Obama-Edwards Feud Brewing?

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As we near the Iowa caucuses, Senator Obama and former Senator Edwards have taken a break from bashing Senator Clinton to bash one another just a bit. (Making this scenario a little less likely.)

Obama had this to say about Edwards:

“The reason now that I raise this issue of the special interests is because everybody now in the campaign talks about how I am going to fight for you. Like Sen. Edwards, who is a good guy—he’s been talking a lot about, ‘I am going to fight the lobbyists and the special interests in Washington.’ Well the question you have to ask is: Were you fighting for ’em when you were in the Senate. What did you do?”

I was at Edwards events all day today, so I found an opportunity to get the candidate’s thoughts while at Coe College in Cedar Rapids. Here’s what he said in response to Obama’s comments.

“I spent 20 years fighting these powerful corporations in courtrooms and winning over and over again. In public life, I’ve carried on the same cause. One of the most obvious examples is I co-authored the patients’ bill of rights, one of the biggest pieces of legislation taken on by the Democrats after we took over the United States Senate. I, Senator Kennedy, and Senator McCain were the cosponsors of it. We beat back the insurance companies and the HMOs and got the patients’ bill of rights passed in the United States senate.”

Edwards declined to go negative, as you can see. We’ll see where this goes. I’ll have more on Edwards in the next day or so.

My crude photographic representation of this situation after the jump.

obama_edwards_broken_heart.jpg

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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