He's not winning the race for the Democratic Primary, at least not yet. He's not winning the race for campaign dollars, at least not yet. He's not winning the race for name recognition. So how come, matchup after matchup, especially in battleground states, he has the best chance of beating our eventual Republican opponent?
Perhaps a better question is how come the media isn't reporting on this fact? But we already know the answer to that. The mainstream media is bound in chains by their corporate masters, and those corporate masters will use every trick in the book to try to quash the political ambitions of anyone they are unable to buy off with campaign donations. And we have already seen attempts by the corporate-owned media to give him the same treatment they gave Howard Dean last time, by flooding the airwaves with story after story about total nonissues involving the size of his house and the price of his haircuts, and editorializing him negatively in just about every single story. But he just keeps on going.
So why is it that John Edwards is doing so incredibly well? He hasn't spent many campaign funds yet, compared to his opponents. Is it his leadership on issue after issue, constantly putting his rivals in the position of having to play catch-up? Is it that, as the only populist progressive in the race, he has the best, most balanced stances on just about every issue? Is it that by not rejecting donations from corporate special interests and the strings that go with them, rank-and-file voters, which includes Democrats, Republicans, and independents, feel that he is the most trust-worthy candidate? Or is it simply that his relative lack of unfavorability ratings (unlike Clinton, for instance) including across party lines, means that for almost everyone for whom he is not choice number one, he is choice number two? You decide below.