This is from Joe Klein. I haven't seen it posted as yet. If so, sorry for the double post.
http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,593500,00.html
Unfortunately, without Dean, the Democratic primaries are lapsing into a synthetic and unsatisfying beauty pageant. This is mostly John Edwards' fault. If he were really running for President, he would be demanding specificity, and forcing creativity, from John Kerry on Iraq and lots of other issues. He would be taking risks, trying to break the entropy of the campaign. A truly sharp John Edwards might say something like, "John Kerry, the more I look at these Bush deficits, the more I think that you and I should scale back some of these promises we've made. Here's my list. What's yours?"
But Edwards is not a particularly sharp candidate. He is a slick speaker but lacks the crackle and candor of Dean's plain talk. Indeed, Edwards gives the same speech, platitude for platitude, every time. He doesn't talk about foreign policy, and he rarely answers questions from the audience. At his maiden New York primary speech, at Columbia University last week, Edwards was confronted by AIDS protesters who wanted him to address their issue and by local reporters curious as to why he hadn't mentioned Iraq. His bland responses--that AIDS was a test of "moral responsibility" and that Iraq was "a very important issue"--disappointed both groups. "He didn't speak with any detail at all," said Kim Sue, one of the protesters. "I think I'll have to vote for Kerry."