John Edwards really made one thing clear to me during appearance at the Yearly Kos convention. He is ready to fight.

Now I hate negative campaigning but that’s not the kind of fighting he wants to do. He’s doing what he needs to do—draw real distinctions between himself and the other Democratic presidential candidates.

He entered his “break-out session” after the Yearly Kos debate..forum, whatever you want to call it, and pretty much right off the bat said this about his challenge to all the ‘08 candidates to disavow lobbyist contributions:

“We got some yes's and and one clear no. Senator Clinton made it clear she intends to continue taking Washington lobbyist money.”

Now, this is a serious issue, especially to progressives and Edwards knew he had caught onto something here and while the way he kept hammering away on this issue seemed a little bit desperate to me, it proved the point that Edwards is focused on the short game, winning over the base, the early primary states and then the nomination, while Hillary Clinton seems to be operating like she has the nomination pretty much in the bag and now must win over the general election crowd.

Edwards went on to steal a few pages from the Obama playbook by saying, “Do we want serious change is this country?” and adding, “We don’t need to trade one group of insiders for another group of insiders." Now how having served in the Senate for six years and then leaving three years later makes Edwards this total outsider I have no idea. But he really sold himself and in person he is undeniably energetic, quick on his feet and charming as hell.