"Grannyhelen", my blogging alias, is a tribute to my Great Grandmother Helen. Grannyhelen was a life-long Democrat, married to a union organizer and she first got me interested in politics. As for me...I'm an almost-40-year old mom of two, a rabid John Edwards supporter and I am working on a fictional book which I hope to have published.
Paul Krugman's piece today is already being derided by some vocal Obama supporters, as it makes the real world argument that any Democratic President will be attacked by the GOP. Although that may sound like a given to those of us here in the grown-up wing of the Democratic Party, to the post-partisan hopedacious crowd this is new to them.
What a hoot.
Krugman, being the realist that he is, feels that the best way to weather these attacks is through a well-formulated platform of detailed policies (and not half-baked compromises right out of the box):
"...I have colleagues who tell me that Mr. Obama's rejection of health insurance mandates -- which are an essential element of any workable plan for universal coverage -- doesn't really matter, because by the time health care reform gets through Congress it will be very different from the president's initial proposal anyway. But this misses the lesson of the Clinton failure: if the next president doesn't arrive with a plan that is broadly workable in outline, by the time the thing gets fixed the window of opportunity may well have passed..."
And although Krugman observes that this primary season has gotten "terribly off track" due to the politics of personalities and celebrity, he does have kind words for the one candidate who has tried to make his campaign about the things that actually affect all of our bottom lines:
"...What the Democrats should do is get back to talking about issues -- a focus on issues has been the great contribution of John Edwards to this campaign -- and about who is best prepared to push their agenda forward..."
Will Americans wake up in enough time to realize that the politics of personality does nothing to help themselves or their families?
Okay, let me just objection-handle for a couple of moments. From all appearances Edwards is over 15% in South Carolina, meaning he will earn delegates from this thing when everything's said and done.
Now, before the punditry and the Clinton campaign start spinning all of the various reasons why John should drop out, let me address these concerns now.
*Objection One: The Sore Loser*
To reiterate talking points from a "senior Clinton advisor" this week:
The former first lady's allies say the longer Edwards stays in the race, the more problems his candidacy will cause the party down the road.
One senior adviser to the Clinton campaign said Edwards was "angry" because the primary race isn't turning out the way he had hoped. Now, Edwards just wants to make life miserable for everyone else.
Some think Edwards is playing the role of a spoiler, prolonging the day of reckoning between Clinton and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic front-runners. They fear the longer the Clinton-Obama battle goes on, the harder it will be to heal the inevitable wounds in the Democratic Party. It's time for Edwards to drop out of the race, they say.
1. As seen by what is widely being acknowledged as a retaliatory vote by African Americans *against* the Clinton campaign tactics in South Carolina, it's pretty damn clear who in this race has already "caused more problems for the party down the road"...and that ain't John Edwards. By playing a cynical race game to try to downplay a defeat in South Carolina, the Clintons have thrown the fragile and often abused relationship between the Democratic Party and African Americans under the bus to achieve their own political aspirations. And they have the temerity to suggest that it's John Edwards who is causing the party problems?
Hillary, puh-leeze. Talk to the hand, girlfriend, cuz we ain't listenin'.
2. "Prolonging the day of reckoning between Clinton and Obama". Cute. As if we're spectators at some type of live computer game where Hillary and Barack are both Death Ninjas.
Uh-huh.
John Edwards being in this race is the tether to Hillary's attacks. She can't go too far out on that limb for fear of alienating folks and sending them his way. An all out flame-war between the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign does nothing but give the GOP fodder for the general election. *This* is not in the best interests of the party. Edwards has consistently made his campaign about this issues, and his staying in this race is the best hope we have for the primaries to continue to *be about the issues*. Hate the flame wars? Keep Edwards in this thing.
3. John Edwards is "angry" and a "sore loser". Sigh...well at least we know how the Clintons are going to attack *his* character. No, John Edwards is not "angry". Edwards supporters are not "angry". We just want this election to be *about the issues*. And yes, we're in this to pull the debate to the left.
'Nuf said.
*Objection Two: If Edwards Pulled Out Obama Would Win This Thing*
This is the culmination of arguments I've read in threads, and diaries, and all over the place.
