Video: Edwards in Dover: “It’s a change election.” (5:17)
Bill McCann former NH State Rep from Dover introduces Edwards with some very brief remarks. He has endorsed Edwards in the primary and discusses how Edwards at the top of the ticket would help NH Dems rid themselves of Son of Sununu.
I’m happy to be here today and have the privilege of introducing to you someone who I think will make a tremendous candidate for president.
He has a record that would make any Democrat proud. He’s in the tradition of FDR and JFK, caring about people, caring about working people, caring about poor people… And he’s someone who I believe will be able to take it to the Republicans next year so not only will we be successful and make him President but we’ll continue our Democratic majority in NH and … rid ourselves of one Republican US Senator: Mr. Sununu
Son of Sununu is definitely going down in 2008.
Edwards always starts with “Elizabeth is doing great,” and a Jack story. This one is pretty good and it has the added bonus of Elizabeth delivering the punch line. Suffice to say that he’s still sore from the Lance Armstrong bike ride in Iowa recently. And that Mr. Armstrong is a gentleman.
And it’s right down to business:
My view is that Washington is broken and the system there is rigged against you. It’s rigged on behalf of big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies.
These people run your government just in case you don’t know and we have got to take them on. I feel strongly that we need big change in this country, big serious change. We will never bring about this change without taking on these entrenched interests. Now there are some people who believe that, you know there are some people who would say that the way to do this is to sit at the table with them and negotiate. I think that is a complete fantasy. The idea that these people are going to give away the power that they have had for decades … it will not happen. We have to take them on … and take back the government on behalf of you … And I don’t know about you but I’m not interested in trading one group of insiders for a different group of insiders. That’s the last thing we need.
This government doesn’t belong to that crowd of insiders in Washington. It belongs to you.
And I just want to make a comment that is a little controversial so I’ll warn you in advance but I believe it. I think the last thing when we’re having to take on these powerful interests to bring about the change we need in this country, the last thing we need is two Democratic presidential candidates fighting with each other instead of fighting for the change we desperately need in America.
I agree and though there has been a lot of intelligent discussion and passion expressed at dailykos over the latest Obama-Clinton kerfuffle, face it: it’s a cat fight. At least the way the media has been covering the issue is completely brain dead and meaningless. I know that many here would say that Obama is merely fighting back and that is true on the whole, in my opinion, but the media exploit the willingness of the campaigns to go after each other and reduce the whole issue to tripe. I’m not a big fan of tripe. And judging from the state of the union I suggest you just say no to scraps and demand real meat in your political coverage. Good luck getting it, but first we have to demand it.
Video: Edwards in Dover: Universal Health Care (4:09)
This clip details his proposal for ensuring that Universal Health Care in this country stops being a campaign slogan and starts to be a reality for real people who really need it in a real and unambiguous way.
He talks about a man he met on the Road to One America Poverty Tour a couple of weeks ago, a man named James Lowe. Although politicians regularly anecdotal-ize their position papers to put a human face on the issues they discuss, this one is more than that. This one is straight from the heart. Based on Edwards’s background I can’t help but think that James Lowe is John Edwards’s Doppelganger of sorts, at least to the candidate. Edwards has always impressed me with his compassion for people which is a very different thing from condescension. The ability to walk a mile is one that eludes so many of us in our daily lives. It’s not easy to teach and it’s damn hard to practice in your daily life. You know you should be doing it, but you can’t quite divorce yourself from the demands of your daily life and your own ego or your preconceived notions of how others should act. And when you do manage to understand, it’s awfully hard to put that understanding to work as wisdom or generosity of spirit. Edwards meets my threshold.
Edwards on James Lowe in Dover:
So I was sitting with him and I had a little trouble understanding him and he explained to me that he was born with a severe cleft palette. And he didn’t have the money to get it fixed. And he was grateful for somebody voluntarily taking care of it for him… The problem was that it was fixed when he was fifty years old. For fifty years this man lived in the richest nation on the planet and couldn’t talk because he couldn’t get the health care that he needed. And I was glad that he was proud and thankful and very noble about the whole thing. But that’s not what I felt. I felt outrage; outrage that in the United States of America someone could live for fifty years without being able to talk when all that was wrong with him was completely fixable.
