LAS VEGAS - Former Sen. John Edwards did his usual razzle dazzle stump speech last night, getting a crowd of 600 excited about Saturday's caucus.

But he received the loudest and most sustained applause when he told his supporters gathered in the Carpenters Union hall there are three viable Democrats in the race for the presidency.

"One of the things that happened in the debate last night, when the three of us were sitting on the stage, is a lot of Nevada caucus goers realized for the first time contrary to what the media's been telling them for a year, there aren't two candidates running for president, there are actually three," Edwards said, to huge cheers.

He later told reporters he is the best candidate and that the press must look beyond "celebrity" "glitz" and more than $100 million in contributions. The campaign has been pushing this message for awhile.

"The press may be trying to spin this as a two-person race -- but the voters in Nevada are saying differently," campaign manager David Bonior wrote in a recent fundraising e-mail to supporters, citing the Reno Gazette-Journal poll showing Edwards in a three-way tie with Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (Sound familiar?)

And to remind voters of the differences between the three candidates, Team Edwards is running four ads with a similar message.

The other spots use the same premise and highlight his pledges to refuse money from Washington lobbyists and to ban lobbyists from his White House and say he's the only Democrat who beats all the Republican candidates in a recent poll.

Edwards adviser Joe Trippi said in the debate spin room Tuesday his boss will remain in the race through the summer Democratic convention regardless of the results of the next primaries.

And to prove he's in it for the long haul for those upcoming elections, he's doing a tour dubbed "America Rising, Coast to Coast," with stops here, and in Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Atlanta and Greenville, South Carolina.

Edwards also jumped into the Social Security debate that raged between Clinton and Obama yesterday. His comments are included in my story I have in today's paper from the Clinton campaign trail.

My colleague Don Lambro also has a piece on Edwards up today, exploring how his populist message isn't winning despite the lousy economy.

As both Clinton and Obama campaign in California today, I'll be spending my day with their spouses as they stump here.

And just for fun, Stephen Colbert in this clip uses a roulette wheel to predict that Obama will win the Nevada caucus.

-- Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter, The Washington Times