An Edwards victory would be great for progressives; what more, really, do you need to know?

If Edwards Wins: The January 4th Narrative
by david mizner, Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 05:04:20 PM EST

We've spent months debating which of the candidates would make the best nominee and president. But no less important than what these candidates would do is what their victories would mean. There will be a story line coming out of the primary, and it will have a huge impact on the battle between the two wings of the Democratic Party, the PPs (progressive-populists) and the CCs (centrist-corporatists.)




An Obama victory would be more ambiguous. An Edwards victory would be a jolt to the central nervous system of the Democratic Establishment.




An Edwards victory would be great for progressives; what more, really, do you need to know?

more at:
http://mydd.com/story/2007/11/27/17420/490#commenttop

Just gotta.

:evilgrin:

Das ist verboten

LET'S TAKE OUR COUNTRY (AND OUR PARTY) BACK!

I love this potential quote:

"This is a real wake up call for the moderates in the party," said political analyst Stu Rothenberg. "This is not Bill Clinton's party anymore. Which means it might not be Hillary Clinton's, either."

No more status quo!

No more lobbyist money in return for favors if elected!

No secret closed door deals.

It can all stop with Edwards, and only Edwards.

Nobody else has more experiencing fighting against corporate excess.

He is my second. Kucinich is my first. If you are populist, you get my vote. If you do not care at all about populism, I will activaly work against you...those are my terms.

Having said that, I will most likely be voting for him in the primary if he is striking distance from Mrs. DLC. Edwards would be very difficult to beat in the general election versus the Republican scum.

am concerned that he is not as "electable", and that voting for him may well make a statement (that I have never felt more compelled to make), but would also take needed votes away from a more "electable" Dem candidate...

They were all electable and got elected largely on "we're not republicans." But what good has it done?

Somewhere you have to realize BS is just that--BS, and will never ever do any good. All those politicians who try to be moderate by compromising their principles and pandering to a bunch of fools do not have the ability to fix any problems. And the voters who knowingly compromise their own principles to elect them are no better.

The whole point of the election is to give a voice to everyone, but what's that worth when they all lie?

I supported Nader last go-round, and I'll support Kucinich this time, and I make no apologies to the crybabies who think they have some sort of right to my vote. My vote will go to whoever earns it, and at this point it's Kucinich.

.. as in 10 points or maybe 15 points down is one thing. Being 50 points down is another.

I have as much chance of being elected president as Kucinich does, i.e. zero.

DLCer, voter of war and PATRIOT Act.

It still amazes me how duped he seems to have progressive boards.

CHECK HIS RECORD.

I don't care what people labeled him in the past, Edwards' ideas are progressive. Edwards explains that he was sickened by what he experienced in Congress. Edwards wants change. Edwards' personal life and the events in his life have pushed him toward progressive ideas. It is reasonable to believe that the fact that Elizabeth has a serious medical condition caused Edwards to rethink some of his stances. It is precisely that kind of event that causes people to grow and change. I think Edwards was always a progressive and a rebel at heart. I can see that from the kinds of cases he brought to court and the huge awards he won for the plaintiffs he represented. He is a fighter. He does not take no, or you can't do that for an answer. This is a man you can trust to fight for progressive ideas and to win.

not the politician from 98-04, when he was my 2nd, not my first choice. There was something missing with him back then - he has it now and it's called a lack of concern of what the elitists think. He knows the system is rigged - he was in it and saw it and knows they stole the 04 election in Ohio. Every single missive from his campaign speaks volumes of who's side he is on!

GO JOHN!

I have enough snakeoil, thank you.

Here is what a Salon reporter said after hearing Edwards in New Hampshire.

What stayed with me overnight were not the remarks from Edwards' prepared text. Rather, I was far more swayed by a riff that the former 2004 vice-presidential nominee launched into in response to a question about which prior presidents have stood up to entrenched interests. (By the way, Edwards, like John McCain, is a Teddy Roosevelt groupie.)

"I'm going to be critical of my own party," Edwards declared, certainly getting my attention. "One of the mistakes that we make is to believe that all we have to do is to be better at this game than are. If we're better at this game than them, we can be elected and then wield power. But for what purpose? But for what purpose, if nothing changes? Except for glorifying the ego of a particular candidate, what difference does it make?"

Then Edwards continued with this refrain that contained echoes of prior speeches: "To be perfectly honest about it, my life is going to be fine no matter what happens. So is Barack Obama's. So is Hillary Clinton's. Our life is going to be fine. On the other side, Mitt Romney is going to be fine. Giuliani is going to be fine ... But should not be about any of us; it should be about the country we believe in. The democracy we want to change. Where the people who we all grew up with -- your story -- get heard."

