After a Night of G.O.P. Attacks, Edwards Fights Back

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/politics/campaign/03edwards.html

September 3, 2004
After a Night of G.O.P. Attacks, Edwards Fights Back
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

MORRISTOWN, Pa., Sept. 2 - Stung by criticism at the Republican convention from Vice President Dick Cheney and from Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, one of their own, Democrats fought back on Thursday, insisting that their adversaries were attacking Senator John Kerry because they had achieved so little worth celebrating.

"I can understand why the vice president spent so much of his time talking about John Kerry," Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, said at a lively rally here in the suburbs of Philadelphia. "It's because he doesn't want to talk about what they did the last four years."

Mr. Edwards, who campaigned much of the week in economically depressed areas of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, took the lead in the Democratic campaign's response to the onslaught. He began the effort from his hotel in Philadelphia late Wednesday night, issuing a statement after the convention speeches saying, "There was a lot of hate coming from that podium."

Shortly after 5 a.m. on Thursday he was at it again, sitting through interviews the campaign had requested with NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and Fox and offering each one virtually the same assessment of the Republican speeches of the night before.

The attacks from Mr. Cheney and Mr. Miller were "way over the top," Mr. Edwards told Fox, and filled with "an enormous amount of anger," he told ABC. On CNN, he said, "If you got up and went to the refrigerator to get a Diet Coke, you would have missed any discussion of what they're going to do about health care, what they're going to do about jobs, what they plan to do about this mess in Iraq."

Mr. Edwards also told CNN that many of the accusations Mr. Cheney and Mr. Miller made against Mr. Kerry were "wildly inaccurate." <snip>