Imagine growing up with the taunts because kids can be really cruel. I know because I used to be one. Imagine the severe and lasting injury to your spirit when people called you stupid or refer to your “problem” in hushed voices when all it would have taken is a six hour elective surgery in a local hospital for you to speak. It ain’t rocket science, cleft palettes have been extremely treatable for decades.
Tying it back to the opening salvo Edwards continues:
One thing I can tell you for sure is that James Lowe has no lobbyist in Washington, DC. You can take that to the bank.
And I’d be willing to bet that there aren’t many of you who have a lobbyist in Washington, DC either…
This has to change.
Amen.
He talks about his plan for coverage and he states that the first thing every plan must include is coverage for everyone. As a MA resident, I now live in a state where the government has mandated that every single resident have health care. The law went in to effect July 1, 2007 and no one knows for sure what will happen long term up here, but in the discussion leading up to the passage of the law by the state legislature one thing was definitely agreed upon by all parties: without the universal mandate you’re going to get stuck fast and hard into a system with many falling through the cracks.
It is true that we need not just health care, but we need universal health care. Truly universal health care. For me the initial test of any health care plan is: does it cover everybody? Is it required by law to cover
everybody?
Video: Edwards in Dover: Economic Inequality (4:27)
In this clip Edwards delivers his remarks on economic inequality in America and slaps the press core for their vapid coverage and branding of the brilliant Two Americas speech that transformed his run and turned him from an also ran into a serious contender for the nomination last time around.
Some of you have heard me talk about the Two Americas and so the press always says to me, “Why do you talk about the Two Americas? What is that the rich and the poor?”
No. The Two Americas are big multi-national corporations and really rich Americans and [then] everybody else. Those are the two different Americas, it’s not just the rich and the poor.
You look at what’s happening to middle-class families, the vast majority of Americans. Last year, the top 300,000 income earners in America earned more than the bottom 150 million. You think we don’t have, we have the worst economic inequality that we’ve had since the Great Depression and it didn’t happen by accident… The effects of globalization have been accelerated by George Bush. He’s made it more, more and more. More help to the people who need the least help.
You know what it took to confront that inequality at that time. It took a progressive populist millionaire with compassion, understanding and a commitment to advocate for the vast majority of people who get by without lobbyists or paid fixers on speed dial. He fought for the voiceless to have security and dignity in a chaotic and volatile time. He dedicated himself to everyday people in this country and he chose to abridge our constitutional freedoms set out in the first amendment with the freedom from want and the freedom from fear. FDR fought for the James Lowes out there in all their permutations of want and fear and he fought against America’s disgraceful lack of redress of the most grievous of grievances.
Bill McCann nailed it in the intro.
Edwards turns to poverty in his remarks:
And besides the middle class, universal health care is a big issue to strengthen the middle class in this country. But besides the middle class we have 37 million of our people in this country who wake up in poverty everyday.
How in the world can that be? And how can we think it’s okay?
You know one of the great myths that exists in America is that people who live in poverty are just lazy and no account and they won’t work. The vast majority of them work. Many of them work full-time. The problem is they can’t earn enough to support their families.
And there is a lot that can be done. So don’t allow the right wing talking points on Edwards and poverty to just waft through the airwaves and across the country unmolested. It is not class warfare. It is not a political curiosity to be greeted with scorn and derision. It’s not about condescension for the poor; it’s about the whole ball of wax. It’s not about poverty over there; it’s about fairness right here. And it all comes tied up in a frame on morality that makes the GOP apoplectic and rightly so. Because what church, synagogue, temple, mosque or other house of worship does not have ingrained in their charter a passion and commitment to serve the least of us? This one plank will give all “values voters” pause when deciding who has earned their vote in November 2008.
