I was just about to blog this. Elizabeth Edwards is the bomb. If she were running, she'd be the smartest candidate in the pack.

You know, generally I think the world of her, but was this effective? She was all stumbly and general. But I'm a terrible judge of what other people find appealing.

Well, she managed to make Coulter look like a complete dick, but that's Coulter's whole stock-in-trade anyway, so it's hard to say.

There's an old saying that goes something like, don't have a mud fight with a pig. You'll both end up dirty, and the pig will enjoy it.

She was stumbly at the start, but got together what she wanted to say by the end. Also, I've never heard Coulter before and never realized she has a voice I associate with caricatures of upper class snobbery.

Couching the attack in terms of "stop insulting my dead son" seems reasonably effective regardless of whether Edwards delivered the message very well.

voice probably s/b accent

5 - She's from fucking Connecticut! Her whole schtick about her love of America's heartland is a pathetic version of "down with the gente" for Republican class warriors.

"stop insulting my dead son" seems reasonably effective

Believe me, if the Cheneys' "how dare you mention that our openly gay daughter who handles gay outreach for corporate clients is gay" outrage played, this will do just fine.

Maybe it would have been more effective if Mrs Edwards had wheeled on Tweety; e.g.,

• why do you have this sideshow freak on your show?


• do you really think she is representative of conservatives? (of course she totally is, but Mrs Edwards would have scored civility points by suggesting that conservatives are better than Coulter)


• sure she's great for ratings, but don't you feel any sense of responsibility as custodian of the public debate to maintain a more edifying standard? etc.

9: I realize that, but never cared enough to hear her talk.

That should be 8, not 9.

What the hell kind of event was that?

It's pretty obvious that deep in her reptilian heart, Coulter was embarrassed to have been called out by EE. She kept tossing her hair and crossing and uncrossing her legs: nervousness. However, unfortunately, she decided that her royalties and appearance checks require that she keep up the act and never show any humanity. She really is going to need to be shunned.

10 makes a really excellent point.

Ugh, watching that young woman behind her laugh toadyishly at every dumbass thing AC said hurt. And when they all laughed at the "HRC's legs are chubby" quote, I just thought how embarrassing that must be, to get on TV once in your life and do nothing but fake-laugh about how fat on women should be a consideration in political discourse.

YES! That woman behind her was so vile.

(I too was thinking that it would be terribly embarrassing to be her, but then, what if it isn't! One can only hope.)

15: that's why you'll never make it in the high-stakes world of studio audiencing.

Elizabeth Edwards is the bomb. If she were running, she'd be the smartest candidate in the pack.

Seriously. If I vote for Edwards, it will be almost entirely because of Mrs. Edwards. If she were running, she would definitely be my dream candidate. (And her illness is so depressing.)

I realized today that I assume all these things about the people I know--that they at least are against things like GENOCIDE and RAPE--and that I'm not wrong, exactly, but they're so busy thinking that genocide and rape are beside the point, somehow, that they don't mind sitting around laughing at man-hating feminists and stupid hippies who talk about rape and genocide as if they're problems. Ann Coulter's groupies seem like that to me. They're so busy laughing at humanity in that stupid, scornful way that they can't hear someone saying "Please don't make fun of the death of my son. Really. Please."

You have to admit, empathy is kind of a hassle.

5: Yeah, me too! I'd assumed she was some sort of California/Midwesterner -- the New England snob voice was a shock. Now I really don't understand all the regional hostility people talk about -- she sounds closer to John Kerry than anything.

I quit.

I quit.

Snorting coke?

23 to 21, resignedly.

Personally, I use constant cynical humor as a bulwark against the unspeakable awfulness of the present day. But I can see how it would come off as unfeeling.

I like, too, that Coulter is so inadvertently (?) honest about her work:

"Please stop making ridiculous and mean personal attacks."
"Oh, you want me to stop writing anything at all! I SEE!"

Well, it's true, it does sort of work out that way.

Shrub nails it.

[I kinda enjoyed typing that sentence.]

i'm trying to care less, but hating people like coulter or the laughing audience are just fine.