*Why this is a false meme*
1. There is no evidence that *all* or *most* of Edwards's supporters would vote for Obama.
2. If Edwards pulls votes from Hillary this only helps Obama in a brokered convention. Edwards has already made several declarations that he and Obama are closer on the issues to each other than they are to Hillary. He has already very publicly called her the "status quo candidate". Therefore, one could reasonably assume that if Edwards were to support anyone in a brokered convention that person would be Barack Obama. Edwards's support may be the deciding factor in such a scenario, and breaking toward Obama would give him the win.
So, Hillary folks: "Edwards is a loser and is hurting the party" won't fly. Obama folks: "Edwards pulling out would give Obama the win" isn't actually the case.
Y'all chill. Edwards is - and should - stay in this thing to the convention.
This is an absolute hoot! From today's San Jose Mercury News:
The former first lady's allies say the longer Edwards stays in the race, the more problems his candidacy will cause the party down the road.
One senior adviser to the Clinton campaign said Edwards was "angry" because the primary race isn't turning out the way he had hoped. Now, Edwards just wants to make life miserable for everyone else.
Some think Edwards is playing the role of a spoiler, prolonging the day of reckoning between Clinton and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic front-runners. They fear the longer the Clinton-Obama battle goes on, the harder it will be to heal the inevitable wounds in the Democratic Party. It's time for Edwards to drop out of the race, they say.
Okay, so let's break this down a little. The Hillary Clinton campaign doesn't want John Edwards to say in the race because it "prolongs the day of reckoning between Clinton and Obama". And the "longer the Clinton-Obama battle goes on, the harder it will be to heal the inevitable wounds in the Democratic Party."
Heh.
Let's cut through the butter here. Hillary Clinton desperately wants this to be a two-way race. We saw it in the last debate. By tossing out the word "Rezko", and getting Obama to go down in the mud she's trying to take away his biggest asset. She's trying to change Obama's persona from the "transcendent figure of hope and change" to one of "just your average Chicago pol". Not squeaky clean. Gets just as dirty as everyone else.
And once she has Obama on that level, now she can talk about the choice between one politician or the other one. Now the talk of "experience" and "being vetted" becomes suddenly more relevant. If the choice is between two politicians acting like politicians...well, wouldn't you want to choose the politician who's better playing that game?
And she would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that pesky John Edwards:
And, what's worse? Check out this notable quotable:
At Monday night’s debate, Democratic front-runners Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) repeatedly engaged each other in their sharpest, most contentious debate exchanges yet.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’m John Edwards, and I represent the grown-up wing of the Democratic Party,’ ” Edwards said. “At times like these we need a grown-up.”
Edwards has just boxed Hillary in on her knock-down-and-take-Obama-out strategy. The more she insists on flinging the mud and encouraging Obama to respond in kind, the more Pappa John can call back from the metaphorical driver's seat, "Do I have to pull this car over?" Edwards has put Hillary in the position of making him look better - more adult - every time she engages in the poo fight, and even running third that's something that the Clintons (given Bill's own history of only winning his first primary in Georgia) are pretty loathe to do.
No wonder Camp Hill feels like John is "making life miserable for everyone else." I'm sure to them he probably is.
I don't mean this to be a hit diary, or a pile on. But in reading the discussions around the blogs today on Obama's growingly-infamous comment about Reagan's legacy, I feel like some folks just don't get it, they truly do not empathize with those of us on the left who hear the word "Reagan" and see red. I think a lot of this is due to not sharing a common history.
So, briefly, these are some recollections that jump into my brain when I hear "Reagan"...
It was 1980. There was no internet. There was no cable (or at least none in my neck of the woods in small town Nebraska). We got our news from the local paper, the Lincoln paper and four broadcast network stations. I was a bored thirteen-year-old, walking the school hallways with her head stuck in a book and glasses perched on my nose, trying to grow through these years as quickly as possible so I could Get Out. Escape To The Great World Beyond.
In 1980 a lot of stores in our small town still closed on Sunday...and they were still huddled around the town square, encasing the county courthouse. If you wanted something you had to either get it Saturday or drive into Lincoln. We had a local movie theatre that was still open (although the local businesses stopped giving out "movie money" coupons a few years back).