I am not certain how well the power of this argument, which was delivered earnestly rather than in polished paragraphs, translates to the written page. But for me -- a self-confessed easy grader when it comes to trial-lawyer rhetoric -- it was a reminder of how quickly the contours of the Democratic nomination fight could change if Edwards were to win Iowa.

http://www.salon.com/politics/roadies/2007/11/27/edwards_unplugged/index.html

I agree he has been a DLCer when even I did not know what a DLCer Clinton party the democratic party had become..

Times have changed and so has Edwards.

I can do without that sort of change.

What is your evidence other than that he has changed?

we'd see a brand new America.

Edwards personifies progressive.

Thanks for a great post, kpete!

I want an Edwards/Obama ticket so we will have 16 years of Democratic rule!

a lot of people who weren't paying close attention to think something else before they formed their opinions based on facts.

a lot of people who weren't paying close attention to think something else before they formed their opinions based on facts.1

Edwards had my vote the minute he said no to corporate/lobbyist money! Who knew that we could once again elect a president to serve the will of the people? Elizabeth will be a
terrific bonus, she is an incredible woman.

My middle class heart is weary, but I know with Edwards we can have real change for the better on all fronts.

Thanks, kpete!!!!:yourock:

at least he's not a Republican lite like Hillary. If the Dem voters are not smart enough to see that, well then stupid is as stupid does.

And no, I'm NOT gay - I never HAVE BEEN Gay! ..... not that there's anything wrong with that.:loveya:

Right now, today, Edwards has already thrown down the gauntlet to corporate interests and the MSM corporate agenda. They know exactly what they will get if Edwards is elected, and they are working hard to silence his campaign.

It is going to take an overhaul of the MSM corporate ownership interests to get the Media to start working in the interests of the public again. Once that takes place, people can be educated as to what has been taking place and how it affects them.

The first 4 years of an Edwards Administration would lead to dynamic, tranformational change. It will be confrontational and will require commitment and perserverance, which Edwards is prepared to do.

Can we see that happening if Hillary wins? or if Obama wins?

gotten as far as Edwards with his anti-corporate stance? If so, I did not notice it.

NoFederales

not just someone who supposedly thought that the IWR would lead to "harder" diplomacy. JE was gungho for war, and he bought every transparent lie in the bush repetoire. He bought the aluminum tubes and nuclear weapons lies. He defended the war way, way after it had become a debacle. I won't vote for Clinton in the primaries and I won't give Edwards my vote for the same reason.

without congress approval first. I raked my Congressman for voting yes to this before "Shock and Awe". I was very very disappointed in him. We were at a local political event and I confronted him about his vote. BTW it was to give Bush authority, not a vote to go to war. His reply was that they had seen some very disturbing evidence and that he felt compelled to vote that way.

Well, now we know that all that compelling evidence was pure bullshit. I will not use that initial vote as the determining factor in supporting a candidate. I would hope that each politician that was duped by the Bush administration would have learned his/her lesson. Do we have evidence of that? I applaud Kucinich for his bravery for voting no back then. I just wonder how he was able to see through it all while the others couldn't.

of the dems in the House voted against it and in the Senate nearly half of the dems voted against it. I highly recommend reading Leahy's great speech imploring his colleagues to vote not to give a blank check to bushco and comparing the "evidence" to the Tonkin Gulf incident. Leahy said then and he maintains today that it absolutely was a vote to go to war and that they ALL knew that. Your rep was bullshitting you.

What did you think of that?

constantly, and I believe he wouldn't have voted for the IWR had he been in the Congress. Edwards not only voted for it, he co-sponsored it with Lieberman, and beyond that he WANTED to go to war. He didn't just vote for it because he thought it "strengthened" the admin's hand. Look, 4 years ago, I decided I would not vote for anyone in the primary who voted for the AUMF. I still feel that way. If Edwards gets the nomination, I'll happily vote for him. In fact, it'll be much easier for me to vote for him than it was to vote for Kerry. He's saying things I like. I've read a lot of his position papers and I'm impressed by them. It's just that vote was huge for for the country and world, for that matter, and I will not vote in a primary for anyone who voted for it.

and he knew that a lot of Americans didn't want to elect a president who sounded like he wouldn't defend America (which would have been a decision based on good research and polling, since that's how things turned out).

And that feeling you had about Dean probably not voting for the IWR, despite his position on the $50B allocation -- a lot of people had and have that same feeling about Edwards and other IWR yes voters. Had and Democrat other than Lieberman been president, the US wouldn't have invaded Iraq, despite their IWR vote.

