Interesting piece here from Slate's most interesting writer of late, Chris Suellentrop:

John Edwards may be the future, but can he be the present?

He opens with a litany of all the beltway boys christening Edwards the golden boy most likely to run away with the nomination this year. " All the adulation hasn't done much for Edwards, however, other than demonstrating to him the powerlessness of the national political media," Suellentrop responds.

Exactly. And not at all. It demonstrates once again how pathetic the national press is at divining what the public will respond to, and they complete inability to shove a lousy product down our throats. What they are very good at doing, however, is marginalizing the interesting people, so we have nothing but dufi left to pick. Luckily the electorate seems to have run an end-run-around them this year with Dean.

That's not the main point of his piece however--just a point that jabs at me, so I felt the urge to highlight it.

He goes on to present an interesting take on why Edwards campaign. The heart of it:

In the two days I follow Edwards through northeastern Iowa, everything about his campaign proves to be just fine. The candidate is fine, the message is fine, the crowds are fine. The problem for Edwards is that fine doesn't appear good enough to topple the growing Dean juggernaut. Edwards' events aren't soporific like Joe Lieberman's, but they're also not energizing like Dean's. They're perfectly pleasant affairs, not unlike a summer movie that fades from memory on the drive home. 

The nice writing, huh? The great thing about reading Suellentrop's work is that it's so captivatingly readable. It's actually a pleasure to read, and he seems to nail his subjects time and again as well.

You might want to put him on your must-read list for politics. Right after Joan Walsh at Salon. She's still the master.