AddieStan

I'm watching this speech and I'm thinking, this is weird; this guy is just giving his stump speech. Okay, I think, so maybe not so dumb; he's got a national audience, so he's decided to use precious media to deliver his message -- not a raft of thank-yous. But then Chris Matthews reminded me that he never congratulated Barack Obama, who won this contest. And that's just unsportsmanlike. Most unattractive.

As your blogstress predicted, the Christian Reconstructionist-friendly Mike Huckabee has won the Republican Iowa caucus. So, she's half right. You'll recall that your ecrivaine predicted that John Edwards would win the Democratic caucus. Though Fox News and others have called the race for Barack Obama, your net-tete is not yet ready to concede her hunch. However, she can't say she would be unhappy to announce an Obama win.

Fox News just declared Barack Obama the winner in Iowa, yet the percentages are quite close, and at least one big precinct -- Iowa City -- has yet to deliver. On the ground is Hans Johnson , the labor and LGBT activist, who texted me to let me know that that the Iowa City precinct turnout is up by 33 percent from 2004. Hans is a volunteer with the John Edwards campaign.

Your blogstress's gut feeling has long been that, on the Democratic side, John Edwards will win the Iowa caucuses. While other prognosticators have come to similar conclusions, for which they have some educated rationale (usually based on the fact that Edwards never left Iowa after the 2004 presidential race), your cybertrix has contented herself by going with the gut. Not long ago, your écrivaine spoke to a friend who is on the ground in Iowa, organizing for a candidate who is not Edwards. The friend predicted a win for Edwards, and, yes, the friend had a educated rationale. " Hillary is not going to win," said the friend. "People doing her footwork are focused on the more populous counties. Meanwhile, Edwards is organized in all the rural counties -- places where an entire caucus may consist of eight people." See, the results of the Iowa caucuses are not based on popular vote. They're a bit more complicated than the electoral college's winner-t...

"Our troops are stuck between a president without a plan to succeed and a Congress without the courage to bring them home." --John Edwards Good line from the 2-minute message paid for by the John Edwards presidential campaign. Not sure how I feel about the likes of Edwards -- who, while in the Senate, voted authorize a presidential option to invade Iraq -- chiding his former colleagues in the Senate for lack of courage on the war. Oh, sure, he's since said he made "a mistake" -- something Hillary Clinton still won't concede about her same vote -- but that's easy to say after the fact, after you've left the body.

Splitting the difference Edwards: I don't believe in gay marriage, but my wife does If Edwards ever had a chance at getting the vote de l'ecrivaine , he just lost it.

Gay marriage and the black church We just heard from the Rev. Reggie Longcrier of Hickory, North Carolina, who is destined to be one of those momentary stars made by televised "town hall" candidate fora in presidential campaign years. The good reverend caused the audience to erupt in applause when he challenged John Edwards , the former North Carolina senator, to explain why the candidate's "Baptist upbringing" offers adequate justification for being against gay marriage. Rev. Longcrier reminded the smooth-talking trial lawyer that the Bible was used to justify slavery and deny women the vote. What made that such a big deal? Rev. Longcrier is African-American, and the rap on the black church is always about how homophobic it is. Your blogstress, errant Catholic that she is, has never bought that rap. By that, she doesn't mean that black churches don't have their share of homophobic leaders and followers; it's just no different there than amon...

At The American Prospect Online my colleague Garance Franke-Ruta has quite the brilliant piece about why the John Edwards presidential campaign can't seem to get much traction among low-income groups, despite the candidate's anti-poverty platform. According to Garance, people who earn low wages are savvy enough to know that the real path out of poverty will open only when more people who look like them assume positions of power. Hence the outsized appeal, among these voters, of Hillary Clinton (women are overrepresented in the low-wage cohort) and Barack Obama (poverty having endured as a problem for African Americans). Here's a taste from GFR of how it got that way: As the nobility and controversy of the civil rights era gave way to the controversy without nobility of the identity politics era, politicians learned to shy away from genuine challenges to the social order while simultaneously seeking to claim the moral mantle of historical daring. Today's goal, as E...

Poor John Edwards ; he has to follow Barack Obama with his speech at the Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C. For those of you with lives, who live outside the political game show that is your blogstress's adopted city, TBA is an annual confab convened by an organization called the Campaign for America's Future . Had he not followed Obama, Edwards' speech would have been a right good speech. But since Obama left the stage, it's all I can do not to notice that the delicate hairs that add an otherworldly shimmer to your blogstress's arms are no longer standing up, or that it is once again safe for your blogstress to wear mascara, since she is no longer weeping in awe -- or that she is again capable of blogging during a speech, something she found impossible during Obama's. Edwards has a program. He has brains. He has nice hair and a good tan. But Obama's got the mojo.

Melissa Silverstein of the Women's Media Center offers this take (quoting your blogstress's fabulous former colleague, Mary Kay Blakely) on the new media war between right-wingers and the feminist bloggers who were hired by the John Edwards campaign, only to relinquish those appointments after the noxious Bill Donohue -- a first-rate mysogynist and anti-Semite -- made great hay out of the posts of Pandagon 's Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare’s Sister : As the drama unfolded, others enthusiastically joined the attack, and disturbing sexualized comments flooded into the women’s blogs. "Problem with women like you, you just need a good fucking from a real man," read one posting. Another was, "It’s just too bad your mother didn’t abort you. You are nothing more than a filthy mouth slut. I bet a couple of years in Iraq being raped and beaten daily would help you appreciate America a little." Sexualized threats against women, and especi...

At The Politico , Anne Schroeder offers up some juicy dish on right-wingers apparently appalled by Ann Coulter 's gay-bashing: At a conference in Ft. Lauderdale over the weekend at the Center for Reclaiming America, which is connected to TV preacher James Kennedy ’s Coral Ridge Ministries, Coulter reiterated her John Edwards description... [...] A birdie on the scene told us that after the f-word remark about Johnny Boy, the hundreds of conservatives who filled the church to the brim, gasped in shock. Moments later, she bid her adieu. For more on this, check out the (PDF file) letter sent by Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United to Rev. Gary Cass of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

Your blogstress is most distressed; she no longer rates as an A-list Catholic-basher now that the media's favorite anti-Semite, William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has discovered John Edwards ' recent hires, bloggers Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon , and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister . From the AP via the Washington Post : "John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots," Donohue wrote in a statement. "He has no choice but to fire them immediately." You'll recall, mes amis , that your blogstress was once the fetching serpent-borne apple of Donohue's ire when she dared to suggest that the Bush administration made a smart move when the president nominated the very Catholic John Roberts to head the Supreme Court, which would allow them to lob the false charge of "anti-Catholicism" every time Roberts was challenged about his ...