Edwards hits Hillary, but who will benefit most?

John Edwards is stepping up his attacks on Hillary Clinton. Both Barack Obama and him have no choice at this point but to be much more confrontational. Hillary is running away with the nomination, and no amount of money and ad will get her down unless her rivals try some new arguments -- or are willing to take it up a notch. Obama has been promising to do this for weeks now, but he has mostly remained quiet. But today, Edwards delivered a major speech tying Clinton to Washington's culture of corruption. His full speech - entitled "The Moral Test of our Generation" - is available here. Some excerpts:

It is not an accident that the government of the United States cannot function on behalf of its people, because it is no longer our people's government — and we the people know it. This corruption did not begin yesterday — and it did not even begin with George Bush — it has been building for decades — until it now threatens literally the life of our democracy...

Senator Clinton's road to the middle class takes a major detour right through the deep canyon of corporate lobbyists and the hidden bidding of K Street in Washington, and history tells us that when that bus stops there it is the middle class that loses...

Today Hillary Clinton has taken more money from Washington lobbyists than any candidate from either party — more money than any Republican candidate... The long slow slide of our democracy into the corporate abyss continues unabated regardless of party, regardless of the best interests of America.

Edwards's rhetoric is strongly populist, and it should appeal to many in the Democratic base... so why has Edwards not benefited more from this? The main answer seems to be that people are not taking him seriously, or taxing him of hypocrisy. Edwards might simply not be the best candidate for this message -- he was running four years ago after all, so the sudden differences in campaign style are obvious!

Edwards is going after Hillary exactly the way he should be: Attacking her on her main weakness, and on her progressive credentials. She is part of the establishment, and Edwards is reminding voters of that. But the main question now is who will benefit. If Edwards softens Hillary up, will he be the one to take her votes? Or will disillusioned voters rather turn to the politics of hope of Barack Obama? Especially in Iowa, people turn away from negative campaigns (witness Gephardt's self-destruction in 2004), and Obama might benefit from Edwards's attacks.

At the end of the day, however, Obama cannot rely on Edwards to soften up Clinton. The race will come down to Hillary versus an alternative. Obama will have to step it up a notch as well if he wants to take this away from Clinton. There is a Democratic debate tomorrow, let's see if he performs better than at the Dartmouth debate last month. After all, Obama himself said today that the "politics of hope was not about ‘holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya.' "

In other news among Democrats, Obama is still being hurt badly by the controversy over anti-gay gospel singer McClurkin. Though HRC condemned Obama, the event went ahead as planned... and things got worse as McClurkin declared at the event that, "God delivered me from homosexuality." Obama's response was very weak, and his campaign was blasted all day by progressive activists. Prominent blogger Atrios talked about the "audacity of homophobia". This does indeed go at the heart of Obama's all-inclusive philosophy and tolerance of every view in the name of a post-partisan political culture.

And Obama did not endear himself to the base today by running a new ad on Social Security acknowledging that there is a Social Security crisis -- a point Bush made repeatedly in the past few years but that the Left countered. Kos, who has historically been very favorable to Obama, summarized Obama's day thus:

Not a good week for Obama, and it's only Monday. His b.s. about bringing American together is clearly just b.s. His judgment is seriously in question. And now, on a major policy issue, he appears to be adopting right-wing rhetoric. It's a real train wreck.