It's premature to be alarmed, but at the same time it's risky to dismiss Edwards. He has near-zero experience for such a hefty job, but I don't exactly have a huge amount of faith that the electorate would be distressed about that. He's a trial lawyer, which is bad, a group that most people abhor, but with his looks and harmless demeanor, it'll be a challenge to portray him as just another predator in a predatory profession. You can bet the little girl in the swimming pool incident will be brought up again and again. He's a political lightweight to be sure, but as we've seen with his position on judiciary, he can play hardball. He might implode later on, but in my view he's the only candidate who's the most threatening at this point--sure he might lose his own state where people know him best and don't like what they see, but some of the other southern states won't have that 'priviledge' and might go for him.
By the way, wasn't the actor who played the villian in the movie "The Dead Zone" the same actor who plays the president in "West Wing"?