edited.

it would be worth overcoming the host of practical objections just to know they'd have to be praying for the health of Edwards as fervently as I pray for the health of Bush :D

Compromising with Republicans is exactly like negotiating with bank robbers. But wait, they're ROBBING THE BANK. Isn't that supposed to be illegal??
.
"Adapt or perish." Murphy's Law? Nope, Darwin's Guarantee.

"I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire".

will step in and do the fighting. So will the DCC, DSCC, etc... It's not ideal, but it's not the armageddon Kosacks make it out to be.

right? And the rules probably aren't real clear, and the Republicans will use any ambiguity to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt. They'll hurl accusations and lawsuits. Funds will be frozen. Ads won't run. You'll write about chilling effects on free speech. All the while the Republicans will be beating Edwards with rhetorical baseball bats and asking "if he's innocent of these terrible charges, why doesn't he respond? Why is he so silent?"

I know the Democrats have some anti-Bush swing to burn, and hopefully the theocons will go independent and split the Republican vote, but it seems like this gives the Republicans an opening they don't deserve.

one step better than the folks who aren't even saying the right things.

He's an excellent lawyer who is able to convince jurors. He would not be, if he were not an excellent speaker as well.

I'd like to hear what you have to say about your experiences Nominay.

For what little it's worth, I think Edwards has a good shot of winning Iowa. Polls are very close, but he seems to be the second choice of a lot of caucus goers, and as you know, that matters.

We'll see.

My cynicism is more towards my peers in the blogosphere. The absolute refusal to choose sides of most of them has dismayed me. Even though I disagree strongly with, say Taylor Marsh (who is strongly pro-Clinton) I respect that she chose sides.

Edwards was largely let down both by the unions as well. And I think that unions will pay if Clinton wins--she'll be better than Bush, but I wouldn't expect really strong pro-union policies out of her. And union movement needs a political boost--they're on the ropes. I'm especially disappointed in the SEIU, of whom I expected better.

how a Edwards/Bloomberg ticket would do.

Bloomberg is just a frustrated billionaire mayor who doesn't see any candidates he likes on either side and thinks party labels are irrelevant, so long as he can get on a ballot. He and Lieberman get along, though Bloomberg is to the left of Lieberman:-)

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

Guardian Unlimited - New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has re-emerged as a possible independent candidate for US president, creating a new wrinkle for both parties just four days before the first votes are cast.

Bloomberg plans to discuss the polarised presidential race in Oklahoma this coming Sunday with about 15 fellow politicians, including prominent liberals, conservatives and moderates.The meeting aims to focus on encouraging bipartisanship, but reports that the billionaire mayor is still eyeing a White House run have overshadowed that broad purpose.

The meeting's two organisers, former Democratic senators David Boren and Sam Nunn, both have signalled their openness to backing Bloomberg, a one-time Democrat who ran for mayor as a Republican but left the party in June. Boren told the New York Times today that he would support a Bloomberg candidacy unless the leading Democratic and Republican hopefuls begin credibly advocating bipartisanship within two months. Nunn also spoke of Bloomberg's potential to mount a serious third-party run on short notice. "The only one who can mount that campaign without a whole lot of consensus building is Bloomberg, because he's got the money," Nunn told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday.

Republican senator Chuck Hagel, who also plans to attend the Oklahoma meeting, has hinted for months that he would consider running alongside Bloomberg on an independent presidential ticket."To say the obvious, the presidential debates thus far have produced little national discussion of ... fundamental issues and plans to address them," Boren and Nunn said in a letter announcing the meeting, first reported by the Washington Post. "If this pattern continues through this important national election, it will produce neither a national consensus for governing nor a president who can successfully tackle these threats to our nation's future."

The meeting will take place between the pivotal primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, giving the bipartisan group a chance to upend the still-unsettled races in both parties. That possibility sparked immediate rebuttals in Washington, particularly from liberals who noted Bloomberg's vocal support for the Iraq war as evidence that he could not bring Democrats into an independent coalition.

One of Bloomberg's closest allies on Capitol Hill is independent senator Joseph Lieberman, a thorn in the side of many Democrats after his departure from the party in 2006. Yet Lieberman has already endorsed Republican senator John McCain for president, denying the mayor a powerful backer for the time being.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

Obama has less personal wealth than Edwards - Michelle forgot that stfu is the basic rule. Bill Clinton's coffers certainly helped in the second election Would that it were true that it were an election
with no auction feel.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

An Independent Bloomberg + Republicans = an office for the Israeli government in The White House.

As he gears up to attend a conference at the University of Oklahoma next week that has been widely seen as a potential launching pad for a third-party presidential campaign, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took several minutes out of a news conference about a sharp decline in teenage smoking rates to sound as if he is already running.

He offered one of his auto-pilot denials of interest (“I am not a candidate”), then tossed off one of his broadest critiques yet of the declared field just as the voting is finally about to get under way in Iowa, saying that none of the candidates had sufficiently explained how he or she would solve pressing domestic and international issues.

Mr. Bloomberg obliquely attacked potential rivals like Hillary Rodham Clinton (“Some people are in favor of free trade and then walk away from it”), Mitt Romney (“One guy had a plan that we don’t know if it will work, but then he walks away from his own plan,” referring to health care) and Rudolph W. Giuliani (“‘I’m going to be tougher than the next guy’ is not an answer to what you would do”). Then he cautioned against reading his comments as that sort of critique.

“Don’t say, ‘O.K., Bloomberg’s criticizing A, B or C on either side,’” he said. “It’s all of them.”

That, he said, was the “frustration you see among a lot of independently minded people from both sides and the middle of the aisle, and that’s why I’m thrilled to be asked to participate in the conference in Oklahoma.”

In an odd sort of replay of a Los Angeles conference he headlined over the summer with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he dropped his Republican Party affiliation — the last time interest in his presidential prospects was this high — Mr. Bloomberg is planning to join several political luminaries at a conference to help pressure the major candidates to reduce partisan gridlock.

The session, organized by former Senator David L. Boren, now the president of the University of Oklahoma, along with former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, is to include Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska senator and an often-mentioned potential Bloomberg running mate. Other political luminaries expected are Gary Hart, the former Colorado senator and onetime presidential candidate; Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor and administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency; and Bob Graham, the former Florida senator and governor who also has run for president.
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