The big news of the day was the Iranian hostage crisis. On the radio in the car, on the TV news at night, in the schools during our discussions of current events, everyone would get updated on "Day Number ____ ", a macabre notation of how many days the hostages had been held. This would be followed up with blurry film footage and photographs of men and women, blindfolded, surrounded by young men with guns. We were treated to reports of what happens when one is being taken hostage. What that feels like. Whether they let you go to the bathroom.
Analysts would discuss the Carter administration's action - or lack thereof. Carter refused to negotiate with terrorists. Eventually we heard news of a downed plane and a failed rescue attempt. People were frustrated and scared. It felt like the one battle in the Cold War that we were losing (regardless of the reality of things - trust me, this *is* what it felt like)...and we all collectively understood the threat that loomed if we let that happen.
It is this environment that elected tough-talking Ronald Reagan. The Man of Action. The choice of "Other" on your ballot. It was hardly the masses yearning for "...a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." After Reagan was elected and the hostages were freed the country breathed a sigh of relief, patting itself on the back for making the right choice. It was only later on that we would learn it was secret negotiations with these terrorists before we even cast our votes - and not all that tough talk - that freed these hostages.
But with the hostages freed we were still under a threat even more dire, that of total nuclear holocaust. Mutually Assured Destruction had been our policy since Kennedy, and - because we couldn't figure out any other way of going about things - it remained our policy since that time. We watched The Day After on the TV, and talked about that woman's hair falling out after being poisoned by radiation. In Nebraska we had a special network news treat: seeing a model of downtown Omaha being blown to bits in a nuclear blast. Unlike the rest of the country, Omaha would be ground zero in a nuclear war as it was the home of the Strategic Air Command.
We drove down gravel roads that suddenly became paved - roads with no names, only the ones that the locals gave them: "missle base roads". Because, well, they were built to lead to a missle base.
And in the middle of all of this the economy boomed, I went to high school and then college and I have to say, even for the eighties I had *really big hair*. And skin tight jeans. (Ah, to have my pre-mommy body back again).
But I digress.
I went to an Ivy League school "back east", where the campus was buzzing about who got the latest job on Wall Street, where the best place to go shopping was and where everyone wore the standard uniform of leather bomber jackets. And in the middle of all of this we learned, and studied, and discussed the Russian threat, the Eastern Block Countries, the history of La Belle Epoch, and, yes, Mutually Assured Deterence. Professors openly questioned the government's assessments of the Soviet threat, the number of missles they had and the numbers we needed to defend ourselves (as opposed to launching a first strike).
I was fortunate enough to go to Russia.
I hung out with engineering students there who openly questioned *their* government's allocation of resources to build these nuclear warheads. Their lack of testing them, and their dictates to just swap components when there were shortage issues. I saw people carrying briefcases and bookbags, to stock up on certain items that hit the store shelves and then disappeared just as quickly. I saw the cheaply made shoes, smoked the cheaply made local cigarettes and walked the streets where small three cylander vehicles - "put put cars" my friend called them - cruised the streets looking for the impossible to find parking spot.
And after all of this I thought to myself: *this* is the Evil Empire? It seemed like a surreal joke, knowing the trillions we had spent in "defending" ourselves against these folks.
It was then I understood I had been lied to. By Reagan. And that the trillions of dollars of debt we incurred at the expense of mentally retarded people being forced into the streets and government programs being stripped to the bone wasn't about protecting us. It was about something else, a more sinister remake of society that was being enabled by a combination of fear and consumption, forcing us to become a more "me" oriented society and less of a "thou" oriented society.
This is why, today, I was deeply saddened listening to Senator Obama's remarks on Reagan. It just took me right back there to that moment in time when, for me, the lie began.
Again, this isn't a hit diary. Just an explanation of where I'm coming from.
Peace.
UPDATE: I was originally just trying to keep this as an expression of what Reagan was really like and what that election was like, but maybe that was a little too subtle. Sorry about that.
To answer everyone, here is Obama's quote, with the part that I take umbrage at highlighted:
I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
If you notice, people actually *weren't* feeling that they wanted clarity, optimism and a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
People were *in fear*. The 1980 election was about *fear*. It was not about *hope*. The GOP has been attempting to spread the message of Reagan the Great Optimist/Hopemonger/etc. in an effort to cannonize him. This spin is far from reality.
I hope this explains my feelings on the subject a little more directly.