I'm a huge fan of David Mizner and John Edwards, thanks for posting kpete :hi:

Makes a nice slogan. K&R BTW.

:patriot:

I guess this is what this thread is about, but I do not need that. I need an honest president that I can trust. Will I get that with Edwards? Until now, his supporters do not seem to understand that this many be an issue for some of us given that he has changed so many positions in the last 6 years.

I'd MUCH rather have a person who could LEARN from their mistakes and adjust accordingly. Hell, we're almost into the 8th miserable year of one unflinchingly hard-headed, dimwitted ASS HOLE of a leader. Of course, if "sticking to your guns" is a pivotal quality for you, maybe advocating martial law right now would be your best choice.

I live in fl. so I made my own primary based on goggle search results, Edwards is the one to support and the one to win over many republican votes as well imo.

8,690,000 results for John Edwards 08
5,150,000 for Hillary Clinton 08
2,880,000 for Richardson 08
2,200,000 for Barack Obama 08
1,580,000 for Dennis Kucinich 08
1,600,000 for Christopher Dodd 08

when AL Gore called off the 'draft Gore' efforts. However, Edwards is a close second that Gore could enthusiastically embrace and we would take a big leap forward.

"Permanent Republican Majority."

Ha!

Yes. Now how do we get the media to pay (positive) attention to him?

Edwards would not be as indebted to the corporate masters as Clinton or Obamba or a Dodd.

And he has already stated that NAFTA AND CAFCA? are on the table for re-negotiating.

I need to know my president will get it right the first time. That man is Dennis Kucinich.I WILL NOT vote for anyone who voted to invade Iraq. I WILL NOT vote for anyone who voted for the Patriot Act.

:toast:

if you go for "all or nothing" you often get the "nothing".

No thanks.

I will not vote for any democratic candidate in any election whose best shot is "Vote for me because I don't suck quite as bad as the GOP." This is the primaries, after all. Take a little risk, vote your conscience, be daring. What's the worst thing that could happen?

Until recently, what little I've heard from the "top-tier" candidates tells me there isn't a dime's worth of difference among them. They've done absolutely nothing to earn my vote. However, Edwards now seem to be trying to edge away from the pack, differentiating himself by spouting less standard DLC claptrap and starting to speak like a human rather than an android.

If he keeps this up, things could become interesting for Edwards because he's moving ever closer to Kucinich's populism on quite a few major issues, notably anti-corporate sentiment, pro-environmental positions, and the second best position on health care.

And, as it turns out, when pollsters poll on the issues, Kucinich is the overwhelming winner. The vast majority wants to buy what he's selling. But when they poll by name, he's near the back of the pack. Which means a) Americans remain dumber than dirt about politics and politicians, b) they're more progressive than the DLC cares to admit, or c) height and hair are really the main issues, since if Kucinich were named something like William Rathbone Overholt, III, stood a trim 6' 2" and had TV newsreader hair, he'd be the next president.

However, he's not named Overholt III, his wife's the tall one in the family and his hair is a lot like mine -- scraggly, unruly, straight and limp. So he's probably not going to win.

But if people who believe in his agenda decide not to vote for him because he's been successfully labeled "unelectable," it becomes a 100 percent certainty that the bilge-spewing pundits who slime the country with their uniquely obnoxious brand of pseudo-insider horseshit will have created their own self-fulling prophesy and succeeded in marginalizing the only true progressive in the pack.

I don't think these pricks deserve to pick my candidates for me, particularly given their non-stop fawning over BushCo from mid-2000 to the present. This time, realizing that the neo-con wing of the GOP is probably politically extinct, or at least on life-support, they'd all prefer I just surrender to Hillarymania, sit down, shut up, disengage my brain and turn on Hannity or O'Reilly for my nightly two minutes of hate.

Just so you understand my frame of reference, what I know about and what I'm completely ignorant of -- I haven't watched any of the so-called debates for several election cycles, nor any form of TV news or pundit-pap for years, and read not a word from mainstream newspapers or magazines for at least a month. I get my news solely from online international newspapers like The Guardian, The Independent, Le Monde (in English), Asian Times, various German zeitungs, and sites like DU, Buzzflash, OpEdNews, Online Journal and other sources available over the internet.

It's disgusting that if I want to know what's actually happening in my own country, I have to seek out information from virtually any source that's not published in or broadcast from the US. Nothing like a little more media consolidation to improve the political IQ of mainstream America.

