As Joan Walsh reports, Elizabeth Edwards phoned in to "Hardball" Tuesday and took it to Ann Coulter, who has called her husband a "faggot" and accused him of trying to capitalize on the death of his teenage son. Edwards told Coulter that she was encouraging people "to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness instead of on the issues, and I don't think that's serving them or this country very well."
Maybe somebody should deliver the same message to Hillary Clinton's pollster. While it obviously doesn't arise -- or, more accurately, sink -- to the level of what Coulter has said about Edwards, Clinton pollster Mark Penn is reportedly using push polling in Iowa to test some negative messages about Edwards and Barack Obama. Among the not-exactly-about-the-issues questions they're asking: Would voters be more or less likely to support Edwards if they knew that he "promotes himself as a champion of the poor, and yet he went and got a $400 haircut"?
Update: At 9:18 a.m. today, NBC's "First Read" asked: "As the end of the second quarter rapidly approaches, anyone want to bet we see a fundraising email from the Edwards camp that highlights yesterday's [Edwards-Coulter] exchange?" At 9:51 a.m. today, we received an e-mail message from Elizabeth Edwards highlighting her conversation with Coulter and asking us to give money to her husband's campaign.
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