Hopelessly (Un) Committed to John Edwards

I'm running for president because of 54 years of my life I have believed to my soul that the men and women who worked in that mill with my father were worth every bit as much as the man that owned that mill. - John Edwards

How can that message NOT resonate with every working class American? It's a message I learned from my parents and they learned from their parents. Every person has value and all work is valuable. It's too bad morality lessons are lost on the media. They've practically written John Edwards off as a footnote in campaign history. That's a shame. They might be missing a critical story according to Paul Rogat Loeb.

As media commentators proclaim Hillary Clinton’s rebirth from the ashes of defeat, they miss a critical story – Obama and Edwards won the New Hampshire primary. Add together Obama’s 36 percent and Edwards’s 17, and they beat Clinton’s 39 percent by 14 points. And because the Democratic primaries have proportionate representation, they’ll in fact come out with more combined delegates - 13 to Clinton’s 9.

Loeb's research also indicates those backing Edwards or Obama solidly pick the other as their second choice, which would make them a formidable ticket if they ran together.

The reason Edwards and Obama beat Clinton by 14 points is because politically they're much different from her. Consider Edwards' criticism that Clinton is the embodiment of Washington status quo and Loeb's description of her.

Clinton recently held a massive fundraising dinner with homeland security lobbyists. Her chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, is CEO of a PR firm that prepped the Blackwater CEO for his recent congressional testimony, is aggressively involved in anti-union efforts, and has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta and Philip Morris to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster. Clinton supported an Iran vote so reckless that Jim Webb called it “Dick Cheney’s fondest Pipe Dream,” and did so, according to her campaign insiders, because she was covering herself for the general election. She’s still not apologized for her Iraq vote, and her hoarding of scarce 2006 campaign dollars may well have cost the Democrats an even larger Congressional victory.

Clinton calls herself an agent of change, but Corporate America is strongly represented among her circle of friends. That sounds like more of the same to me.

Would I like to see a woman become president? Absolutely, but I need to consider more than gender. The problems we face in this country are primarily the result of two things - (1) years of Republican dominance and (2) corporate abuse and greed. Edwards is a Democrat, so that takes care of the first problem, and Fortune Magazine recently made the claim that the Democrats' war on corporate greed is mostly bluster - except for John Edwards - they believe he is the only candidate who will stand up to corporate America. When a business magazine makes a statement like that, I sit up and take notice. So, that takes care of the second problem and makes Edwards the candidate for me.

(Attn: Michigan Democratic delegates. My uncommitted vote is a really a vote for John Edwards. )



(Cross-posted at Blogging for Michigan.)