Maybe Murdoch can buy all the rest out, creating a total media experience devoted to celebrity worship, gossip, soft porn, 30 minutes of commercials per hour, plane crashes and car wrecks, NASCAR, giant tits, with "24" playing continuously on the Fux Patriot Channel and featuring the lighter side of extraordinary rendition and torture.

The fall lineup also debuts a next-gen game show designed to reward the prototypical morbidly obese American numbskull with a high tolerance for anti-anxiety meds. Contestants begin by eating a 1mg Xanax (tm), lie back on overstuffed couches and La Z Boy(tm) chairs, shovel margarine-saturated microwave popcorn and dripping Honey Buns (tm) into slobbering distended jaws, chase it all with Diet Coke (tm) while watching endless reruns of America's Funniest Home Videos featuring drowning puppies, human dismemberments, four-story plunges, fatal head-on collisions complete with closeups of blood and gore, lethal dog fights, and so forth.

The last contestant to nod on Xanax wins an all-expenses-paid trip for two to scenic Buttonwillow, Calif., conveniently close to beautiful I-5, where the truckers fill-up on diesel and chewy steaks and exchange mega-dittos in honor of Da Big Man, the carhop whores work the perimeter with cell phones jangling and beepers chirping and little pieces of DayGlo taped to the backs of their miniskirts so they don't get flattened by a semi, and operators of all kinds are always standing by.

Wow... the coffee must have kicked in just as I was typing the previous three paragraphs. Must have antidote... must find Xanax (tm)... must quit typing... NOW.


wp

:shrug:

This is like insurance company telling you what you should buy even though you know what you're looking for.
Dennis Kucinich is the most progressive and I don't think we should settle for less.
I don't care who thinks he doesn't have a chance. I think he has a chance.

we're screwed if we don't elect Edwards as President of the United States!

The record counts! That's why I vote DK.

and that's why I simply can't trust the candidate who was founder of the Senate New Democrat Coalition. http://www.nndb.com/people/306/000024234/

http://www.nndb.com/group/269/000093987/

Why do you think he's really running?

Do you thing he's running so that he can divert all the wealth in the US to finding a cure for breast cancer, while people starve in the streets?

What do think his hidden agenda is?

What is everyone doing to get this guy in the GE!?!

if the current, populist, "progressive" version of John Edwards is the real John Edwards.

Seriously.

The man's campaign trail rhetoric does not match up with his actual record as an elected representative, and I find this troublesome.

He is making a much more clear argument about what he stands for than all the other candidates (except maybe Kucinich).

Why would he tell Americans what he was going to do with so much precision and clarity if he didn't want to be held to the standards he is laying down?

I'm just wondering why I should believe in his arguments, considering the differences between what he's saying now and what he did when he actually was in a position to act on those arguments.

I do realize that people change, but he hasn't convinced me of his sincerity. Talk is cheap, especially in politics.

What do you think he's really going to do?

Why do you think he wouldn't do what he says he will do?

which is what the OP of this thread is about.

He hasn't convinced me because there is very little in his actual time in the Senate to show that this is truly who he is. To be honest, his Senate record doesn't bother me that much - it's the disconnect between his Senate record and his current brand of "progressive populism" that bothers me. He seems to obviously be running to the left in the primaries in the hope of winning over that section of the Democratic Party base, a section of the party that is usually over represented in the primary process. Is it just a strategy on his part or is he sincere? I don't know....

Edwards is clearly motivated to be President of this country - that he served only a single term at any level of government before throwing his hat in the ring shows, to me at least, that his motivations are far more driven by that goal than a goal involving just purely public service. Given that drive, why shouldn't I believe that he would say anything in his efforts to reach that goal?

won't do them?

As for his senate record, got over to project vote smart. He has excellent high ratings from progressive groups and low ratings from conservative groups.

...compare it to, say, Rudy changing on abortion.

I really don't think Rudy cares one way or the other about the things women consider when deciding to have an abortion, and I don't think that he even has a real theological or moral concern. I don't even think he's saying one thing about abortion so that he can get elected and do another thing about abortion when he gets elected.

I think his primary concern is getting elected so that he can ensure that a lot of his cronies like Kerik can make a lot of money. I think he cares a lot about his own personal wealth. I also think that a lot of his own moral and ethical decisions suggest that he shouldn't be allowed within ten feet of any policy-making position where his policies would have moral and ethical implications.

That alone should be reason enough for Iowans to support him.

he has lots of crossover appeal for the GE. Nice summary of his strength in red states and with independents and sane republicans in this post on Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/30/17944/797