This is a crosspost of a blog entry originally posted on Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/16/202428/519/291/438030
Here's what you need to know from the Nevada debate tonight: if you want a great, wonkish policy hound, vote for Hillary. If you want a professor who can literally see (and sometimes take) all sides of every issue, vote for Obama.
But if you want a strong leader who will fight for you, your neighbors and the rest of the working folks that you know and love, vote for John Edwards.
With question after question tonight, John stayed on message. The civil rights movement? It was about ordinary folks - just like you and me - who stood up and fought to correct a gross injustice. The economy? The core problem is that there are large, monied interests who are subverting our economic stability, making it harder and harder for working folks to get ahead. Health care? All of us (and I can testify to this from my own personal life) are paying more and more and getting less and less, and we are all one catastrophic illness away from financial ruin.
While Hillary was framing the debate around "black and brown issues" (yes, her words, not mine) and Obama had moments of brilliance tarnished by a tenacious verbosity, John Edwards was short, sweet and to the relevant point: we need to change this country. We need to fix the system to make it work for working people. And we need to do that now.
Anyone who's reading this - the netroots are having a historic drive to raise $7 million dollars for John Edwards this Friday, January 18th. This is unaffiliated with the campaign. It is a people powered push.
If you can, please help us. Whatever you do is greatly appreciated. Visit this link for more details: http://www.johnedwards.com/action/contribute/mygrassroots/?page_id=Mjc2MDc
Together, all of us working folks fighting strong, we can win this thing and take our country back.
I'm sitting in my tiny dining room/children's play area/throughway between the living room and the kitchen, listening to The Wiggles sing the virtues of olive oil intermingled with the occassional soft murmurs from my four year old as she plays with her collection of stuffed animals, while my son draws in a Charlie Brown coloring book. Outside a heavy, wet coating of snow weighs down tree branches and gives the world the appearance of being covered in so many cotton puffs, hastily glued by an overly-enthusiastic pre-schooler who just didn't know when to stop.
We are a small family of small means, living our small lives in the small rooms of our small, cozy bungalow. Soon I'll have to fix lunch and start nap time, but before I do I just wanted to share some quick thoughts, ramblings really, about who I am and why our family supports John Edwards.
Of primary importance for us is healthcare. Even having decent health care insurance through my husband's work, we are still paying an exorbitant amount of money. Our premiums just rose this year, and there's no reason to not expect they will rise again. Our health care costs are going up faster than any "cost of living" raises we expect to see. Because of this we just can't get ahead.
John Edwards has the best universal health care proposal, for my money. He is also the candidate that I feel wouldn't quit until it got passed. His plan lowers rates through a combination of mandates and subsidies. By allowing government to compete, families like mine could choose to either keep our insurance or opt for the federal government's plan. This helps my kids stay healthier, and helps me if we choose to have another child, and helps our family by stopping the trend of skyrocketing premiums. This is a central issue for us, and one of the main reasons we support Edwards.
Second on the horizon for me is our foreign policy, which stops our country from addressing the pocketbook issues of working folks by funneling billions of dollars away from domestic programs and into things like bigger and better bombs that one hopes are never used. I feel confident all of our Dems would stop the madness in Iraq, and John has called for our troops to be out in ten months. But beyond that, I want to know what type of foreign policy will stop this nonsense from happening again. John has made ending the Bush doctrine of preventive war a central part of his campaign, and has stated clearly that the neoconservative doctrines that pulled us into this war would have no safe haven in his administration:
George Bush's "preventive war" doctrine was crafted by a radical group of neoconservative Bush administration aides. The doctrine holds that America should shoot first and only ask questions later. It rejects the historic grounding principle of America's national security policy, which is that military force should always be an option of last resort. This radical doctrine was a stunning departure from the policy that kept America safe during both World Wars and during the Cold War. The doctrine led directly to the disastrous war in Iraq and is driving the Bush-Cheney approach today to Iran, including Senator Joe Lieberman's resolution declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
As president, Edwards will get rid of the dangerous "preventive war" doctrine and instead rely on proven national security strategies including overwhelming deterrent strength and retaining every option to address imminent attacks.
