A question perhaps too cynical for the MySpace event with John Edwards: If you’re running third, and a pretty distant one at that, and Democratic primary voters are livid that U.S troops are still in Iraq, how on earth could you not promise to get all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by the end of your first term?

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Edwards, will you commit that at the end of your first term, in 2013, all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq? MR. EDWARDS: I cannot make that commitment. I — well, I can tell you what I would do as president. If I — when I’m sworn into office come January of 2009, if there are in fact, as General Petraeus suggests, 100,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, I will immediately draw down 40 (thousand) to 50,000 troops and, over the course of the next several months, continue to bring our combat troops out of Iraq until all of our combat troops are in fact out of Iraq. I think the problem is, and it’s what you’ve just heard discussed, is, we will maintain an embassy in Baghdad. That embassy has to be protected. We will probably have humanitarian workers in Iraq. Those humanitarian workers have to be protected. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of a brigade of troops will be necessary to accomplish that — 3,500 to 5,000 troops.

If Edwards had simply said ”yes, I can make that commitment,” wouldn’t he be the winner to the audience he needs to reach? Wouldn’t he be the serious antiwar candidate?

On an unrelated note – for a brief while, they were piping techno music (I think) loudly into the press area. Um, organizers, I realize some of my blogging brethren may be cooler than I, but generally those of us covering campaigns get old and crotchety before our time.