Ladies and Gentlemen, here are your candidates.

John Edwards: DAMN, he's good.

And the wingnuts are going to make mincemeat out of him. Edwards has a couple of problems. First of all, he's almost TOO polished -- too pretty, too youthful, too -- dare I say it? -- slick. Second of all, when he flashes that toothy smiles, he looks disconcertingly like Jimmy Carter. That's also going to be a problem. But this is a really good speech. He's studied his Al Sharpton very carefully, and I mean that as a compliment. The speech is based on two themes: "It doesn't have to be that way", and "Will you stand up?". Then it's structured around these themes: illustration --> theme --> illustration --> theme --> illustration --> theme. It's not quite call-and response, but it's awfully close, and it WILL play in the south. It also expertly demonstrates how Democratic values line up with real families -- something that Democrats have let get away from them in recent years. Right now Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are sucking all the oxygen out of the room, but if Edwards plays like this everywhere he goes, he may very well be the stealth weapon of this campaign. His web site is already fabulous, and he's just brought on two of the best damn bloggers in the business in Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen (a.k.a. ShakesSis).

Edwards' biggest liability is his lack of experience, particularly in regard to military affairs, which is going to hurt him with white males who may not support the Iraq war but realize that some pretty fancy dancing is going to be required to repair our reputation in the world. Barring unforeseen circumstances, 2008 is going to be about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, and health care. And unless Edwards can do some convincing on the first four, his potential strengths on number five won't do him much good.

But speaking of Iraq, let's now look at Hillary Clinton's speech. I had to snag this one from YouTube because Hillary, who desperately needs some help with her web site, because there's no embed code to take the video right from her site, and she has absolutely no position papers posted.

It bugs me that the words "I'm Hillary Clinton and I'm running for president" don't give me thrills. I should be excited about this candidacy. God knows Clinton is smart enough and savvy enough, but unlike John Edwards, she refuses to say the three little words that so many of us want to hear: "I" "Was" "Wrong". And that is just too much like the person who currently occupies the White House. Hillary is trying to undergo a metamorphosis into an antiwar candidate by saying she's always been critical -- which she hasn't. She has never repudiated her vote. She has never admitted that in October 2002 she, like so many others, was afraid to listen to people like Scott Ritter and the Duelfer Report and the sources that the half-million of us who marched in New York City had read so that we knew that the Bush Administration was a) planning to go to war come hell or high water, and b) that this war was being entered into under false pretenses.

In this speech, Hillary says that if she'd been president in October 2002, she would not have started this war. Then why did she give this president, this dimwit, this numbskull who sat in an elementary school classroom for seven minutes while people in the World Trade Center jumped over 100 floors to their deaths, authorization to go to war? How can she say she never dreamed he'd actually do it?

She certainly LOOKS presidential here, as if Meryl Streep is going to play her in the movie. But when she tries to rouse the crowd, she sounds shrill. Perhaps this is going to be the burden of any female presidential candidate, but she could do with some vocal coaching to be able to project to the crowd without sounding so much like a scold. But the scolding tone aside, there's nothing in this speech that makes you jump to your feet and scream "Yes!"

With Hillary, it's all going to come down to Iraq. I don't care how smart she is, I don't care how good a president I think she might be -- and I think that if she banished the DLC from her life, she might have a better shot of being a good one instead of being just another corporatist in a different costume. Unless I hear those three little words, she isn't getting my vote.

As for Barack Obama, you'll have to go to C-SPAN and click on "Democratic Nat'l Cmte Annual Winter Meeting" to see his speech (it starts about 57 minutes in, and RealPlayer is required), because it's not on his web site (bad move, guys), and the speech in its entirety isn't even on YouTube.

I really like the way Obama talks about how right-wing talk radio and the 24-hour news cycle create an environment in which politics is like a reality TV show, and how it has poisoned the political environment. I like that he alludes to the Democrats' fear of taking a stand. This is clearly a dig at Hillary Clinton, but he's also correct -- Too many politicians are so terrified of the Washington punditocracy that has had its lips attached to George W. Bush's codpiece for the last four years that they don't dare levy criticism of this president's policies.

I also likes that he talks about energy dependency and how some sacrifice here at home is going to be required. This may be a deal-killer for him, because while the Administration talks about sacrifice, the current president regards news coverage of Iraq as enough sacrifice for Americans to make. But I think enough Americans outside of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade are willing now to listen to realistic plans on how we can change how we live to eliminate the need to go to war with every country in the Middle East in order to get oil. Whether too many Americans regard Middle Eastern oil as "our oil under their sand" remains to be seen. My guess is that it's fewer than there were four years ago.

I also like that he talks about hope, stealing Bill Clinton's theme right out from under Clinton's wife's nose. But what is "hope"? Hope is also manifested by "It will work because it has to" -- and it's not enough. Not this campaign. This isn't the best speech I've seen from Obama. It's long on symbols and short on specifics. Yes, he's charismatic, and I think far kindlier of him after his development of a plan for dealing with Iraq. But overall I'm still getting a not-quite-ready vibe from him.

It's early yet, and we'll see how it all shakes out. Jeff Feldman at Frameshop has been liveblogging the entire meeting, and if you want to feel like you're in the room, go over to Frameshop and pay him a visit.

Overall, it's nice to see the candidates give Howard Dean credit for the victories in November. Whether it's because it's because HoDee is providing the shrimp, or a smackdown of those media hogs Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer, I don't know. But it was classy, and Dean deserves the accolades.

I'm not going to spend time and effort on Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and Joe Biden, because I don't think any of them has a shot at the nomination, especially Biden. And I can't imagine why they're doing this, except that when you're done, you get to keep any money you've raised, and all three can use that money for future campaigns.

This is going to be an interesting campaign. Obama is very much the fresh face in this race, much the way Howard Dean was in 2003. But Obama still feels like a symbol rather than a real candidate. I expect that to change as he begins to develop position papers, and I hope that he will be able to get someone to do something about his web site, because right now John Edwards has the best mix of substance and community on his site that I've seen since, well, Howard Dean. Hillary seems to be sucking up the Big Boy money, which as far as I'm concerned, dilutes her rhetoric about being a candidate of the people.

It's odd to see John Edwards, a white southern male, be emerging as the netroots candidate this year. I'm sure that much ink will be spilled about how the so-called liberal netroots aren't as liberal as they like to believe. We shouldn't let the Chris Matthewses of the world define the blogosphere that way. It's BECAUSE we aren't engaging in identity politics that we DO have concerns about Obama's tendency towards conciliation with the religious right and his coziness with Joe Lieberman. It's BECAUSE we aren't engaging in identity politics that we are wary of Hillary Clinton's corporatist tendencies. We aren't going to support a woman just because she's a woman, and we aren't going to support a black man just because he's black. We simply want to nominate, and elect, the best candidate possible.