Edwards' decision to accept matching funds makes sense for his campaign. If he doesn't get the infusion of public money that the funds will give him in January, hell have a lot more trouble competing financially through the primaries (though the fact that he's going this route at all means he'll have a lot more trouble competing through the primaries).
But it's genuinely opportunistic -- and yeah, it's a campaign, whatever -- for him to make this into some sort of principled stand that Clinton and Obama must follow. The downside of the matching funds strategy is that you're basically broke until you're convention, as you hit the $50 million primary spending cap during the primaries. That gives the Republican months and months during which they can bury you at their leisure. It's a good thing to decry the system and make public financing a plank in your platform -- but his decision to take public funds is actually a significant blow to his general election chances, and it would be a really bad thing if his demand that the other Democrats followed his lead somehow gained traction. We need real public financing. But to get it, we need to win.
