Here’s a good interview with Joe Trippi. Trippi was Edwards’ campaign manager and Howard Dean’s back in 2004. It’s all very good. Here’s a quote that fits my view of the race.
Were you surprised that, after the Philly debate, where Edwards really wailed on Hillary, that seemed to be the start of the Obama surge?
It happened every time. Go back and look. We take her on on lobbyist money, the next day’s headlines are “Obama-Hillary clash on campaign finance.” The press just wanted to just see everything through the Hillary-Barack lens. Particularly the South Carolina debate, where he called her a Wal-Mart board-member and she said, “slumlord.” I think by all accounts we won that one. There were definitely three people in that debate–we really engaged hard in that thing. The next day, every single headline was “Clinton-Obama.” On television in particular, “Clinton-Obama.” We weren’t even at that debate.