Why John Edwards?

My name is Michael Conrad. I am a General Director with Team Edwards, a coalition of supporters working together to nominate and elect John Edwards. I am writing this for two reasons. One is to introduce Team Edwards to other supporters of John Edwards.

http://teamedwards08.blogspot.com/

The second, and far more important reason, is to lay out a few reasons for supporting John Edwards that I feel have been overlooked. There many reasons to support John Edwards. Instead of listing all of them here I think it would be best if I did this in a series. Consider this the first part.

For the first time in a long time the Democrat who best represents our values is also the most electable. That is just one of the reasons why I feel it is so important for the progressive movement to come together and support John Edwards' campaign. This diary would be far too long if I went into detail about all the reasons to support John Edwards, but I'll list some of the things he has done that make it clear that he is the bold progressive leader that both our party and our country desperately needs. If you dispute the point that John Edwards is the most electable Democrat I would like for you to check out the latest post on our blog. If you are already a John Edwards supporter you will be able to find information that will help you when engaging fellow Democrats about supporting John Edwards.

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John Edwards' recent confrontation recent confrontation of the Bush doctrine of a "War on Terror" is a great example of this. Confronting one of the most widely used and effective political frames in recent memory was not an easy task but it was something that someone, for the long-term well being of both our party and our country, needed to do. What makes this decision even more important is how it was made. Edwards had a few seconds at the most to decide whether to raise his hand when the question about a "war on terror" was asked. Not only was he the only major candidate not to raise his hand, he did not stop there.

He showed progressive Democrats why engaging conservative myths is important, that it is possible, and how it can be done. Every counter-terrorism/national security expert that I have seen speak (usually on C-Span's "Book TV") has made it clear that the Bush administration has made us less safe, increased the number of terrorists, and fueled their hatred for us. As Edwards himself pointed out, we need to give those on the fence (and there are many) a hand to our side, not a shove to the other. Edwards confronted this conservative myth publicly and vigorously and he offered a substantive alternative to the Bush doctrine.

There are many other examples of John Edwards displaying the bold leadership that we are looking for, and that is what I would like to end with. I like to call it the "John Edwards First and Often Only" List. It is a list of times that during the course of this campaign John Edwards was the first, and often only, candidate to do something of importance. This list was first posted on our blog on Monday April 2nd. Soon after it became very hard to keep track of all of the examples of Edwards demonstrating leadership during this campaign so this list has not been updated as often as we would have liked, but I think it gets the point across.

http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2007/6/10/173923/641">Read More Here