Once the best of buddies along the campaign trail, John Kerry and John Edwards are reportedly now trading charges about who's to blame for blowing their chance to defeat George W. Bush last November.
"Mr. Edwards these days has made little secret of disagreements he says he had with the presidential campaign," reports Wednesday's New York Times.
The North Carolina Democrat has been complaining of late that team Kerry "should not have pulled out of Missouri," the paper said, "and that it was slow in responding to the attacks on Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record by other Vietnam veterans."
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"I wanted to fight back the day it started," Edwards recently griped to ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos.
A former senior Kerry campaign adviser fired back, telling the Times: "The veep is supposed to be a teammate of the presidential nominee - and he and his senior staff were part of every significant decision that was made in the campaign."
Meanwhile, Kerry "associates" are beginning to grouse that Edwards appears to have already welshed on a promise not to run in 2008 unless Kerry bows out of the race.
Some even complain that the wannabe-veep was MIA on the campaign trail when he should have been giving the effort his all.
"The most common question I got during the course of the campaign was, Where was John Edwards?" said T.J. Reynolds, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. "His stature seems to have been diminished somewhat during his run for presidency, in the opinion of more than a few people I spoke to."
Still, despite the carping and backbiting, Kerry adviser Jenny Backus was doing her best to keep up appearances:
"Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards are good friends and they ran a great campaign together," she told the Times.
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