As Edwards said in his remarks: It’s a change election. The Edwards agenda has the potential to change the entire paradigm in this country. It has the potential to reunite our party with those Reagan Democrats that started voting GOP in the eighties. It has the potential to welcome home voters that don’t like those crazy liberals, comme moi, on the coasts. Edwards is a throwback and hopefully, if we nominate him, the Edwards agenda is the future of our party. Because we can’t win it on rhetoric alone. We can’t win the next one on been there and done that. We can’t win the election on Bush bashing alone. We have to offer a positive vision and specific ideas of where we want to be as a country; where we need to be as a people. Edwards meets my threshold on that score too.
And it’s not a moment too soon because economic mobility is another complete myth in this country today. America is no longer a meritocracy. Hard work, talent and/or luck is not nearly enough to guarantee any kind of freedom from want and fear. Today the best way to predict a child’s financial stability in the future is by what their parents do. The Economist tells us that the “pick your parents paradigm” is A-okay with Americans for various reasons and consequently there should be no political ramifications to this alarming and completely unamerican trend in our country today, but it’s not okay. Poverty has become an institution in this country once again. If you’re born into it then you’re just going to have to survive in it for a good long time. You’re just going to have to make due until someone comes along, if they come along that is, to fix your cleft palette out of the goodness of their heart.
That’s not right in America.
Video: Edwards in Dover: Energy (1:48)
This clip deals with Global Warming. Offered with no comment here from yours truly.
Video: Edwards in Dover: Iraq (4:14)
This clip covers Iraq. Again this clip just posted in the interests of completeness, I didn’t have time to really write up the speech in the full detail I usually do.
For details on any of these issues or a look at the Road to One America Tour check visit the campaign website.
Tomorrow, I’ll try to post the questions from the Town Hall in Part 2. Two questions in particular were very noteworthy. The first one was a question about how the transition to a clean fuel economy will affect ordinary people in this country and Edwards goes off on a very interesting tangent in his answer. The second was a very tough and detailed question on Iraq from a knowledgeable Granite State voter with an equally detailed and frank answer from Edwards.
See you out there…
cross-posted at dailykos
progressiveman says
for the detailed report on the campaign. It is critically important that John Edwards’ message contiues to get out to the public. His recent statements on economic inequality are right on. These are the kind of ideas that will allow the Democratic Party to speak to the concerns of working class America.
mbair says
He’s put together a stunning message. I really liked The Two Americas stump speech because it sounded like he was a truth teller, but that was chump change compared to this message. This one you can take to the bank. It’s like he had to run the first time to learn how to run.
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For any readers, there are a lot of details that I left out of this vlog available at the website or in the video clips. I just didn’t have time, sorry.
mojoman says
about Edwards and his message, is that it points out how far the discourse in this country has moved to the Right, courtesy of Fox, Rush etc. His references to FDR, RFK or MLK remind me of the values that I was taught as a child about strength & compassion, yet here he is in 2007 fighting.
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When you listen to Edwards speak, and you hear the howls from the Right, just remember the way that they’ve demonized other progressive leaders. This guy scares the shit out of all of them.
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Two Americas!!!????
But, but…….he’s rich!!!
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kbusch says
Given that current polling shows Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead, I’m surprised how much fire Edwards draws from the Right — and a big part of it is that he really is trying to pull progressive values into the center of our national discourse, and the conservatives will have none of it.
mbair says
allow this to get out in the open. It’s like if you’re a serf. If you don’t know any better then you think that things are pretty much the same everywhere, but once you get off the plantation and see some big sky out there it’s awfully hard to go back to work.
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I would further submit that the power of money and the Plantation Mentality pervasive in American media today also collude to shut off this type of discussion in the country. Like mojoman says, the dialog has shifted so far onto their side of the playing field that this progressive message is a point of singularity in the landscape. I like that because I want to Edwards to stand out in the field and get the nomination, but he’s really up against a well-oiled machine that is not capable of promoting or even accurately relaying the message. That’s where we come in. Frankly, I think it’s outrageous that this responsibility falls on us, but at least we have these tubes on the internets to enter the discussion.
