"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.
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'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.
As long as he's opened that door, The New York Times has decided to step right on through it. And you'll be amazed - in the Illinois senate he reversed himself from his current track record.
He showed up.
The problem is, he didn't want to make a decision once he got there.
From the article: (link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22335739/)
"In 1999, Barack Obama was faced with a difficult vote in the Illinois legislature — to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults, a position that risked drawing fire from African-Americans, or to oppose it, possibly undermining his image as a tough-on-crime moderate.
In the end, Mr. Obama chose neither to vote for nor against the bill. He voted “present,” effectively sidestepping the issue, an option he invoked nearly 130 times as a state senator..."
Now in fairness, Camp Hope has tried to defend this record, saying it was part of a strategy. The article points to 36 times Obama voted "present" alone or with a group of less than six. Fifty-plus times it looks like he was "acting with other Democrats as a part of a strategy".
At issue, really, is whether he abused the "present" vote. From the article:
“...If you are worried about your next election, the present vote gives you political cover,” said Kent D. Redfield, a professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “This is an option that does not exist in every state and reflects Illinois political culture.”
And that seems to be what he did on the bill highlighted that would allow juveniles to be tried as adults.
I'm bringing all of this up because it seems that Camp Hope HQ is trying to insinuate that John Edwards's entire life experience - from litigating multinational corporations and big insurance companies in the cause of making injured people whole, to speaking out against Bill Clinton's impeachment, and even his personal battles of dealing with the death of his child and having a spouse with terminal cancer - amounts to nothing. Nada. Zilch.
"What have you done?" Arrogantly echoes through the halls of Camp Hope.
Well, when the going got tough what did Obama do? Chose a political duck-and-cover, assisting the bad by not helping the good. And he continues that courageous tradition of caving by voting to fund the war he so valiantly talked about opposing, and selling out working people by being a vocal proponent of the Peru Free Trade Agreement.
In the age of obfuscation and signing statements, that's the last kind of leadership we need in the White House.
Give me a leader who will at least stand up and take responsibility for all of his decisions, even the wrong ones. Give me a leader who can admit when he's wrong and work like heck to right that wrong.
I'll take that any day of the week over someone who wants to hold hands by the campfire, vote "here" when the tough decisions need to be made and who will *actively work* to continue an injustice that he knows is wrong.
These are trying times that call for a tough leader, not a political compromise.
John Edwards is that tough leader. Let's get him into that oval office. Now.
There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?"
snip
We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.--Martin Luther King, Jr. "Where Do We Go From Here?"; August, 1967
"With an increase in Americans without health insurance by two million to 47 million, nearly 37 million Americans still living in poverty and continued high levels of inequality, the need for fundamental change in our government is obvious.--John Edwards, Statement on New Census Data On Poverty in America, August, 2007
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a holistic thinker, and someone who saw the problems plaguing mankind through the prism of the inter-related, triple evils of racism, poverty and war. In speaking out against the Vietnam War, King called for the United States to engage in one, final systemic change which he called a "revolution of values" ( http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html ):
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
All of our Democratic candidates have great ideas and policies to help us right the ship of the nation after eight disasterous years. But for my money - and more than that, for my time, support and dedication - John Edwards has the holistic vision that can help us achieve that revolution of values that King called our nation to embrace over forty years ago.
Civil rights leaders, from Martin Luther King III, to Jesse Jackson, to Harry Belafonte, have praised Edwards for concentrating on the poor. This isn't because this is just one more issue in governance by laundry list. What these civil rights leaders realize is that when you focus on poverty it forces you to view our society in a fundamentally different way. Indeed, it makes you question the *ediface that produces poverty*.
In making poverty a central issue of his campaign - against advice from pundits and advisors and all of those smart folks who feel that this is just a downer issue - Edwards has shown his commitment to this revolution of values by laying out detailed policies on how we can reach this goal:
Creating a Working Society Edwards has outlined a Working Society initiative to lift 12 million Americans out of poverty in a decade and beat poverty over the next 30 years. In the Working Society, everyone who is able to work hard will be expected to work and, in turn, be rewarded for it. The initiative includes major new policies in the areas of work, housing, education, debt and savings, and family responsibility.
If you visit his issues page, Edwards outlines specifics behind this vision, including increasing the minimum wage, creating stepping stone jobs and making it easier for workers to unionize: http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/poverty/
Our country needs a change of direction, but more than that we are still in need of a revolution of values. By addressing the issue of poverty, Edwards is putting us on that road. Harry Belafonte expressed this last week when he endorsed Edwards for President:
"I also happen to believe that had he not so forcefully and precisely put the issue of poverty into this campaign, I don't think we'd be talking aobut it as much as we are," Belafonte said.
Our revolution of values shouldn't start next year, next decade or in the middle of someone's second term. It needs to start today. For me, that's why I'm supporting Edwards and volunteering for him in the following weeks. I'd like to invite folks to take a look at Edwards and if you agree, help him win the nomination and then the Presidency.