Nu, if you care about electoral politics, and you want to raise the tone of the whole sordid mess (as EE is pleading for), and it sure sounds like a lot of people here do, then right now would be a good time to think about what you can do to increase your participation in the coming elections. You can poll watch, or staff a phone bank, or host some of those activism-parties, or canvass the neighborhood, or be an election judge. I'm not even a fan of bourgeois democracy, and I participate. All that is required for Ann Coulter to triumph is that middle-class liberals do nothing.

(Inside every thirtysomething minneapolitan is an 18-year-old anarcho-punk screaming to get out.)

What made me love Elizabeth Edwards, in this, was that she called Coulter out not only for what she said about their son, but that if you listen closely she also mentions a comment Coulter had made when they found Howard Dean's younger brother's body in Laos in 2004.

I would *so* vote for her.

This was beautiful. The key reason I'm an Edwards supporter is that the two of them understand the nature of the game right now. The public discourse has to change or we're all screwed.

Everyone looks at different aspects, but to me, the focal point of this event was Tweety, and Tweety's audience. Elizabeth didn't - couldn't - shame Coulter, because Coulter has no shame. I only saw the TPM clip, but I've never seen anybody in the media actually treat Coulter as though her whole schtick might be, um, a bit inappropriate. For a few minutes, Tweety did.

Now that the tide has turned, people like Matthews are starting to show a little spine, but they need to be nudged along at every opporutunity. Elizabeth Edwards did that tonight, and John does it, too.

Elizabeth Edwards is the bomb.

Yeah. That pretty much goes without saying. But I'm happy to say it again.

33: I like the line in that article about John being very clear that he is conflicted on gay marriage, and how EE explains that as the conflict between his rural souther roots and his antidiscrimination values. It struck me as a surprisingly honest acknowledgement of the difficulty of breaking free of the prejudices we are raised with. I like the sense that it is an admission that he wants to do what's right but can't quite figure out what he believes is right.

I've always been of the mind that the state should offer civil unions while letting churches marry or not whomever they feel theologically able to marry. But I kind of love Elizabeth Edwards for being bold enough to imagine a day when same-sex marriages don't even rate an eye blink.

5,8: And she went to Dartmouth! Well bred, indeed.

32: Matthews turning on Coulter is what struck me, too.

30: Were you listening to "The Great Leap Forwards" when you wrote that comment? Because I was singing "the revolution is just a T-shirt away" by the end of it.

32: I don't think that's a departure from the norm -- I gather that Mathews has Coulter on, and says, "Ann, why are you so mean?" pretty often. Showing spine would require not having her on. Not bloody likely.

Showing spine would require not having her on.

Yes, Coulter always gets the "why are you so mean" thing, but I thought there was a difference of tone here - I got the feeling that Tweety actually meant it, or wanted people to think that he did. Tweety seemed to understand that his job in this instance wasn't to lob open-ended softball questions, but to stand up, just a little, for basic decency.

Matthews always has a moist finger in the air. It's the job of the good guys to make it crystal clear which way the wind is blowing.

That said, of course, you are right: We'll know that Edwards - and the netroots and decent people everywhere - have been successful only when Coulter is no longer a television personality.

Are we all Edwards fans here? I consider myself slightly to the right of center, politically, but I'm sold on Edwards/Obama '08. Has anyone else shown such political agility or, god forbid, balls? My basic metric for support of an '08 presidential candidate is this: who is most likely to yield the recently bloated executive power? Ron Paul won't win, so Edwards is my man.

40: I feel like Edwards is politically a bit tone-deaf, and he's made some bonehead maneuvers over the last year, so I don't count myself a big fan. He's somewhere above Hillary and below Obama in my rankings right now, but I'd vote for any of the three in the general.

I wanted Feingold to run. Alas.

So far the only candidates I've contributed to are Denis Kucinich and Ron Paul (a hundred bucks each). There'll be enough time for pragmatism later, right now I want to hear people calling this war insanity what it is.