For me, it's not enough to talk about how the Iraq war was a mistake, or talk about how we need to get out, or talk about who was right and who was wrong at which moment in history. *For me the important question is: what are you going to do to prevent another Iraq from happening.* And again, for my money, John Edwards has issued the clearest statements and most detailed policies to stop another Iraq from looming on the horizon.
Finally, the overarching issue that is important to me and my family is the economy, and here John Edwards has consistently led. He was the first candidate to correctly evaluate our economy not by who the winners are but by who it leaves behind. He was the first one - even before George Bush - to recognize the tell tale signs of our drift into recession and the first one to put forward an economic stimulus package to address it. And he is the only candidate to look at economic policy holistically, not as a series of tax breaks here and there but how it affects so many aspects of our lives, from energy to health care to education and so many more.
If you want to know more about John and his policies, his issues page really lays out how he will govern as President. The link is here: http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/
As a country we're heading for troubled times, times that will call for strong leadership that doesn't just govern by laundry lists and feel good, but that tackles our problems holistically and tells us the hard truths, even when we don't want to hear about it. None of the other candidates in this race hit this right balance for me. That is how John Edwards earned my vote...
...and regardless of how many folks declare his campaign dead, or write him off, or ignore him, he'll continue to have my vote and my support until we decide our nominee.
Okay, I'm gonna borrow a phrase too often used by the folks across the aisle: this is beyond the pale.
The NY Post, under an article titled, "Edwards' Evil Insurance Plan" defends Cigna, calls Edwards - in so many words - a political ambulance chaser and in the process degrades the Sarkisyans and their fight for justice after the death of their daughter from what appears to be unfair claims practices on the part of their insurance company.
Here's a gem quote right here:
But he's [Edwards] too smart not to know that in this case (at the very least) it's dishonest and ignores important public-policy concerns: Cigna didn't kill Sarkisyan, her disease did.
Based on that false premise of blame the sick patient for dying of their disease (instead of blame the multi-billion dollar health care insurance company for denying life saving treatment that doctors said was both necessary and not experimental), the article then goes on to berate Edwards for using these folks as political pawns in his nefarious scheme to become president and give folks universal health care.
The logic - or lack thereof - is astounding in its pretzel-like twists and turns:
Edwards' grandstanding was irresponsible. Livers are scarce, life-saving resources. Far too few are available; thousands of potential recipients die awaiting a transplant. A transplant for Nataline would have doomed another potential liver recipient to death for want of an organ - or subjected a live donor to risky surgery for little likely gain.
Should one potential recipient be jumped over others because John Edwards has found it politically expedient to champion her cause? Should an organ be used for an unproven indication when it's far more likely to save other possible recipients?
We can't expect parents and even the treating physicians to decide that the prospects of success are so slim or uncertain that their daughter or patient shouldn't receive a scarce, life-saving liver. But public officials, particularly ones who aspire to overhaul the health system, must be able to.
Get it? Those pesky doctors and families of sick and dying people are standing in the way of those "responsible" public officials who need to overhaul the health care system. And if you're sick and dying and need a liver transplant, tough. You can't have one because of the next sick and dying person in need of a liver transplant.
The health care battle has already started, folks, with people like John Edwards being painted as the irresponsible public servants trying to fix the system, and folks like - oh, I don't know, your next Republican congressmen in the pocket of the insurance lobby - as the good, honest public servants riding in on their white horses to save the day.
I'm an Edwards supporter, in no small part due to his stance on health care. This is a fight, the fight has already begun, and we're seeing right now how compromised media outlets like the New York Post are going to be waging it.
That's why I firmly believe any attempt at giving these folks a few bought seats at the table will fail. They won't just eat up all the food, they'll blame the rest of us hungry folks for not having enough food to feed ourselves.
There's a revolution happening this first day of the New Year. It isn't on your television screens. You can't read about it in the New York Times or the Washington Post...yet.
But it's all the rage on the blogosphere.
From laptops, and desktops, clad in PJ's and sweats, downing aspirin as they're recovering from New Year's Eve, the political blogosphere is quietly asserting itself against the New Hopeism of Barack Obama.
Let's start with Markos Moulitsos of Daily Kos, who is far from a fervent supporter of John Edwards:
"...Not being blinded by candidate worship, it's easier to sniff out the bullsh**. And you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that's not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy's hearts a flutter."
