John Edwards is a not a guy who has had two books at or near the top of the bestseller lists for weeks, he is not the former first lady of this country, nor is his spouse a very popular former u.s. president who can sell personal appearances to raise tons of money for him. Edwards has done fine in fundraising. Even though Edwards ran four years ago, Hillary and Obama are better known than him now. They are stars. He raised more this quarter than Gore did in 2000 and Kerry did 2004. Of course the rules are different this cycle. It would be interesting though to see how much of what Edwards raised came from trial lawyer groups, mass tort lawyers, the kind of millionaire jurors like him who were said to have given heavily to his last campaign.

Frankly I find the money grab by all these candidates a bit of a turnoff. A pet peeve of mine is receiving emails from "names" asking for money. I got an email from "Bill Clinton" asking for contributions for Hillary. It is not really from him, nor did he write it. Same with the nice email I got from "Geraldine Ferraro" I don't know Geraldine Ferraro, yet she writes me email and addresses me by first name as if we're old friends, and its an autoemail fundraising letter she didn't even write. Drives me nuts!