Iowa Health Forum - Edwards was star

Watched the Iowa Health Forum. Kerry, Gephardt, Dean, and, the star of that forum, Edwards, who connected with the audience with a short speech (Kerry talked so long he only could take two questions) and then engaging substantive answers to questions. The answers were all real solutions (like his policy book says) to problems in health care, and all doable. This guy will give Bush heartburn.

She was smart, she was making so much sense that on an intelligence basis, she would sweep George Bush. Dean did good imho and so did Kucinich. I 100% agreed with Gephardt when he said that it is important to cover the people who don't have health insurance, but we have to improve it and make it more affordable to those that already have health insurance.

or rather I like the idea of Edwards- bright, charming, goodlooking, substantive- but he just doesn't grab me. He should have charisma and maybe he does, but so far I have yet to see him demonstrate that he is a compelling candidate. Yesterday was no different. He's got to catch on soon or drop out. I think he has until the end of October.

I watched them all. I was first very impressed by Kerry. Gephardt looked too spooky. Kunicich was very good. CMB was astonishingly cogent and engaging. Dean was straightforward, knowledgable and impressive.

But John Edwards stole the showl. He was knowledgable, down to earth, witty. warm - beyond engaging - magnetic.

Edwards is a sleeper. He's laying in the weeds right now. Who cares what the poles say now...Next March is when we will know and I bet Edwards will crank it up then.

He will finish no lower than 2nd in the running in my view.

And I think he will. His numbers in Iowa and NH should go up, after his traversing both states during August with his fabulous family.

I think (hope) in September, he soars.

and it's going nowhere, johnny is toast.

Edwards has been campaigning hard in NH, IA, and SC since August 1st. I haven't seen any updated poles for NY and IA, because I don't have the thousands of dollars to spend on up to the minute, low margin of error polling that the campaigns see. However, there has been one published poll covering August. There was a poll out for SC which, I believe, compared the first week in August to the first week of July. Edwards leap frogged four or five candidates to go to second place. His numbers almost doubled to 10 from 6 (and he was at 4 the month before, I believe). In first place was Lieberman, and I doubt that will remain the case.

So, the facts are that Edwards IS making up ground now that he has switched to campaign mode. And, beyond facts, I have a couple feelings which, I believe, are well grounded. First, have you seen his commercials? They're great. They're infinitely better than Dean's stiff-necked, stiff stacatto-voiced commercials. Edwards's --which are just now running in SC (he'll be the first to run commerceials there)--are certainly going to have a huge impact. Second, Dean and Kerry are going to destroy each other in NH. When the primaries get down to SC a week later, Edwards is so clearly going to be the big winner. I don't see how anyone is going to stop his rolling stone after that.

Edwards's performance did nothing for me. Even though Kerry was a bit long-winded, I found myself connecting more with what he was saying (at least, more so than usual). At this point, Edwards should start thinking about saving his Senate seat, because his presidential campaign is not going to magically take off like some people would hope.

I liked Kucinich's delivery of his proposal (though it would NEVER pass), thought Braun was better-than-average, and on the substantive issue itself (i.e., what he was actually talking about) Dean was the winner.