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The slave language is a reference to the speech that Bill Moyers gave in Memphis last January: Moyers video: The Plantation Mentality in American Media Today, my apology to anyone who may be offended by that language.
mojoman says
pay attention when Wingnuts are st(r)oking their revisionist history regarding FDR. There’s a whole cottage industry dedicated to undermining his legacy. When I read business related message boards & forums, I can’t count the times I’ve seen disparaging references about ‘FDR the Socialist’ or ‘FDR the Appeaser’. From Rush’s lips to their empty heads, never mind the facts.
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One other thing. In a 5 year period between 1963 & 1968, three of the most important progressive leaders in our history, including the POTUS, were murdered by ‘lone assassins’. JFK, MLK, RFK, gone. Just like that. Then in 1968, Nixon was elected.
mbair says
My husband came home and took a look at the diary before I published it. He hates Fox so much he actually watches them and sometimes he even tunes into Hannity on the way home just so that he knows what they’re saying. Today was the first day in a long time that he came home bursting with the bitterness and displeasure that only Hannity can produce in him. I told him I had a smoking hot diary for his review. A salve for what ailed him. He kicked off his shoes and enjoyed it because a lot of the assertions in this diary really are correct.
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The message has great potential in this party and country. Edwards could deliver a loss to the GOP like they haven’t seen since Goldwater.
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There’s also another wrinkle here. I usually transcribe the remarks as delivered and not as prepared. My husband asked, “do you really want to put it that way? It reads poorly the ‘more, more and more’ bit and the broken sentences in these quotes.” I replied, “yes and how.” That’s because part of the mastery of this stump speech lies in the delivery. Although I think Edwards is a superior public speaker, it ain’t fancy. It’s not rhetorically superior. It’s down home and that is just as powerful as the content.
amberpaw says
And it is personal. He is the only candidate who cares about the real lives of real people and causes me to care enough to stand in the rain with a cane and hold a sign.
mbair says
I love it. See you out there kid…
mr-weebles says
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Perhaps you’re overstating things a wee bit.
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I’m as “Righty” as the next guy but Edwards is a non-issue to me and a lot of folks on this side of the aisle. He doesn’t have a chance in hell at the Dem nomination anyway. It will be Obama or Clinton in ’08.
mojoman says
Since it’s July of 2007, I won’t go out on a limb making predictions on who I think the Dem nominee will be, but Edwards is in the race IMHO.
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As KBusch points out upthread, Edwards has certainly attracted some wingnut wrath for such an inconsequential candidate, no? It reminded me of this great post by Glen Greenwald, analyzing the reasons behind Coulter’s ongoing Jihad against progressives in general, and Edwards in particular.
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My larger point is that his populist message (and it’s roots) is what scares wingnuts, hence the ongoing demonization of FDR, MLK & the Kennedys, as noted.
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I’ll predict this though: If (Double Guantanamo!)Romney gets the GOP nomination, not only will he lose the general election, but he’ll lose Massachusetts against any of the top Dem candidates, including Edwards.
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As the election gets closer, I plan on making some easy money wagering against MA wingnuts on this very prediction.
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All for a good cause of course!
mbair says
to Mr Weebles. If that article is true then it’s 1964 and Goldwater all over again.
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But overall let’s remember that if Mr. Weebles is a good “righty” and Edwards doesn’t seem like the devil to him then that’s the whole point. There is a big difference between the right wing voices in the noise machine and what people in real life actually think. Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest may very well be voices that right voters listen to, but those guys are pros and they seek to whip up their listeners/viewers into a frenzy. That’s just for ratings. It remains to be seen whether it’s persuasive to normal average thoughtful Americans, yes they do vote GOP sometimes, like Mr. Weebles or many others that self-identify as conservatives.
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In all fairness, the left also has a noise machine. It took us a long time to put one together but we also have one.
mr-weebles says
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The part in bold is an excellent point.