Ron Paul being against the war should not obscure the fact that he is a total nutjob.

Ron Paul being a total nutjob should not obscure the fact that he's against the war. At this point, why not create an antiwar bonus for primary candidates in both parties? $100 doesn't make it any more likely ol' Ron'll win.

I gave Edwards fifty dollars. And got a recipe for pecan pie from Elizabeth.

I don't like pecan pie, so I'm voting for Dodd.

Pat Buchanan's against the war too, but I'm not going to send him money.

Fuck the other party. They got on board with Bush, and we should make sure they go down with the ship.

40: presidents don't yield executive power. No matter how much you like them.

47 is a serious and very depressing truth. After all, Clinton was expanding executive power a little before the Bushies went crazy with it. The changes Bushco have made to the structure of government will be with us for quite some time.

when I finally got an academic job last year I gave my first political contribution---$50--- to james webb, the weekend before they slimed him about porn in his books. I was sure it went down the drain. Now I am pretty sure I turned the senate. Obama, call me.

presidents don't yield executive power

George Washington in '08!

37: Actually, as I was drifting off to sleep last night, I was thinking that I should team up with Joe Drymala and write Cynical, Greedy and Vapid: The Mary Ryder Story (it would be like a roman à clé see, except with a different name), a musical about Ann Coulter, kinda like Anything Goes, but instead of having the title character be the heroine, like Reno Sweeney, she would be the villain.

47 is totally exaggerated and obscures huge differences among the candidates. Bill Clinton vetoed an official secrets act that Congress passed; if he hadn't done so we'd be even more screwed. Gerald Ford exercised less executive power than Nixon. Do you not believe the dem. candidates when they say they'd sign a restoration of habeas?

It was not really in the cards for Ford to exercise as much power as Nixon. More to the point, Carter exercised less executive power than Nixon.

It was "not really in the cards" for a reason. Congressional opposition is much weaker now, of course, even under the Democrats, but public & Congressional pressure still makes a difference.

Congressional pressure still makes a difference

Yes, and what people like us feel is that our system of checks and balances is broken. So I'm looking for a restoration of concepts of Congressional Supremacy, ala W.W. Crosskey, to counteract theories of Unitary Executive, which I want made a matter of public debate and repudiated, not least in the court of public opinion. I'd be willing to tolerate a lot of Congressional overreaching, meddling and inefficiency to get it.

I own a copy of Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government, which marked a beginning of theories of the strong presidency, to test its notions, but have never read it. I may have a look, now that the whole issue is very live.

4: but if there's a pig shitting all over the living room, what other options do you have?

Although I hope he wins the nomination, I have this sinking feeling that John Edwards will never win elective office again.

Why the anonymity, Mr. former President?

58: Maybe it's Ms Candidate, eh?

Ms s/b Mrs

"Oh, you want me to stop writing anything at all! I SEE!"

The tall woman in the white sweater behind Coulter appears to be, um, really pleased with that argument. Watch the video from 2:25 to 2:00 left. Don't let her nipples poke your eye out.

54: My point exactly. Nice presidents don't yield power; congress and the public check and balance them.

Coulter gets off on living a high coastal lifestyle while peddling her trash to middle America. People should refuse to patronize bars and restaurants that offer her service.

her coke dealer should be shunned, etc.

Not surprisingly, Edwards is using the latest Coulter flap for fundraising. What I love about this whole thing is Coulter's insinuation that using her slime to spur on fundraising is beyond the pale but insulting dead relatives of candidates is A-OK.

I'm becoming more and more of an Edwards supporter. I wanted to host an Edwards house party today but guests from foreign lands come first. I thought EE rocked just fine by being persistent and gentlewomanly---when the audience around Coulter applauded, she won.

Doesn't Coulter realize that the sun glasses are not helping her look?

It's to cover up her flat lizard eyes.

I'm a big Edwards fan. They both rock. She won when she got the applause from the kids in the audience. This was awesome--and I enjoyed getting informed of it by the JE twittering.

It sounds like Elizabeth Edwards is making Ann Coulter cry.