Though Edwards was the debate's consensus winner, the distinction had come with a caveat: What if he'd unwittingly turned Clinton into a sympathetic victim? It was a reasonable question, but one that ignored a key biographical detail: Having spent two decades doing rhetorical battle in some of the most hostile courtrooms in North Carolina, with juries ready to punish the slightest hint of overreach, Edwards arguably has a better feel for how voters will react to his words than any candidate in recent memory.
"There are a lot of people that the jury doesn't want to see you pound on," Edwards told me later. "What happens is, psychologically, they'll put themselves in the shoes of the witness. And you don't want them to do that." Then he picked up on the analogy between a trial and a campaign: "Tough is fine. Juries don't mind you being tough. Voters don't mind you being tough. ... If you're being factual and you're giving them information that's defining their choices, nobody'soffended by that."
The media is a huge problem, perhaps THE big obstacle in JRE's campaign, just as it was in 2004, because they have been told Edwards is dangerous for daring to take on corporations:
As for the press, well, that's another story. "The difference between a jury and politics is that the jury is a verycontrolled environment. ... Equal access to the jury--that's a battle I win," he says. "Politics is different, because the media controls access. And the result is, if every nanosecond they're talking about Senator Clinton or Senator Obama or another candidate, then it's hard to be heard." Then he breaks into a smile: "The thing that's different is the debate. ... If all America knew about the eight of us is what they saw in the debate on Tuesday night, or in the debates in general, you would see very different numbers."
