Ooh, That Spin—That Spin That Surrounds You!

Ben Smith over at the Politico highlights the increasingly-humorous spin that the Clinton campaign is feeding reporters—"as we look ahead to American Samoa" is a favorite. But nothing beats the spin we get from the John Edwards Campaign to Change America for Working Families Who Live on Main Street, or whatever it is today. From my inbox, the latest Edwards missive on how he will survive Tsunami Tuesday.

As we move into a campaign focused on the 22 February 5th states, our target demographics are:
- Voters fed-up with the broken system in Washington
- Voters who believe the middle class has been neglected by politicians in Washington
- Voters who have had enough of the personal and destructive attacks between our two rivals

Those aren't demographics. But I suppose Edwards can't get away with saying "we won white men in South Carolina and we can do it everywhere."

Numerous polls in the Palmetto state recently had Edwards roughly 30 points behind Clinton. But because of a strong debate performance and nonstop, personal and often bitter attacks between our rivals, Edwards proved this is a three way race.

Yes, Edwards narrowed the gap between himself and Clinton to nine points… while losing to Obama by 37 points.

The campaign has enjoyed an online fundraising boom – over $3.2 million raised online since the first of the year – most of which will be doubled by federal matching funds.

Alternate translation: "Since January 1st we have raised less than Ron Paul."

That's a pretty awesome fundraising gimmick, by the way.

I don't hate readers enough to excerpt much more of this. There's an odd prediction that the race will narrow to "one of the two celebrity candidates and us," and this will be good for JRE, because people hate celebrities. There are lists upon lists of endorsers in the February 5th states with a startling number of "formers" in front of their names. (He's got the 1998 nominee for governor of Massachusetts! How's that taste, Ted Kennedy?)

All of that aside, blogger Cicero has the best argument that Edwards could be viable if the Obama-Clinton contest goes down to the wire. At this hour Edwards still has a better shot at the nomination than, say, Rudy Giuliani.