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What some people fail to realize (on both sides) is that whether someone identifies as “R” or “D,” neither side is a monolithic bloc.
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Someone earlier mentioned Coulter. The last ten seconds I spent thinking about her was more than I’ve spent thinking about her in the last year. She can rail against Edwards all she wants but to me it’s a waste of time. The dude’s a non-starter for me. he just doesn’t matter (although his wife seems like a lovely woman).
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The same goes for Hannity, Limbaugh and whoever else you care to mention. I may occassionally listen to one or the other (but not often, I’ll admit) but there is very little they do or could say that changes my outlook on the issues I care about.
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For example, I’m all for gay marriage. After all, when my ex-wife and I decided to get married I didn’t bother asking my buddy Tim (gay dude) whether he thought it was OK. If a gay or lesbian couple decides to get married it’s really not my business. The more happy, productive couple in society, the better. The government shouldn’t be involved in the marriage business anyway.
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My other hot-button issue is the right to keep and bear arms. Personally, I don’t trust a government that doesn’t trust me to own firearms.
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All that aside, when it comes time to vote we all tend to vote for the lesser of two evils. Romney and Guiliani’s records suck when it comes to the 2nd Amendment but I’ll put up with that as long as they don’t raise taxes (like Hillary or Obama would).
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Does this make sense?
mbair says
it does and one of the things that people on the left forget is that a lot of R’s vote R on the tax issue alone. Take a small business owner for example. There’s nothing gay bashing or immigrant hating about the guy/gal. He just feels like if a D gets into office then he’s screwed. He can’t make his payroll; it’s as simple as that and he doesn’t want to have to hire another lawyer to comply with any damn Federal or state regs either. It’s just something that he cannot afford to do. He/she has got mouths to feed that may or may not reside in their home by the way.
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In an election any winning candidate has to build a coalition to win. I like the cohesiveness and sweep of the Edwards message and I was really trying to make the case for that agenda in this diary. I can’t see Clinton, or the country, surviving an election with her as the standard bearer. I can’t see Obama putting together a coalition with enough indes to make it a competitive race.
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As far as the dig on Clinton, the general will really be a conversation and a dialog. Even with all the trash in the media most people can figure out what’s going on by the first Tuesday in November. I don’t want to see her as the leader of the party because she’s too conservative for today’s problems on economics, in my opinion, and the conversation will amount to nothing more than a 8 month long screaming tirade on both sides. It will rip us apart even more than the fractured media we consume and the pervasive distrust voters have for our public institutions today.
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Someone has got to come along and build some unity at the top level. Edwards meets my threshold on that.
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Thanks for your comments, I like that they’re here for anyone to read because we label each other to our own detriments.
raj says
The part that should have been bolded was
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“Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest may very well be voices that right voters listen to, but those guys are pros and they seek to whip up their listeners/viewers into a frenzy. That’s just for ratings.”
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What is often overlooked in an advertising-driven marketplace, which dominates broadcasting in the USofA, is ratings. And, in a cacophony of voices over the radio means that even a very low rating show, properly syndicated, can do extremely well at making money. Lamebrain is on ‘RKO, but Hannity is (if memory serves) on AM1150. Who ever tunes in to AM1150? I suspect that Hannity’s syndicator is actually buying the time on AM1150, probably for peanuts.
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BTW, in an advertising-driven marketplace, the customer is not the listener or the viewer, the customer is the advertiser. The stuff between the advertisements is filler to try to get listeners or viewers to stick around to catch the advertisements. That was made clear to me 20 years ago by–of all places–the Wall Street Journal. If you want to get to the right wing noise machine, you complain to the advertisers.
