Real Clear Politics brings up this interesting bit of news:

Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina leads a list of potential Democratic presidential candidates while Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack holds fourth place, trailing Edwards by 20 points in an early test of support among likely Iowa caucus participants.

A new Iowa Poll conducted for The Des Moines Register shows that Edwards, the runner-up in the Iowa Democratic caucuses two years ago and a frequent visitor to the state since then, is the choice of 30 percent of Iowans who say they are likely to take part in the January 2008 caucuses.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York follows on Edwards' heels with 26 percent in the Iowa Poll.

Experts say it's the first poll showing anyone besides Clinton as the preferred Democrat in the race for the White House.

It is just a poll - but it is a poll of likely caucus participants, and thus it is a bit significant.

Edwards did well in Iowa in 2004 - mostly, I think, because he's speaks the liberal-populist lingo well enough to gull the Democrats in Iowa who still like to think of themselves as average Joe's (really, they are a bunch of government bureaucrats and educrats who don't know the first thing about how regular Iowans live). He's taken the anti-war stance - and took it early enough that even his vote to liberate Iraq in 2003 is forgiven (after all, he'd just be yet another Democrat "tricked" into supporting Bush's illegal war for oil/Halliburton/Likud/Insert Conspiracy Theory Here).

It will be the Un-Clinton who ends up with the Democratic nomination - whomever adheres to the most left; whoever, that is, who most definitively doesn't try to triangulate themselves into office. My bet is that Al Gore is best equipped to do this - but a march may be stolen on him, and an allegedly fresh face like Edwards (who can, after all, self-finance for the early going if he wants to) could sneak up and grap the whole, worthless Democratic ball of wax. We shall see.

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