LH - I would much have preffered Edwards to Hillary as well, but the problems all got started in the Iowa caucuses. You can see that local--and I'll call them perverted--Republicans tried to propell Huckabee to greatness, but in the Republican camp reason finally prevailed.
                         With the Democrats, I think it worked like this: you had a covey of up-scale baby-boomer Democrats who thought they could have their concsiences cleansed by supporting a black candidate for president. That way they could all walk around and spend their "factually unearned" money and make the case that they had nothing to feel guilty about.
                         Idealistic college students eagerly jumped on this bandwagon too, so in almost every case, when the Democrats had a caucus, Obama won. It's hard to blame the kids, though, they haven't really been around the barn yet. In one sense, it's hard to blame the up-scale baby-boomers. They've led pretty sheltered lives as well.
                         Getting back to the Iowa Caucuses, though, if Obama hadn't been in the race, and hadn't been who he was, just like Geraldine Ferraro reported, the race would have been between Edwards and Hillary.
                         All of this, I think, explains why Clinton did so much better in Ohio. In Texas, we saw Hillary win the primary, and then continued to watch her delegate count reversed in the caucuses.
                         If we think back to what Edward's message was--the "two America" idea--we can see that if he'd come out better in Iowa, and had been better able to go on, by the time he got to Ohio, he'd have had the best message going.
                         Ironically, by the time of the general election in November, the US will probably be in a very dismal recession, and Edward's message would have been the message to win the day.