John Edwards & Dennis Kucinich, Wow, your speaking has improved! Neither of them really has a shot at winning, but it's a good thing for the Democartic Party to see their improvement. I haven't heard either of their stumps since Kos and I both went to the CA Democratic Convention in March of last year, where Dean gave his now historical "What I want to know... " speech, which brought the house down. Edwards and Kucinich also spoke, but it wasn't a good performance by either of them. The only reaction that Edwards got from the whole crowd during the event was when he was cat-called while voicing his support for the Iraq invasion, otherwise, very boring. And for Kucinich, it was so painful that I had to leave, and fortunately missed the worst part-- when he sang.
But today, here in Debuque, Iowa (Kerry & Gephardt both were no-shows at the last moment, Dean wasn't scheduled), both of them spoke very well, hitting hard against Bush, and both avoided attacking the other candidates by name. Kucinich did say something swiping about a "Dr." and one point, and Edwards seems to be growing into the morph of Dean that took place in his stump about a month or so ago; neither of these guys have a shot, but their improvement as speakers is good for the Democratic Party.
I should have taken notes of Kucinich and Edwards speaking, I guess. But I did ask Tom Curry of MSNBC if he thought so as well, and he concurred. On a related note, Kucinich is going to surprise Zogby, he's got more than 2 percent, I'll bet on that one. Judging by Zogby's latest day, Dean looks likely to nudge ahead of Kerry in another day of polling
I'll have another report later tonight from Debuque, inside the Dean campaign. People are streaming into this town from neighboring states; Door Storm is happening. I wandered about the town for about 45 minutes trying to find anything happening. There are no signs at all, you'd never guess that beneath the surface, a full-force on the ground campaign is being waged by five campaigns. The only hint I caught was seeing the Dean Doorknob flyers, which led me to the source... more on that, with more photo's, later tonight.