Ron Paul first tier?

Ron Paul has not replaced McCain in the front tier of Republican candidates.

Paul has more money on hand than McCain, which is such a counter-intuitive shocker it's a hot item on the web. The media of course picks this up as part of its McCain's-in-a-slump narrative. This podcast from 2008Central makes the excellent point that the media craves a story, a narrative, and will jump on it without regard for any countervailing evidence which only confuses people. This is indeed how the media works. McCain will pick up steam at some point, and then his comeback will be exaggerated.

The podcast also makes some interesting points about Edwards. It criticizes the lack of saliency his Two-Americas theme has, and chalk up his lead in Iowa to the fact that he's been campaigning there for two years, ever since his ticket lost in '04, and claims that his poll numbers there will only decline.

The podcase also points out that Edwards has some credibility issues. For example, Edwards reportedly promised John Kerry in 2004 not to run for President in 2008 if he was picked as Kerry's running mate and they lost. Edwards promised this, and of course, didn't keep it, running for president immediately after they lost. Another example: Edwards would begin a story about how "I've never told anyone this before" and talk about loosing his son and the role it played in entering public life, while according to new reports this week he's told this story many times, and his staffers can repeat it by memory because he's told it so many times.

Here's the quote from Bob Shrum:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else--that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before--and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

The credibility issue is a vital one--we saw what that did to Gore in 2000. That story about Gore emerged during the three debates, which was the point in time in which Bush really started getting traction in the polls against Gore. Eric Alterman complains about just that whole episode in this week's Nation.