For someone who "overlooks the urban worker," Edwards sure seems to have spent a lot of time campaigning in urban areas of Michigan (just to name one). He supports unions of all sorts and is one of the few candidates who has talked much about the problems of outsourcing.

The media corporatocracy hates (fears) Edwards for much the same reason they turned on Howard Dean 4 years ago.    Their quasi-monopolistic stranglehold on our radio and TV airwaves is threatened by any populist, pro-union candidate whose other qualities make him/her a viable candidate if given a fair hearing.

They have made way too much of the Edwards $400 haircut -- not a scandalously outrageous price for having a top-quality barber/stylist make a 'house call' to your hotel suite and far from abnormally extravagant where DC politicos' expenditures are concerned -- the way they did the fabricated "Dean scream" in 2004.    They are also pulling out all the stops to try to turn Obama's surprising results in Iowa into a very premature and self-fulfilling prophecy.

Notice that nearly all the "polls" given much attention in the "mainstream media" are within-party polls (or at least "Whom do you support in the primary?)?    They aren't giving much attention to polls that pit likely Repub v. likely Dem candidates in November 2008. Who cares if most Democratic primary voters prefer Obama or Clinton to Edwards, if their preferred candidate has little chance of carrying any states except the ones the Dems officially won in 2000 and 2004?

It's being reported that polls that focus on November 2008 consistently show Edwards beating all likely Republican candidates and by a sizeably wider margin than either Obama or Clinton would, both on an electoral-college and a popular-vote basis.
Whether those results will hold up over the next few months or not, that is what we Democratic voters should be asking themselves in selecting our nominee.

If the Democratic candidate cannot pull more than about 51-52% of the votes in 2008, the election will be stolen (or at least questionable) again because of "caging," black-box voting, and Rovian dirty tricks (such as robo-calls giving disinformation about polling dates and places).    The Democrats will (officially) lose the White House again this fall if they go again with a 51-49% strategy.

I think an Edwards-Obama ticket would be very hard to beat, and Obama would then be perfectly poised to be the hands-down favorite for President in 2106.    His being the "rock star" right now would make it hard for him to accept the #2 spot, but it still might be the best strategy for the party.    And if the media would level the playing field (by playing journalists rather than cheerleaders or prophets), Edwards might well rise a lot in the public's estimation.

Democrats seem to embrace Edwards's stand on most issues more than they do Obama's. But then, if you watch TV or listen to most "news" radio, you wouldn't know that.