Spin Cycle

Dan Janison spent the morning with John Edwards and City Councilman Bill deBlasio in NYC, and sends along the attempted picture at left (Edwards is the one with the open collar and pronounced "v" in his sportcoat, deBlasio the tall guy in back), and this dispatch:

Former presidential candidate John Edwards toured a food pantry in East Harlem -- and said it was purely coincidental he was in town the same day Barack Obama was due in midtown on a fundraising mission.

"Yes it's a coincidence, but I'm glad were doing it," he said.

Edwards, in a Q and A after the event, part of his anti-poverty push, tied the increased needs of the poor to "the advent of welfare reform" (wasn't that under Bill Clinton?) as well as the Bush administration. "You're seeing the effects," he said.

"We need it to be as easy to get food stamps on line as it is to get an airline ticket," he said.

He insisted Obama and John McCain are "very different" on poverty issues and said Obama "will do what he can" in office to relieve hunger. In other words, Edwards stayed professionally on message, and argued away concerns among some that Obama has shifted strategically rightward on Iraq and faithbased programs, among other topics, in the wake of the Dem primaries..

Bill deBlasio, who chairs the welfare committee in the City Council, was Edwards' New York chairman in the 2004 presidential primary but has also been a Hillary Clinton campaign operative going back to her first Senate race in 2000.

Edwards was asked if he planned to speak with Obama, perhaps about a post in the Democrat's administration if he wins.

"I have no plans and would not tell you if I did," he said. In standard political form for such questions the former senator said he'd serve in whatever way Obama saw fit.