Kos is referring to Obama's recent attacks on trial lawyers, unions, and even Al Gore and John Kerry. Add that to the earlier gaffe of having Donnie McClurkin, a gospel singer and proponent of the controversial "ex-gay" movement, sharing the stage with you at a campaign concert fundraiser, and you have a candidate who is running to win the Democratic Party's primary who is simultaneously able to alienate some of its key constiuents.
Politico covers the outrage that unions are feeling against the New Hopeism:
"...I'm taken aback that somebody like Obama would think that Oprah Winfrey has a greater right to participate in the political process than the 4 million people I represent," Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has spent $799,619 on New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's behalf, said, referring to the television host's high-profile support for Obama. "It's sour grapes. It sounds just like the charges the Republicans make."
Gerald W. McEntee, the president of the other major union supporting Clinton, wrote on The Huffington Post that "the Obama campaign's criticism of our political action committee and some of the so-called 527 efforts, such as the one organized in support of [John] Edwards, is troubling because they are suggesting that workers are somehow a special interest, just like insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry..."
"...Since declaring for President, this person has called Social Security a 'crisis', attacked trial lawyers, associated unapologetically with vicious homophobes, portrayed Gore and Kerry as excessively polarizing losers, boasted as his central achievement an irrelevant ethics bill, ran against the DC establishment while taking huge amounts of cash from DC, undermined Ned Lamont in 2006, criticized NAFTA while voting for a NAFTA-style trade agreement, compiled opposition research on the most effective liberal pundit in the country, refused to promise that American troops would be out of Iraq by 2013, and endorsed the central plank of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy doctrine, the war on terror.
How would you react? You could concoct a 'theory of change' and argue that all of this is just deceptive, and the candidate is worth supporting anyway..."
Ian Welsh in Huffington Post does a full frontal assault on the technical aspects of the New Hopeism:
"...Then there's Barack "Consensus" Obama. It's hard to even take this seriously. In 2007 the Republicans in Congress killed, through technical filibusters, almost twice as many bills as any Congress ever has. For the last 7 years, George "I won the vote that matters 5-4" Bush has ruled the country by running rough-shod over the opposition party, giving them essentially nothing. There has been no consensus-driven voting or decision-making in the U.S. in 7 years, and there wasn't that much in the '90s, either. Oh, sure, I understand that Obama and many Americans would like to go back to the land of consensus-driven politics, where there's a center and where everyone works for what is best for America by splitting the difference. It's a pretty picture. But there's no middle left..."
Ezra Klein shrewdly observes that the trend of New Hopeism is actually veering away from anything progressives or liberals would embrace as a victory:
"...But Obama's comfort attacking liberals from the right is unsettling, and if he does win Iowa, it will not be a victory that either supporters or the media ascribe to the more progressive elements of his candidacy. Instead, they will search for the distinctions he's drawn, and, sadly, a number of those distinctions point away from the heart-quickening progressivism of much of this race, and back towards the old politics of centrist caution and status quo bias..."
Finally, the New Hopeism has unfortunately lead Obama to embrace the Harry and Louise talking points that helped to successfully torch universal health care in the 1990's:
So, let's review. The New Hopeism uses right wing talking points against unions and trial lawyers. It calls out Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore and Senator John Kerry for being too divisive (link: http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/lo ngisland/politics/blog/2007/12/obama_gor e_kerry_alienated_hal.html).
And it's willing to alienate the LGBT community by embracing a troubled man pitching a troubled and harmful philosophy of "curing" homosexuality.
On policies it embraces the Harry and Louise arguments against mandates for universal health care and calls social security a "crisis".
This isn't Clintonian triangulation. It's actually worse than that. It's unilaterally disarming before the first shot's been fired.
In the face of the New Hopeism, John Edwards's fighting words are drawing new praise. To quote Ian Welsh:
"...It's time for a new approach, and amongst the three front runners in the Democratic field, that means Edwards. As with FDR, if his approach works, he will be both the most loved and most hated man in America, and some will wring their hands about how divisive that is. But if "unpleasantness" is what is needed to stop going to war illegally, to end the shredding of the Constitution and to stop the destruction of the Middle Class, so be it. An unwillingness to really fight means that those who will, the Republicans, will walk all over those who won't.
The time for the failed politics of compromise is over.
