One thing that shows up time and again is that unfortunately, both McCain and Guiliani have very high name recognition, high favorability and low negative ratings. Edwards seems to come closest to these two in these types of surveys.
http://www.pollster.com/...
"The cluster of Giuliani, McCain and Edwards represents a group with about a 2-1 favorable-unfavorable ratio, suggesting pretty broad appeal. But even among this group around 40% of voters are unable to express an evaluation."
It has been pointed out that we need to do something about this to have a chance in 08. Edwards must have been reading the blogosphere and also may start connecting everything Bush does to McCain I suspect.
While so far this is just a press release
http://blog.johnedwards.com/...
Like the McCain Doctrine it may eventually get more play. Basically, Edwards is saying McCain and "allies" are blaming the generals for the failure in Iraq.
Senator John Edwards released the following statement today in response to Senator Lindsey Graham's comments on Meet the Press yesterday, where Sen. Graham said: "Well, I hope we will hold the generals accountable for their work product. I respect General Casey and Abizaid, but the strategy they've come up with for the last two years has not worked. Iraq is not more stable than it was when they took over two years ago."
Edwards said, "Senator McCain is the leading advocate for escalating the war in Iraq against the advice of our military leaders, what I call the McCain Doctrine. Now, one of his top allies is attacking those generals and blaming them for the terrible situation in Iraq. That's outrageous. The failed Iraq policy lies squarely on the shoulders of the people who make that policy - the president and his Cabinet - and Senators McCain and Graham know that. Senator McCain should ask Senator Graham to apologize to the men and women of our armed forces who have done nothing but heroically serve their country while trying to carry out a broken policy set in Washington."
He continued, "Instead of scapegoating our military leaders, Senator McCain and Senator Graham should start listening to them. Escalating the war in Iraq sends exactly the wrong signal to the Iraqis and the rest of the world about what our intentions are there. We need to make it clear that we intend to leave Iraq and turn over the responsibility of Iraq to the Iraqi people. The best way to do that is by actually starting to leave."
A baby step, but in the right direction.
Here is a second article about Edwards as the Anti-Clinton
http://www.time.com/...
The Anti-Clinton
So what is the ex--North Carolina Senator and former vice-presidential nominee doing dumping the centrism that was key to putting the past two Democrats in the White House? Why is he tacking sharply to the left? As Jesse Jackson, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean could tell you, the most liberal of the Democratic contenders hasn't even won the nomination since 1972.
Although in 2004 he spoke eloquently of the "Two Americas"--rich and poor--if you looked at the fine print, Edwards backed ideas that originated in the centrist group that created much of Bill Clinton's agenda, the Democratic Leadership Council. Not this time. Many of the proposals for middle-class tax cuts from Edwards' first run won't be on his platform. Edwards says the country can't afford them and the bigger goals he wants to pursue. He says the problems in the U.S. are too pressing for the incremental solutions he proposed last time. So on the day he announced his presidential candidacy, Edwards boldly declared that reducing the deficit, a hallmark of the Clinton Administration, was less important to him than spending government money on, among other things, creating a universal health-care system and stopping global warming. His call to end poverty in the U.S. over the next 30 years by spending more than $15 billion each year sounds like a plan ripped straight from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the kind of Big Government liberalism Clinton shunned. Clinton did all kinds of things to show he was pro-business, while last August in Pittsburgh at a rally sponsored by an anti--Wal-Mart group, Edwards blasted the company for not paying its workers enough. Although Edwards got much of his advice in 2004 from centrists like Bruce Reed, Clinton's ex-- policy guru, the Edwards '08 campaign is being run by David Bonior, a former Michigan Congressman who strongly opposed Clinton's welfare reform and free-trade deals in the 1990s.
The economic populism Edwards talked about in 2004 and has now fully embraced was a winning formula in 2006 for many Democratic congressional candidates --even after Republicans depicted them as big spenders.
But Edwards has to win his party's nomination first. If Hillary Clinton runs, she could immediately become the front runner, picking up much of the money and endorsements from the party establishment. ...That's why Edwards has spent the past two years actively courting the liberal netroots, even hiring Dean's old blogger, and wooing top union bosses. Edwards' attacks on Wal-Mart, which has discouraged its workers from forming unions, and his calls for universal health care are beloved by labor leaders, who could give Edwards a major lift in the early primaries in Iowa and Nevada, where their organizations are influential in Democratic politics.
The Edwards strategy would be complicated by a presidential run by Senator Barack Obama, ... Obama too is very well liked by the left. But both Obama and Hillary Clinton act like front runners: cautiously. They often deploy platitudes (witness Obama's speeches about hope) and look for easy targets (note Clinton's sermonizing on violent video games). That leaves room to emerge as the candidate who connects with Democratic voters by saying bold things that appeal to liberals, as when Edwards wrote "I was wrong" in voting for the Iraq war in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in the fall of 2005. Dean employed this aggressive strategy in 2004 but couldn't win the nomination because he was viewed as too feisty and angry to be President. But if you're going to take your party in a new direction, it helps to be like Edwards, a smooth-talking Southern charmer with a light drawl whom Bill Clinton himself described as being able to "talk an owl out of a tree." That's where the ex-President's model may suit Edwards just fine.