It's kerry and Edwards

Nah, they haven't really tried to evoke the lawyer hating in full force yet. Wait till that becomes his label.

We'd note that even though the Kerry camp calls North Carolina a battleground state, we never received any kind of response to the Edwards pick from Democratic Senate candidate Erskine Bowles yesterday (or even from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee when we asked about a Bowles response).

Democrat Nancy Farmer, fighting an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Kit Bond in Missouri, went out of her way to liken herself to Edwards: "John Edwards and I both come from working class backgrounds, we were the first in our families to go to college and I'm the first to applaud Senator Kerry on choosing an outstanding running mate who understands the needs of working Americans."

It's not about specific cases, it's about general hatred and distrust of lawyers.

It's not about specific cases, it's about general hatred and distrust of lawyers. Surely you've seen that on A2K. Extremely reviled subspecies in America

Yet Mr. Edwards's background as a trial lawyer before he entered the Senate is already drawing fire from another group with even deeper pockets: business leaders and manufacturers. Few things are capable of uniting industry groups as much as their opposition to trial lawyers. And few politicians have been as adept at exploiting that hostility as President Bush, who, at the urging of his political adviser Karl Rove, has made attacks on trial lawyers a central part of his political strategy ever since his first run for Texas governor a decade ago.

Here you go Fishin. I don't know how he'll avoid getting buried under this.

a generalized and significant dislike of lawyers.

When Edwards talks of the two Americas, it doesn't come across the way it does for Kerry, as some rich guy who feels guilty. This is someone who's been there and thinks that other people deserve the chance that he got.

Also the question is one of those that is a little tricky -- "experience as". I could see that a slightly different spin could yield very different results

PAKISTAN FOR BUSH: July Surprise

[..] The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

[..] Powell conspicuously did not commit the United States to selling F-16s to Pakistan, which it desperately wants in order to tilt the regional balance of power against India. And the Pakistanis fear that, if they don't produce an HVT, they won't get the planes. Equally, they fear that, if they don't deliver, either Bush or a prospective Kerry administration would turn its attention to the apparent role of Pakistan's security establishment in facilitating Khan's illicit proliferation network. One Pakistani general recently in Washington confided in a journalist, "If we don't find these guys by the election, they are going to stick this whole nuclear mess up our asshole."