I've got a piece up at TAP right now, on John Edwards' new strategy, and the raw, emotive nature of his campaigning. An excerpt:Barack Obama won Oprah Winfrey's endorsement. But it's John Edwards whose campaign most resembles her famed Oprah Winfrey Show. Edwards has always been comfortable with emotion, with personal drama and narrative. He thanks people for their courage and bravery, comments on their goodness and resilience, bolsters them with encouraging affirmations and applause from the crowd. Where other campaigns routinely feature outside politicians and famed surrogates, Edwards is more likely to tour with the sort of guests you'd see on daytime talk: Ordinary people who have undergone extraordinary hardship. Where the other candidates closed their Iowa campaigns with sincere speeches laying out the arguments for their candidacies, Edwards ran a commercial where a burly Iowan spoke emotionally of the moment when Edwards leaned down, stared his seven-year-old son in the eyes, and promised to fight for his father's job.This irritates the Press Corps. It's schmaltzy and raw. As Mark Halperin put it in his summary of Edwards' most recent debate performance, "His habit of recounting moving stories about anonymous (and, sorry, random) people sometimes makes him sound like a mayoral candidate in a small Southern hamlet." It's a tribute to Halperin's deep obsession with politics that the nearest example at hand was a municipal politician, but the better comparison is a daytime talk show host. Edwards is comfortable with a level of emotive personalization that many simply cannot abide. It's the difference between those who watch The Daily Show and those who watch Dr. Phil. Edwards' campaign is increasingly aimed at the latter, and that's even truer in his town halls and campaign events than in his debate performances and ads.Read the rest...
