The Nation: Edwards Swipes at Hillary At Nevada Democratic Forum

[marmar]

BLOG | Posted 02/21/2007 @ 6:16pm
Edwards Swipes at Hillary At Nevada Democratic Forum
Marc Cooper


Carson City, Nevada

The line of the day at Wednesday's Democratic presidential candidate forum came from former Senator John Edwards. When asked if he was afraid that voters would suffer "election fatigue" given that this first debate was taking place more than 600 days before the actual November 2008 balloting, Edwards responded: "I'll tell you why there won't be any fatigue. There won't be any because right now hardly anyone is paying attention."

No doubt Edwards is right. While lots os Americans are feeling quite passionate, most would be hard pressed to offer you many details on how one of these Democratic candidates differs from the others.

And if they had sat through today's two hour parade of Democratic contenders, it's unlikely they would have any sharper of a notion.

What heat there was, if any, sparked between the two most prominent candidates who showed up: Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (Barack Obama was the only candidate who didn't attend). In the strange format imposed by the union sponsors of the forum, each candidate appeared separately, gave a short talk, and then took a few questions from ABC's George Stephanopolous.

"Let's begin with Iraq," were the first words out of his mouth as Hillary sat down with him. Her 3 minute opening talk completely omitted any mention of the conflict and focused instead on broad promises of universal health care and college education if elected. ""Why wasn't your vote a mistake?" he asked. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=168136