Here is a simply marvelous column by George Will, dealing with Hillary, SCHIP, savings, and, most deliciously, John Edwards.
His concluding paragraph: “Many politicians pander, as Edwards does with gusto, to Americans’ current penchant for self-pity. Hence the incessant talk about ‘the forgotten middle class.’ Because such talk is incessant, it of course refutes itself.”
Could a national politician get anywhere by conspicuously not pandering at all? I recall that the late Paul Tsongas seemed to get a bit of traction with that back in 1992.