John Edwards is up in Portsmouth this morning, and before the town hall meeting began he invited a group of bloggers into a back room to ask a few questions. It turned out to be a short, frantic sort of meeting as Edwards was running behind schedule (I think that must be a fact of life for all political candidates). Probably not a lot of information came out that hasn’t been covered by the main stream media. He got the obligatory question about the role of new media and ran through a quick list of all of the efforts the campaign has been making (blogging, live streaming of the town hall meetings, uploading video to YouTube, etc. There was also a Vermont-based blogger who asked him specifically about Pat Leahy’s hints that he might move to cut off funding for Iraq. Edwards said he wasn’t in favor of any move that might put the soldiers at risk.
I asked him if he felt it would be possible role back any of the other national security related actions of the Bush Adminstration (Guantanamo, NSA, etc.) and he responded that we had to if we are going to restore America’s moral leadership in the world.
All in all a nice experience, though it seemed like it ended almost before it began. The town hall meeting will be starting shortly, and if anything interested takes place. I’ll note it later.
41000 on line in Iowa yesterday participated in the event, not just watch.
Moral leadership
Health Care
Poverty
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Media focusing too much on Iraq, other needs being ignored.
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Last election was a vote for change
Totally opposed to the escalation. Men serving are heros, not in favor of cutting off funding that would put the men at risk. Need hearings, loud vocal opposition.
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Region could become unstable no matter what we do. Believes only solution for Iraq is political
Live streaming the town meetings. Blogged on Daily Kos.
Raise minimum raise, make it easier to organize. Unionized workers in hotels are middle class, if not your in poverty. Better access to college (College for Everyone) housing voutures.
Besides Iraq, need to roll back issues like Guatanamo, etc. that have destoyed our moral leadership in the world.
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That’s all folks. Very short and sweet. I’ll post more details later.
I’ve put up a bunch of photos from the event here.
Inside the hall probably 400-500. There were an additional 1000 outside that never made it into the hall. Edwards went outside and briefly spoke to the crowd before he came back in for the town hall. Oh by the way, LOTS of press.
I wrote about the bloggers meeting on my blog, John Edwards Meets the Bloggers.
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“Going into this meet the bloggers event I was wondering how I’d get a chance to talk to John Edwards about video blogging when he was only scheduled for 15 minutes with us and there were 20 bloggers in the curtained off area.”