Letters to the Editor
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Edwards
I'm sick and tired of John Edwards and his snarky ways, I wish he would just go home!No way is he going to beat Obama but he continues to pile on Hillary. If he can't be touched by her emotion is he really so caring of all those "poor" people he has built his campaign around?
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to Green Job
You write:
"Edwards knows a lot about giving up ... since he gave up on his Presidential campaign Saturday night."
That's not what he's up to. Edwards is clearly going for a two-candidate race, with him and Obama as the two candidates. This requires that he help Obama knock Clinton out of the race first, then stay close enough to keep going. To win, he's got to take on Obama at some point, but as long as the press pretends that it's Hillary vs Barack, attacking Obama only helps Hillary.
For this tactic to work, he probably needs a miracle of some kind, like a major mis-step by Obama, but he isn't likely to get it.
But if Hillary melts down so badly that Edwards comes in second in New Hampshire, the press is going to have an increasingly difficult time ignoring him.
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After 25 years in the public eye, a public tear?
1. I hope the press doesn't dismiss Sen Clinton for this, as happened to the late Sen. Muskie in 1972.
2. Edwards' lack of sympathy is understandable, because she didn't tear up over anything more than a question of difficulty in realizing her own ambitions. For her to act as if her political difficulties boded ill for the country is more egotism than warm hearted vulnerability. She showed no such emotion when her husband was defeated for reelection in Arkansas, or when Vince Foster committed suicide, or during the period of Richard M. Scaife's revenge for a tax increase, or during the public airing of her husband's infidelities. But after she is compared unfavorably to Obama's inspiration and Edwards' passion she develops a quaver and tear. Eh?
3. Edwards comitted a tactical blunder by playing into the act.
He should have said, 'No comment. Next question.'
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Co-opting campaign lines
I know it's really mean to kick people when their down. I haven't seen the video, just read about this, and I was moved, so I'm not a total ice queen.
But, I've been watching Hillary since October. I would have voted for her. But, she voted for Iran, and then she... did lots of mean stuff (trying to be nice).
What most sticks in my mind, however, is when Shaheen talked about Obama to the MSM, she apologized personally (BIG press release on that), and fired Shaheen. If the apology had been sincere, the issue would have been dropped. But, Mark Penn was out that very evening pushing the same story. Her apology was just a ruse. As she was quoted in a NYTimes article, "Don't leave any finger prints". I was just starting to feel sorry for her for the second time, and she once again pulled something doublehanded.
In that context, I look at the tears. Are they real? I can easily imagine the stress she's under. On the other hand, it seems rather scripted when she co-opts John Edwards line at the same time and says "This is personal for me." I think it was scripted. Ice queen that I may be, I've seen her toss her integrity away to score some points before.
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Politics is A Tough Business
Politics is a tough business. Harry Truman, as usual said it best: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." If anything, I thought Edwards was relatively gentle. Look what happened to Ed Muskie in the same situation.
And most amazingly, HRC wasn't crying about the death of a soldier, or some horrible missed policy opportunity, but over her own electoral fate. And if you listen carefully to the quote, she says, "some of us are ready, some of us aren't; some of us know what we want to do on day one, some of us don't . . . ." Apparently she truly in her heart believes that Obama and Edwards aren't qualified. Not that she's more qualified, but that they are not qualified. What a load of arrogant, self-centered bullshit.
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Unworthy of a once fine guy
I used to be a strong admirer of John Edwards and contributed more to his campaign than to any of the others last summer. But I've had it with this recent toadying to Obama and ripping of Clinton, again and again. Edwards has a dead-end "strategy" that will get him nowhere and will only continue to ruin his reputation. I'm glad to see several Edwards supporters in this thread rebuke his mean-spirited comments, and of course they should continue to support him--it's not THAT big a deal if he's your guy. But I'm sorry to see the man become someone so much less admirable than he was.
And of course the Hillary demonizers are still with us. If she crashed in a helicopter accident some of them would insist she'd planned to be killed to get sympathy. Well, it takes all kinds to make a world...or a divided suicidal political party, I suppose.
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Guys it was a set up
I saw the on-the-fly interview where a reporter asked Edwards to comment and it wasn't at all like Tim Grieve just reported it.
Edwards was actually sympathetic and not in the patronizing way that Obama was when he commented.
Indeed, Obama often is patronizing toward Hillary. But he gets a "by" and Edwards apparently is fair game, not being a god-like figure, but a mere man. So you get to call him a prick, twice.
Look, this may have been just an excuse for you all to pile on to John, but the truth is, you just got manipulated by biased reporting. (I guess I'm not going to get an editor's choice on this one.)
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And now for the rest of the story...
No thanks to Tim Grieve for only giving the controversial part of Edwards' response. I haven't found the whole thing in video or print but found at least a couple places that owned up to Edwards prefacing that he didn't know about Hillary's statement / behavior...
"... At a New Hampshire campaign event, presidential rival John Edwards told reporters ***he was unaware of Clinton's emotional reaction and would not respond to it.***
But he did say, "I think what we need in a commander in chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are a tough business, but being president of the United States is also a very tough business.
"And the President of the United States is faced with very, very difficult challenges every single day, difficult judgments every single day." ..."
And even Edwards' tone, in the video with only the above quote, isn't as bad as one might expect from reading it. Plus, compare that to seeing her in video - not very convincing at all if you know what its like to honestly get choked up in public. Plus maybe she's forgotten her closing statement a couple months ago at her alma matar, Wellesley: "In so many ways this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boy's club of presidential politics."
So I think this is mostly media manipulation... turning a couple of political play mole hills into a sound bite mountain. Salon played right along with it. Disappointing.