Either through good luck or good planning, the Edwards campaign put up its first television ad in Iowa today, just 36 hours after their man emerged as the consensus winner of the Democratic debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. The 60-second spot, entitled “Heroes”, uses clips of Edwards giving a speech as its soundtrack, with a …

Funny, the only person in the room not terrified by another Joe Biden is, you know, Joe Biden.

Also, I’m gonna miss Chuck Hagel.

It looks like a fundraising smackdown is in the works. For the past few days, liberal bloggers have been complaining about Nancy Pelosi attending a fundraiser this Saturday for Maryland Congressman Al Wynn, who is facing a Democratic primary challenge from Donna Edwards.

Edwards came surprising close to knocking off Wynn the last time …

The methodology of this poll by conservative journal Human Events is not exactly scientific (emailing a list of subscribers?), but the results are suggestive, if also a little surprising:

Thompson 25 percent
Giuliani 20 percent
Huckabee 19 percent
Romney 13 percent
Hunter 8 percent
Paul 8 percent
Tancredo 5 percent
McCain 2 percent

I’m …

A slightly counter-intuitive take on the Hillary Clinton brain trust, reminding you that what they’re actually good at is manipulating* communicating with voters, not the press:

And a SwampCast flashback to how the strategy of addressing the audience, not the reporters, worked in Iowa.

*”Manipulating” was a bad word choice. I really …

While at least one campaign is debating whether or not to release a bunch of old emails (and other documents) that are locked up in a building in Little Rock, Chris Dodd is sending new ones around to anyone with an address. The senior senator from Connecticut has yet to emerge from the bottom tier in most national and state polls, but — …

The overlap between science fiction geeks and political journalists is notoriously thick. For an usually public example of those interests colliding, note this AFP story from yesterday:

“This morning I was with the vice president. I was asking him what costume he was planning. And he said ‘I’m already wearing it.’ Then he mumbled

…

Be sure to check out Joel Stein’s story, which includes these encounters between Ron Paul and popular culture:

His name is the most searched, his YouTube videos the most watched, his campaign the topic of songs by at least 14 bands. “The last thing I would listen to is rap,” Paul says. “But there’s something going on when there’s a rap

…

A bit of post-debate analysis, keyed to the awesomest putdown of the night, from Biden to Giuliani: