Edwards still holding off on endorsement

But...

In his first public speech since dropping out of the race two months ago, Edwards told the Young Democrats of North Carolina convention he has a "very high opinion" of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He said the country "would be blessed" to have either one of them as president.

The former North Carolina senator and vice-presidential nominee said both are better suited to advance his anti-poverty platform than Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

John McCain is a campaign finance criminal. Click here to read more about McCain's finance finagling and then remember this in November. A vote for McCain will give us another president who puts himself above the law and does whatever he wants. Is that really how you want to cast your vote?

King to Edwards: My Father Would be Proud

Martin Luther King III met with John Edwards at the King Center in Atlanta on January 19th, 2008. Following that meeting, he sent Edwards this letter praising him for speaking out for those without a voice. The highest praise comes at the end though. King tells Edwards, "My father would be proud."

January 20, 2008

The Honorable John R. Edwards
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Dear Senator Edwards:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father's legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father's legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.

I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.

You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don't have lobbyists in Washington and they don't get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.

I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.

From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.

I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Sincerely,

Martin L. King, III

Edwards may not get the nomination, but I believe he'll be a force for change in this world just like Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter, and others who have seen injustice and stepped up to the plate to do something about it.

(Cross-posted at BFM.)

Edwards Fundraising Goal Falls Short

Edwards' supporters efforts to raise $7 million dollars in one day weren't even close according to Mark Maynard:

I can’t find official numbers, but according to a comment left at Democratic Underground dotcom, the Edward’s “money bomb” fell dismally short of the $7 million dollars that had been hoped for. Apparently, about $1 million was raised. That’s not bad, I suppose, for a really unorganized last-minute effort, with no help at all from the national campaign, but I think we were all hoping for quite a bit more.

I was hoping for better results too, but $1 million is better than nothing. I'm not sure if that total includes matching funds or not. If not, that $1 million becomes $2 million dollars.

The Edwards' campaign was appreciative of our efforts and David Bonior (the national campaign manager) posted a thank you on their website.

Thank you! On behalf of John and Elizabeth Edwards and our entire campaign, I want to thank everyone who made a contribution on Friday, January 18th. In particular, I want to thank all those from the netroots community for rallying to our side at a time when we need it most. Thanks to you, we received several thousand contributions on Friday - and more than half of those contributions were from folks who had never before made a donation to our campaign.

As a result of your support, Friday was one of the best online fundraising days ever for our campaign. And, importantly, the great majority of those contributions will be eligible for matching funds, doubling the impact of your extraordinary effort.

We appreciate every contribution and every contributor to our campaign. We know many of those who have given to this campaign do so because they see that John is fighting for them - for their families and for the American dream we hold close to our hearts. Thank you for continuing to stand with John, and for helping to get out his message of bold, transformational change.

We fell short of our goal, but we still have South Carolina and Super Tuesday to look forward to. If Edwards secures enough delegate votes in those contests, pundits are saying it could make him a kingmaker. His aides haven't divulged what he might want for the support of his delegates, but he'd certainly be able to wrangle a prominent role for himself in a Democratic administration. That gives me some consolation.

John Edwards in the race till the convention

John Edwards may not have placed first in any of the earlier primaries, but he is not planning on quietly fading away according to his campaign manager David Bonior. He told The Huffington Post, "we're in this all the way, not only through February 5th, but into June and into the convention and picking up delegates all the way."

It's no secret that I support Edwards, but I've been increasingly concerned that without a first place finish he wouldn't stand a chance. Huffington Post correspondent Marc Cooper gave me a reason to be optimistic:

There may be more than standard campaign bravado behind Bonior's bold prediction. Edwards, in fact, doesn't have to win the nomination in order to win a similarly striking victory. If neither Obama nor Clinton can win a clean majority of nominating delegates going into the late summer Democratic convention, and if Edwards can keep scoring at least in the double-digits throughout the primaries, he could wind up with enough delegates to empower him as kingmaker, as the candidate with enough convention floor votes to sway the nomination to whom he pleases.

It's hardly a strategy that Bonior would confirm. But neither would he deny it when asked directly by the HuffPost. "I can tell you this much," Bonior said. "We're going to be marching into that convention with a whole lot of delegates."

Unfortunately, to keep Edwards in the race, he'll need money, lots of it, and that's why Edwards' supporters are asking people to donate to his campaign on Friday, January 18, and help him raise $7 million dollars. Come on Democrats, don't let Ron Paul supporters show us up! Help Edwards even if you're a Hillary or Barack fan by donating whatever you can afford. Just click on the picture below or donate at JohnEdwards.com.

Judge the candidates by their enemies

When the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce promised to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business (Edwards, Obama and Huckabee), I told myself those candidates must pose a real threat to the status quo to draw that kind of attention.

When Fortune Magazine recently made the claim they believe John Edwards is the only candidate who will stand up to corporate America, I sat up and took notice. Corporate America is the media and their message was clear (at least to me) - Edwards is the enemy.

I don't know if my method of choosing who I believe to be the best candidate is scientific or not, but I felt reassured when I read this from David Sirota.

With so much campaign rhetoric and propaganda swirling around, how do you really find out where any of these candidates are coming from on the issues? Over the years, I've figured out a decent method: Judge them - at least in part - by their enemies. Enmity cuts right through all the B.S. Who is afraid of a given candidates indicates whose interests that candidate truly threatens.

By this standard, this week has given us two pretty exemplary signals. First, Reuters reported a story under the headline "Corporate Elite Fear Candidate Edwards." The piece details how Wall Street moneymen and K Street lobbyists are frightened about Edwards populist, power-challenging message against greed and corruption.

Now today, the Club for Growth - a notorious corporate front group in Washington - has issued this press release bemoaning "Mike Huckabee's Liberal Record." It provides the details of an event in which the major players in Washington's conservative Establishment will berate Huckabee for having the nerve to stop health care cuts and invest in public infrastructure during his tenure as governor of Arkansas.

Sirota isn't endorsing either of these candidates, but he's making the point, "When the forces of money, power and corruption attack, it means candidates are probably doing at least something right."

Edwards is still my choice, and while I'm no fan of Huckabee, it does make me laugh to just think about a "Republican populist" being targeted by a corporate front group. I never thought I'd live to see the day.

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.)

Hillary's health plan to be revealed today

Hillary Clinton will be unveiling details of her health care proposal later today. Briefly, the plan would require everyone to carry health insurance and offer federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage.

The centerpiece of Clinton's plan is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance — just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.

Edwards and Obama may be worried about reaction to her plan if this poll holds up after the public learns about the details.

Clinton's previous effort gives her a voice of authority on health-care coverage now, with 65 percent of Americans in a July Gallup poll expressing ``a great deal'' or ``a fair amount'' of confidence in her on the issue. That's more than any other White House contender.

According to Ezra Klein, Edwards is already on the offensive:

Which may help explain why the Edwards campaign, concerned that they could lose their advantage on the issue, has decided to do the Clinton camp one better and has scheduled a speech outlining their strategy -- as distinct from their policy plan -- for passing health care reform. In the speech, Edwards will directly attack Clinton's performance in 1994, her willingness to take donations from insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists, and announce that on his first day in office, he'll submit a bill terminating the health coverage of the president, the Congress, and all political appointees if Congress fails to pass health reform by July 20th, 2009. In other words, he'll begin raising the stakes on the candidates' political commitments to passing health reform, rather than their policy documents. Should be interesting... [emphasis mine]

Interesting is right. Edwards is delivering his speech as I type and he's getting a good reaction from the crowd.

And his plan to end coverage for Congress if they don't pass health care just got a huge, 20- or 30-second ovation. "It's time for our government, for our Congress, to feel the pressure...to understand that health care isn't a political, but a moral, issue."

We'll have to wait to see the details from Clinton's health plan, but one thing is certain, voters want health care fixed, which may account for the "take no prisoners" attitude .

America's growing wealth gap

What kind of society do Americans want to create in this century? That question was posed by Amber Arellano in the Detroit News where she discussed the growing inequality between the haves and the have nots. If you know anything about the Detroit News, then you know they're usually a mouthpiece for Republicans, so I was prepared to read that those Americans falling behind are simply lazy, unmotivated people. I was pleasantly surprised. Arellano defends workers and argues that "Globalization is creating extreme winners and losers, much as industrialization did at the turn of the last century," and that we need to figure out how to make globalization work for everyone.

She also points out it's not just globalization that we should blame for the growing inequality.

In the U.S., education is also driving this dynamic. Americans with some college education have realized the strongest growth in wealth with an average net worth increase of 31 percent.

High school graduates' wealth modestly increased; dropouts' wealth actually declined.

That supports a recent survey that found the most likely person to leave Michigan today is a 40-something man with no college education -- the group most displaced by globalization.

So, what's the answer? How do we make globalization work for everyone?

Many Republicans and Democrats avoid talking about growing inequality. If they do, they argue the solution is for more folks to go to college. This crowd likes to blame Americans themselves.

On the other end of the spectrum, leaders such as John Edwards argue that creating more college-goers cannot be the only solution. If all or most Americans get a college education, they say, then the value of a college degree will decrease -- making all college grads' salaries fall.

Passionate Michiganians often echo Edwards' feelings.

The truth is, both crowds are right. The U.S. needs more college graduates to compete globally.

At the same time, we need policies that will reward the hard work of America's non-rich and boost their wealth, regardless of college degree.

We don't want to live in a country where only people with master's degrees can live a decent, middle-class life with strong K-12 schools, college and access to good health care.

Our policies need to consider the additional causes of our widening wealth gap, including tax breaks for the mega-wealthy; the lack of strong U.S. employment strategies; and the decline of unions, which were essential to building 20th-century America's middle class.

The question, really, comes down to this: What kind of society do Americans want to create in this century?

The avoiders will continue to try to weakly dispute whether inequality is growing.

But intelligent leaders and citizens will take on the issue. And the best will figure out how to make globalization work for more people.

Amen. We're not all college material, and quite frankly, we need janitors, plumbers, waiters, home health care aides, etc. Somewhere along the line, we've become snobs in this country. I was raised to respect a person regardless of what they did for a living and I passed that lesson along to my children. Some of them are college graduates and some of them aren't, but they all work hard for a living and deserve a decent middle-class lifestyle, as do all Americans.

Rewarding people for their hard work. That's the kind of society I want America to create in this century, and if leaders step forward with solutions to make that possible, they'll get my vote, and more than likely the votes of millions of other hardworking Americans too.

Cover the uninsured

This is "Cover the Uninsured Week" across the nation and here in Michigan. Americans may disagree about many issues, but according to a recent Kaiser Health Tracking Poll health care ranks second behind Iraq as one of the most important problems for the government to address for Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.

That doesn't surprise me. The plight of uninsured people continues to touch the lives of more and more Americans and their families. Here are some facts that show just how serious the problem has become [pdf file]:

Eight out of 10 people who are uninsured are in working families

Non-Hispanic whites make up half of the uninsured.

In 2005, more than 32 million of the uninsured had household incomes of $25,000 or more, compared with 14.6 million in households earning less. (The federal poverty level for a family of four in 2005 was $19,350.)

About 18,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have health coverage, according to the nonpartisan Institute of Medicine.

In 2005, 23.1 percent of the nation’s uninsured workers age 18–64 were in firms employing more than 500 people.

Our country has done a better job of insuring children than adults thanks to SCHIP (which is up for renewal this year), but there are still 9 million more children--more than the total number of kids enrolled in the first and second grades in U.S. public schools--still living without health coverage.

That's a shocking statistic. The Bush administration had no problem asking for $500 billion for the war in Iraq (the war based on a lie) and the President also wants the tax cuts scheduled to expire in 2010 made permanent, which means the top 1 percent of households would receive more than $1 TRILLION in tax benefits over the next decade, so why didn't he ask for money to insure those 9 million children? So much for compassionate conservatism.

On a state level, statistics show that Michigan's uninsured numbers are better than U.S. averages, but there's still lots of room for improvement. Gov. Granholm is working to help solve the problem, including her plan to help as many as 550,000 uninsured residents gain health coverage, however, the state is still negotiating with the Bush administration over this. Keeping people healthy should be a no-brainer. I don't know why the Bush administration is dragging their feet.

In the meantime, local communities are trying to fill the gap too. Genesee County voters supported a 1-mill levy last year that provides health coverage for those who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, cannot afford insurance on their own and are not old enough for Medicare. The levy costs a taxpayer with a $150,000 home about $75 a year. This plan is making a difference for the more than 55,000 adults in Genesee County without health insurance, but some needs are still lacking - surgeries, hospital stays, substance abuse and dental care.

These programs are helpful in the short-term, but this is the bottom line according to Woodrow Stanley, county commissioner and member of the Genesee County Board of Health:

"This is more of a stop-gap for our community," Stanley said. "We can't afford the kinds of comprehensive coverage people need, but we're doing our best until national leaders take on the issue." [emphasis mine]

Republicans have demonstrated that they can't be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to people's health care, so I'd be very surprised if voters don't elect a Democrat like Edwards next time around - the only candidate that has a truly universal health care plan.

Voters sent a message about the war in Iraq last November and they're ready to send another one: No more donut holes, no more gaps in the level of care, and no more handouts to insurance companies and Big Pharma.