Wampum

In 2004, John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign. Today, he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Howard Wolfson

We weren't at Morningside Heights yesterday. Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY was, as were a lot of Clinton paid staff and hopeful clients. We don't know if they didn't applaud when 1,200 others present did, or remained sitting when the response of those others moved from applause to a standing ovation ... for what Howard Wolfson, a very experienced communications director, has characterized as a political attack on Democrats fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Not one of Wolfson's better efforts as a CD.

You don't have the right to ask your member to vote, although lobbyists obviously do have that right, and just as obviously, you don't have the right to vote for a primary challenger to an incumbent member who does attend to lobbyists and who doesn't answer your mail, because those are political attacks on ... Democrats fighting the Whatever Mumble.

Then there the choice of phrasing, "John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign" vs "John Edwards ran a positive campaign in 2004". The poorer choice was made, framing his client as the owner of the fairly tin-foil-hat story that there was a 2004 primary that all of us missed.

I've no idea if he or anyone else had anything to do with the person who asked JRE about his 2002 vote for the war. Marian Wright Edelman's reaction in praise of candor seems pretty balanced and normal to that "It turns me on to hear a political leader stand up and say 'I made a mistake."

Finally, there's the symbolism of the venue and the status and egos of the people who stood up when someone other than his client delivered decent lines. Wolfson doesn't appear to notice that a historic church isn't any old hall, and that a politically active congregation isn't a paid focus group. As far as he's concerned, the hall and the hicks aren't places and people, they aren't in politics.

I don't know if Wolfson's on-staff for the HRC presidential campaign this week, but he's been senior staff to HRC, and the DCCC, in the recent past. He didn't say "Great speech, great church, great people, but ..." and then work some doubt, some defensible weakness, into his target's position. Like "no" means complications with 140,000 troops marooned in the field while we settle authority and standing orders.

That's seven words before the ellipses.

He is right that Johnny Sunshine, all hope and happiness, is history. Its Johnny Get To Work this cycle.