What is John Edwards Thinking?

Does John Edwards really have the chutzpah to ask Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to return contributions from News Corp. employees? When you get your book published by a division of News Corp. and accept its advance, albeit turning it over to charity; when you have invited News Corp employees to past fundraisers in past campaigns and appeared on Fox News Channel 33 times, then you kind of don't have a lot of standing in this area. (As always, I note that my spouse works for Hillary Clinton's campaign so take my criticisms as you will.) Leaving aside the hypocrisy, it's not clear why Fox News contributions are more onerous than say other contributions that come from employees who are engaged in businesses that offend Democratic sensibilities. Halliburton? Altria? Where' s the line? There is none which is why this is a pure pander designed for the most knee-jerk members of the blogosphere.

Edwards foray into the politics of the liberal blogosphere now seems totally complete. He hired Deaniac Joe Trippi to essentially lead his campaign. Elizabeth Edwards now responds to blog postings; she even took a shot online at my old colleague John Dickerson of Slate. That's her prerogative but it shows an obsession with the online world that, I think diminishes, the campaign.

The biggest pander to the more irritable style on the blogosphere left is Edwards release of a video which accuses unamed opponents of using irrelevant issues (i.e. his haircuts) to try and "silence" him because he's the champion of the working poor.

This is an example of what the late Richard Hofstadter famously called the "the paranoid style in American politics." He wrote at the time of McCarthy and Goldwater but his thesis applies to the left as well as the right; Hofstadter wrote that there's a strain in American politics that fantasizes about dark and mysterious forces shaping the landscape.

That's what we have hear. First there's the sheer absurdity of the statement. In the cacaphony of the Internet who would bother trying to silence someone when every has a megaphone? And by the way wasn't it Edwards and Clinton who were caught chatting onstage about offing the lesser candidates--presumably Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel--from the debate stage? I think they're right but what a hypocrite.

Ten years ago, John Edwards was a wealthy trial lawyer without political experience. In 1998 he did America a service by ousting a curmudgeonly North Carolina Senator named Lauch Faircloth, a Jesse Helms acolyte without the warmth and social conscience. Edwards set about to be a Democratic superstar of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council vein.

Since declining to run for reelection in 2004--he probably wouldn't have won reelection and he did nothing for the Kerry-Edwards presidential ticket in his homestate--he's moved left in ways that may have been calculated but were always interesting. He emerged as the strongest champion of poverty issues since Bobby Kennedy in 1968 or, perhaps, Jesse Jackson in 1984 and '88. He has interesting things to say about wages and inequality, not all of which I agree with but all of which are compelling.

Edwards also has a lot of absurd things to say. At the CNN/You Tube debate he released a charming video, set to the music from the musical "Hair" making the point, elegantly, that there are things more important in life than his haircuts. Whimsical and smart, I thought. Then he concluded the debate with a lame joke about Hillary's pink jacket. So much for the politics of profundity. At one debate he made a ridiculous gambit by praising Clinton and Obama's vote for cutting off Iraq funding but damning them for doing so with insufficient vigor. Uh, okay.

In all liklihood, this is John Edwards's last campaign. I'd be shocked if he caught up to Clinton or Obama and I suspect Richardson will overtake him, too, although who knows? I could be begging Joe Trippi and President Edwards in two years for an interview, explaining how misguided this blog posting was.

Still, I think Edwards had a choice. He can end his decade in politics on a note of foolishness with panders to the more craven in the blogosphere--and I say this as a card-carrying Huffington Post writer and Talkingpointsmemo and Firedoglake fan--or he can go out on a note of seriousness. Edwards is worth of the latter. So are we.