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No, not the effective negative ad aimed at Hillary Clinton, but another one that Dave Weigel calls, "one of the most sleazy, manipulative little political commercials of recent years." If Clinton is playing the gender card, Edwards is clearly playing the cancer card:

"And Elizabeth and I decided in the quiet of a hospital room." Subtle. "After 12 hours of tests and after getting very bad news." Even subtler. His wife has cancer. "We're not going to quietly go away. Instead we're going to go out there and fight for what it is we believe."

You know, Mitt Romney's wife has multiple sclerosis. Obviously that's not going to shorten her life the way Elizabeth Edwards' cancer will shorten hers. But it's the kind of thing that could stir up sympathy and handkerchief-clutching out there in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the Romneys only ever talk about it when asked. There's no TV ad pimping her illness. If Romney has no emotions, than Edwards has only the basest ones. There's not enough Lysol on the eastern seaboard to scrub his slime away.

I would also add that the two Edwards campaign appearances I attended this fall both began with a variation of him saying, "I know a lot of you want to know how Elizabeth is doing. Elizabeth is doing great."

topics:
Hillary Clinton