In 2004, John Edwards won the endorsement of the Des Moines Register. But this time they picked Hillary Clinton because they were terrified by Edwards' challenge to Corporate Power. Edwards told George Stephanopoulos,

What I’m saying is I’m going to be the president, like Teddy Roosevelt, and like others like him-Harry Truman, who understood that there is an important battle against those interests-well financed, well entrenched, that prevent the kind of change that the country needs, that’s for the greater good. That’s for the greater good of the people. That’s the battle I’m talking about and that’s the fight I’m going to take on and win. And those who think you can do it by making a deal with him or compromising and conciliation…what possible reason do they have to give their power away voluntarily? They will not do it until you effectively taken their power away from them.

Good for Edwards.

Of course the loss of the Des Moines Register endorsement is just the beginning of a wave of attacks on Edwards by the Corporate Media, which must - by definition - destroy any anti-corporate candidate. They even censored Kucinich entirely from the last debate.

All eyes are on Iowa. If Edwards wins, the Corporate Media will unleash an all-out assault. It will be the job of progressive bloggers to defend him against that assault.

And in the longer term, we will not get our Democracy back until we put the Corporate Media out of business.

Update 1: In his inimitable style, Atrios simplifies the campaigns of the three poll-leading Democrats:

Obama: The system sucks, but I'm so awesome that it'll melt away before me.

Edwards: The system sucks, and we're gonna have to fight like hell to destroy it.

Clinton: The system sucks, and I know how to work within it more than anyone.

Is that how you see the differences?

Update 2: Due to the shocking rise of Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, Corporatist Ideologues are being forced to fight a two-front war against both Democrats and Republicans. Here's panicked rightwinger David Frum:

The currently front-running candidate in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has built his campaign on a plan to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax.

Economists and tax experts virtually unanimously agree that the plan is beyond unworkable -- that it is downright absurd. (It does not help that it was originally drafted by the Church of Scientology.)...

Just a little lower down in the polls is a libertarian candidate named Ron Paul. Paul is best known for his vehemently isolationist foreign policy views. But his core supporters also thrill to his self-taught monetary views, which amount to a rejection of everything taught by modern economists from Alfred Marshall to Milton Friedman.

Conservatives may claim to worship Jesus, but Milton Friedman is the one and only true god of Corporatists. In their eyes, anyone who deviates from Friedmanism is a heretic who must be destroyed.