revanchist antisemite, it is evidence that he is a second-rate strategist.

When he practiced law, how often did Edwards take trial tactics advice from the junior associates working for the insurance carriers?

I don't care for John Edwards anymore, and this is why; he's trying too hard to be authentic but he really isn't because he doesn't know who he wants to be. He wants it all ways, and its not working, as it rarely does.

His speech at that Neocon conference was very harsh on Iran.  He didn't call for war per se, but if his words would have been put in the mouth of Perle, no one would have been surprised.
Here's the actual speech.  Does sound overly hawkish to me:
http://www.herzliyaconference.org/Eng/_A rticles/Article.asp?ArticleID=1728&C ategoryID=223

Edwards' turnabout by calling up the Prospect for an interview had more to do with getting word that the netroot didn't like his message. In other words, he got caught. Nothing on his website about any of the conference stuff. They only put up what we want to see.

Ditto with the big house vs. poverty theme.  Same with organic authentic grassroots vs. paid astroturfers. Same with Iraq war co-sponsorship vs. recent mea culpa. Same with I voted for IWR because Clintons told me so although I was on the intelligence committee vs. Now Congress needs to stand up and not betray us.

Edwards needs to figure who he is if he wants us to know him.  

I was partially in his camp until I started reading up on him and thinking about it.  I'm just glad he's not the only candidate running.  

There's Obama, Clark (if he's running) and Richardson.  At least I don't feel used and manipulated with these three.

Anti-Semite my ass. There's nothing Matt has written that couldn't be the position of an Israeli patriot or a Jewish American liberal who believes Middle East warmongering ill-serves Israel and America.

"I'm just pointing out that your characterization of the issue is consistently wrong."

The issue is Edwards hired some employees who had made some outrageous statements (I found them funny but most probably would not) and has been called on account of the views of his employees.

Neither he nor a good portion of the blogosphere quite understands the issue which is fairly simple.

The bloggers want it both ways. They want to be considered "media" when the press plane takes off but don't want to play by the reporters rules that you don't take money from the candidates and remain a reporter.

Edwards wants it both ways, he wants to be a "wild and crazy blogging boy" but doesn't want to pay the price of the freewheeling, informality of the online political discussion groups.

A better approach would be that suggested by Matt Browner Hamlin who noted the sleazy backgrounds of McCain bloggers.

If Edwards was smart (and he hasn't been showing signs of that lately) he'd say he would fire his bloggettes if McCain fires his outrageous right wing bloggers.

It would toss the debate back into the lap of the leading Republican candidate and worst case is Edwards and McCain would have to get rid of their hired trolls.