News-Record.com

I was listening in on a conference call with Presidential candidate John Edwards this morning. I'll be hitting the road in a few hours to check out how he's doing in South Carolina.

Edwards seemed buoyed by last night's debate. A lot of the pundit class said he did well and some focus groups among independent voters showed they liked Edwards' message more than Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

"There was a lot of squabbling in last night's debate," Edwards said. "I'm John Edwards and I represent the grown up win of the Democratic Party."

That said, Edwards is still running #3 in what is pretty much a three-person race. So is worried about running out of money?

"Money is not and will not be the issue," Edwards said. Rather, he said, the hard part was breaking through on television, newspapers and other free media. "The key for his is for me to be heard."

When asked when he might, you know, win a primary, Edwards got his fur up a bit.

"You want to talk about strategy, I'm not a political strategist," he told the questioner.

As for substance, the news bullet from the call was Edwards saying that Congress should not cooperate with President Bush on crafting an economic stimulus packages. The president's proposed tax cuts, he said, were the wrong way to go and Congress should resist.

"They ought to send him the right kind of stimulus package and then dare him to veto it," he said.

That's it for now. I'll check in from the road as time (and bandwidth) allow.