As Thump333 states--Lemon Law, I certainly don't recall any muting of Edwards by Kerry. They pretty actively campaigned together. Like Skoorb i do recall Edwards being pretty much spanked by Cheney in the VP debates.
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I have some mixed feelings about your statement. I do think Kerry did actively decide to soft peddle the Edwards message in 04 and Edwards, as the dutiful VP complied. As we see, the Kerry I am a smarter version of GWB flopped, when IMHO, Kerry should have run as the not GWB and used Edwards more to attack GWB&co. economic policies.
I do however agree that Edward's ignorance of issues showed in the Presidential debates in 04, but as I said, I followed his career, and he spent almost four non stop years better preparing himself on the issues. Edwards is far more knowledgeable now.
However, Obama is now in the Edwards boat, he is more image than substance, and as the New York times pointed out, Hillary has the far greater data base mastery of the issues. In terms of how we ignorant voters think a given candidate should stand on the issues, that is far more debatable