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BTW, to go downstream a bit, I’ll take issue with the complaint about Murdoch buying the WSJ. As far as I can tell, Murdoch isn’t conservative (nor is he liberal) he is just interested in making money. I’m not exactly sure what he would do with the WSJ, whose primary claim to fame is financial information, most of which is available for free over the Internet, but I guess someone will see what he will do. We won’t, we gave up our subscription to the WSJ about a decade ago.
mbair says
Exactly right – the show is completely incidental. It’s true of the MSM as well. If CBS could put a bowl of fruit on the tube for 30 minutes a day and sell the show for a big enough profit then that would replace dear Katie Sunshine and would eventually spin off into FruitTV network and the IPO would rake in about a billion dollars.
mojoman says
“if that article is true”, but pretty clearly, earlier this year at the leading Conservative Political Action Conference, Coulter called Edwards a “faggot” during her introductory remarks for Romney. Greenwald puts it into the larger context.
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The Right wing noise machine dwarfs anything the left has (mostly bloggers), and further,it isn’t “just for ratings”, it’s for votes. The left isn’t in the business of promoting political propoganda and outright lies. That is the GOP noise machine’s whole purpose and it’s naive to think that those memes haven’t taken hold.
As far as Mr.Weebles goes, he claims that Edwards is a non starter for him, no problem. As for the guns and taxes stuff, different strokes.
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Again, the discourse has moved so far to the right with the advent of Fox, Rush etc. (Murdoch is buying the WSJ) that the ‘propaganda has been catapulted’ into the stratosphere.
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Case in point, gun laws in this country and the influence of the NRA. After the VA Tech murders it finally hit me that there really isn’t anything someone could do with a gun in this country, that would cause gun advocates to say “enough”! If someone walked into a nursing home tomorrow and started shooting old folks (God forbid), what would the NRA answer be? The nurses should have had guns. We already have fairly lax gun laws in the USA, yet any discussion about how to curb gun violence is met by shrieks of protest. In large part, IMHO, it’s due to the Right wing noise machine.
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On taxes, for my righty friends, all I can say is that under the GOP, borrowing against the future to finance wars and corporate welfare, has turned us into the largest debtor nation on earth. We’re broke. Small business owners don’t appreciate the fact that we’re paying our share, but it’s a suckers game.
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BTW, here’s how GOP guys like Murdoch do it:
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And remember Ken Lay from Enron, Bush’s largest contributor ever?
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What’s all this noise about ‘Two Americas’?
mbair says
His appeal would be far broader than any coalition that Clinton, Obama or the GOP could put together. The eventual GOP nominee is in a very tough place right now. It is a change election. The right track/ wrong track numbers show that most people in this country are done with supporting or even believing Bush. The GOP nominee is in between a rock and hard place. From what I’ve read about McCain most GOPers don’t trust him because he’s not seen as being supportive enough of the national party = Bush. That’s due to his criticism of Bush on the war, his stance on immigration and the past association with CFR legislation. Those were all moderate positions and it seems to me that he can’t get the nomination with those positions and that brand.
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It’s an old story about running to the left or right in a primary then running to the middle in the general, but I don’t see how that’s feasible for the GOP in 2008. The Bush taint is going to be hard to scrape off once you guys settle on your nominee. ANd if this is true, it’s 1964 all over again: CNN: Pentagon to announce continuation of ‘surge’ into 2008. It’s CNN so take it with a grain of salt, they can only be trusted to accurately report on Paris Hilton stories these days.
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What I tried to communicate in this diary is that Edwards is running to the left in the primaries yet at the same time he’s setting up the run to the center with the same rhetoric and positions and in fact it will be a winner due largely to the morality frame and because of the economic insecurity pervasive in the country for the vast majority of voters. That’s pretty sweet.
kbusch says
The Edwards Campaign has done a number of things that have pushed the discourse in the right direction. Its current effort to send copies of the Constitutions to Gonsales is brilliant. I like Edwards’ description of leadership. I like his comment on “the war on terrorism”. I’m not convinced he has the best qualifications or is the best candidate or would make the best president, but what his campaign is doing today, so many months out, seems useful, valuable, and worthy of support.
mbair says
See my reply above about the conversation that we need to have in these elections because we really need to talk this one out.