Last week, DailyKos had a diary that intentionally attempted to impugn John Edwards character.

Unfortunately, the diarist used the perception of change in John Edwards to make a conclusion that I view as grossly incorrect.  The theory was prefaced as such:

He says he regrets the war vote, yet there is solid evidence of his cheerleading leading into the war.

It is not contradictory, let alone dishonest, to have supported a vote in the past and to regret that vote.  In this case, it is called progression.  The conclusion of the diarist is if John Edwards is different, he must be a panderer, an opportunist, and a fraud.

That is obviously incorrect as people change on a daily basis and it isn't for some sinister purpose.  Also, the obvious contrast with Bush's absolute stubbornness is actually quite complimentary to John Edwards.

The progressive policies and plans that John Edwards is putting forth, speak for themselves.  This has lead to the acceptance by many that John Edwards is the most likely to succeed in implementing progressive ideas.  Therefore, the question that is being asked is not so much how he is different, but why is John Edwards different?

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Edwards was at a United Steelworkers of America forum yesterday talking about"The Blue Green Alliance", and brings two key leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers union's WakeUpWalMart.com onto his campaign. The Edwards addition of Paul Blank and Chris Kofinis, which seems pretty inside baseball, got pretty wide coverage outside political junkie blogs like MyDD. Partly, it's been spin as Joe Trippi taking a larger part in the campaign, but what it really seems to be is as clear a sign as possible that Edwards is making further in-roads into the labor camp:

Ron Galloway, who was once working against Blank and Kofinis, over the issue of Wal-Mart, says this is going to help the Edwards campaign, as does the WSJ, grudgingly. I doubt very much this is a sign of demotion for Bonior; instead it's a sign of the next stage of the campaign- organizational endorsements.

Bonior moves into the role as public spokesman for the campaign, and travels extensively with Edwards-- that's actually a signal of gaining more power.

The proclamations that Edwards campaign is fading come a bit premature. Though Edwards is not raising $28-32M like Clinton and Obama, he is running a campaign that's targeted activists in the progressive movement, both in labor and in language that speaks to the partisan democratic netroots. Clinton's running the establishment campaign based on inevitability and co-opting anything that gets traction by the others; Obama is running a non-partisan and candidate-centric movement campaign that has engaged many youth and attracted new donors. It becomes clearer with each week that there is a large gap that is both partisan and new progressive, which Obama and Clinton fail to attract. It's also a division of those whom are basically catering to the corporate donor class for their large numbers raised, and a failure to not speak to Democrats who want to re-establish equality in the tax structure.

Gore is whom many hope would fill the void of having a candidate whom is both partisan and progressive, but if we are in October and Gore's still not in the race, Edwards is going to be in position to rise with momentum going into the primary and caucus period.

There's more...