Josh Marshall on three candidate events yesterday: Edwards may have the niceness campaign. But his folks aren’t above showing off what brickbats the other guys’ are using. In the hall behind the forest of tripods and the underbrush of AV cables and knocked over chairs, an Edwards staffer was telling a reporter he could come by Edwards Headquarters if he wanted to view the attack mailing Kerry was sending out about Clark. Right, Edwards will hook you with Kerry’s anti-Clark attack mailing...The crowd at the Edwards rally, by my count, was about 600 people, all very pumped up, with some undetermined number of others in an ‘overflow’ room somewhere else on campus....Edwards, as nearly as I can tell, never utters a word without one or more hands gesturing in some significant, word-intensifying manner. He railed at “that crowd of insiders in Washington and their lobbyists”, pumped his fists again and again, smiled again and again and told the audience about “the America we’re going to build.” I’ve realized that it’s impossible not to believe Edwards is going to be the nominee while you’re actually watching an Edwards event. The certainty wears off a while later, of course. But while he’s got you in his crowd you’re under his spell. ...Clark’s audience was in a similar-sized room with just as many people (roughly 600 we figured, with others in overflow) and, in their own way, just as charged as Edwards’. There was the same intensity, the crowd waves, the call and response, chants building up to fury and then lapsing away. The same intensity, but less organized --- and more boisterous --- or not so much directed by one person up on a stage...When I saw Clark a few days ago his delivery struck me as a tad rushed. He yelled his presentation a bit, or something -- I'm not sure precisely what -- was just off key. But today was different. He connected with the crowd. He hit the war issue hard --- Bush is someone who “prances around on the deck of an aircraft carrier.”...Edwards is a bit like a high school rally: fun, loud, clean, exuberance, well-drilled. Clark’s event had no less intensity, but it was a bit more rough-edged, grittier somehow. ...Kerry’s event was in a cavernous high school gym at another school in Nashua, a room at least twice the size of the other two I’d been to that morning and bisected by a massive Patton-like American flag, which made the backdrop for Kerry's speech...it seemed like many more than either Edwards’ or Clark’s --- I wouldn’t be surprised if it were double the number...And looking around the crowd I noticed it was well seeded with political notables from both states...It reminds you that Kerry was the front-runner last winter and spring, before the wagon got upended...He’s also adopting the high presidential cant … “and so I say to you” … “in these final hours” … “stand with me and …”