Letters to the Editor
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Edwards is The Right Candidate
I'm as intrigued and impressed by Obama as the next person, but Edwards has the goods right now. The other evening, we watched him at an hour long town meeting at the University of New Hampshire. His command, his sinceriy, his believability, were rivetting. He's like Clinton with guts and morals. Not Hillary. She has no guts.
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It's gotta be either Edwards or Richardson
We need to quit messing around with the popular Hollywood candidates, and pick us a candidate with some substance and brains and courage. Either Edwards or New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson would do -- but let's dump the Top Two.
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Good People
Long live Elizabeth and John Edwards.
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He still seems disingenuous
Having read this piece, I still can't get past the sense I had in the last election that Mr. Edwards is just fake and that everything he says and does is just calculated. I have felt badly about expressing it aloud when his wife is terminally ill and everyone is giving him a pass but he still seems fake. Everything from the kids on the campaign, to using the sympathy notes to generate a list of potential financial contacts. I hope it turns out not to be true but for now, I'm just not buying the total transformation from moderate, cautious candidate to a far left gospel.
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Political Relativity
Edwards is not, and does not pretend to be, "far left". He only seems far left because we're ruled by fascists. A moderate, rational Democrat seems like a leftist after the goosestepping fools that have been "leading" us since the 2000 coup.
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foolmetwice: I did too for a minute
I'm so accustomed to being cynical under the rule of King W. and rightfully so, and so I too have felt pangs of skepticism towards Edwards' sincerity. After all, wasn't the base of the right-wing seduced by the aww-shucks facade of W.? And we all now know his good-ol'-boy charm was just a mask for the insecure, cruel, frat-boy asshole that we all know he really is. Could John Edwards be the same? Could it be an act?
But that all disappears when I think about how passionately and unequivocably he is giving voice to so many issues that I care about and desperately want to see become a part of our national dialogue. His background does matter, we know what someone's upbringing does to shape or, as in the case of W., mis-shape their character. The man seems to get it on a personal level, and thank god for all of us that he also happens to be an extremely gifted orator. It is a welcomed change and a necessity frankly that all of America hear John Edwards articulate the need for universal health care, worker's rights, fair trade and an environmentally sustainable economy.
These are populist issues. They can only propel a candidate to the Whitehouse if there is a massive wave of support for them that can overwhelm the politics-as-usual elites that survive on their corporate donors and meandering pandering centrist ways. So if you're gonna stir up the people by talking about big issues like these, you'd best deliver or you'll be ten times as unpopular twice as fast if you turn your back on the people who put you there. It'll work much the same way as things did under Bush and Cheney, but instead of the president guiding policy towards the whims of neoconservative thinktanks and Halliburton, he'll be guided by the needs of the people of the United States of America.
So I'm not as much supporting a candidate, as I am supporting all of the issues that I care most deeply about by hiring the most passionate and effective advocate for them that I can find. Right now that's looking like Edwards to me and a lot of other folks.
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A New Man
I saw Edwards speak in December and I'd have to agree entirely with this article.
He will win or lose based on his firm conviction that the country is in a state of emergency. He doesn't waste anybody's time with the Pollyanna hooey we hear from every other candidate except the unviable Kucinich (good fellow without a snowball's chance in hell). People don't want to hear that we have to start to contend with incommodius change of some sort to curtail the abject disasters that loom ahead if not grappled with asap; the war in Iraq, the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, no national healthcare, global warming, the energy crisis... This is an "ask what you can do for your country" kind of man now. It's so refreshing to hear him speak the obvious truth after so many years of the "go shopping" perspective.
Maybe it's because he's had even more experience with the precious nature of life itself because of contending with Elizabeth's illness. He knows that not even one moment can be wasted when something requires urgent attention.
He's not going to fob off a bill of goods to gain a warm and fuzzy fan club, that's for sure.
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The metamorphosis
American politics, and commentary on it, runs by rules as artificial as those of the Petrarchan sonnet or the TV western.
The principal trope here -- as with the recent Barr article -- is 'change of essence': the hero mysteriously transforms from one kind of being to another, causing all memory of the previous incarnation to disappear. Thus Bush changes from sot to savior, from dish-rag governor to silk-purse 'compassionate conservative', and we are constrained by the rules to accept this as possible.
Edwards' abysmal, vacant, costly performance in the last election still deserves an explanation.
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What's allowing Edwards to be the left flank?
It's easy to observe the campaign rhetoric and say, "Edwards is the most left of the top-tier candidates." And that may be the case. But this essay completely misses a more glaring difference between Edwards and the other two candidates: he's a white male .
I'm not saying we should give Obama and Clinton a free pass. But for those of you who think Obama and Clinton have sold out, just think about this: how much easier is it for Edwards to be a progressive than it would be for either of them?