The NYT offers an illuminating comparison of the three Democratic frontrunners today:
Mrs. Clinton has a tendency to use the “when I’m president” construction, as opposed to “if I’m elected.” She prefers the pronouns “I” and “me,” whereas Mr. Obama is more prone to use “we” or “us” and Mr. Edwards “them.”
The paper continues, “In a sense, the candidates’ chosen pronouns reflect their varied messages. Mrs. Clinton’s “I” is a proxy for her message of experience. She is thorough in conveying her litany of accomplishments – all the things ‘I’ve worked for.’…”
Mr. Obama’s “us'” and “we” reflect his unity campaign, the so-called new kind of politics. His “we” constitutes a prospective coalition of anyone bent on changing the political system – as opposed to “playing the game” within it, a tacit reference to the Clintons and their political mastery.
“Instead of sending someone to Washington to play the game, we need someone to change the game plan,” Mr. Obama said. “We are not a nation divided as our politics suggests.”
That last line is for you, angry BMG readers! And here is your candidate:
“They have infiltrated everything,” Mr. Edwards shouts, right hand clenched in a fist around his microphone. He is gifted at summoning fresh rage, despite delivering these grievances so many times. “They have an iron-fisted grip on our democracy. We must take their power away.”
Elsewhere in the article: “”I welcome their hatred,” Mr. Edwards says of “entrenched interests,” quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
The difference, of course, is that FDR offered that quotation in 1936, when he was a popular incumbent President. Edwards is a one-time loser well on his way, in my opinion, to becoming a two-time loser.
Edwards is definitely a loser, though he could hand the nomination to Hillary if recent movement in IA is to be believed. If he wins in IA and puts Barack in 3rd Ill find it very difficult for him to beat Hillary anywhere else and difficult for Obama to come back.
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p>If Edwards wins the nomination, perhaps more so than Hillary Clinton, he will destroy the coalition we are starting to aseemble with socially liberal Republicans and independents who are tired of theocratic social policies and a neocon foreign policy but would be unwilling to endorse the radical social democratic populist vision of that son of a millworker.
Obama’s got some conservative smarty-pants cheerleaders rooting for him b/c they know he’ll bend when he gets to Washington
I am confident if things don’t work out so well for John Edwards in Iowa and New Hampshire he can always return to his successful ambulance chasing practice of law where spewing faux outrage at greedy corporations and entrenched interests will surely result in more than a handful multi-million dollar settlements and verdicts for his highly selective clients.
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p>And, of course, once Edwards has tired of suing physicians and hospitals out of existence, he can always go back to his cushy consulting job at that New York hedge fund. The ample compensation Edwards earns from the hedge fund company will undoubtedly help him repay his leftover campaign debts, pay off the mortgage and upgrades on his 102 acre estate in Chapel Hill, and allow him to purchase his monthly $400 haircut guilt-free.
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p>If any surplus funds remain, perhaps, Edwards can donate these monies to the people and organizations representing the Other America, for whom he expresses such strident concern, but with whom he has never exhibited any authentic affinity, save for the required Lower Ninth Ward photo-op in New Orleans.
Edwards is a far better candidate than anything the GOP has to offer. A lot of his message makes sense. We are being squeezed by Corporate interests that don’t know how to effectively run a country.
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p>He was a loser in the first run, but we come to regard losing as the worst possible thing to happen to someone. As if their ideas don’t matter anymore the moment they lose. If this were true, we certainly wouldn’t have had some of the presidents who came to office.
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p>Mind you, I don’t feel sorry for Edwards, except for his wife, but you write him off as if he’s somehow different than Hillary or Obama. Any of them would do far better than Mutt Romney, who scares the hell out of me.
In 2004, Edwards ran a losing presidential campaign with a legislative record as a proud centrist member of the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council who accepted campaign contributions from business lobbyists and their affiliated organizations.
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p>John Kerry chose Edwards as his running mate in order to capitalize on his supposed popular appeal in the South among white Southern Democrats; Edwards couldn’t even deliver his home state of North Carolina for Kerry. Apparently, the citizens who knew Edwards best didn’t think enough of his supposed sincerity and authenticity to support the presidential ticket he shared with Sen. Kerry.
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p>In the 2008 presidential election cycle, Edwards amazingly recast himself as a left-wing populist and champion of the poor and downtrodden seeking to overturn dominant corporate power in the United States. His ideological evolution over the last several years can only be characterized as Romneyesque in its speed and scope.
Edwards has indeed changed his mind on some things: He has apologized for his Iraq vote, for instance. And he’s a good deal more direct and strident than he was, but that’s mostly a change in tone, not substance. He was talking about “two Americas” four years ago, and he’s talking about it now. You will have to demonstrate how Edwards was “more corporate” than he is now, rather than just asserting it.
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p>Eddie, no one, no one can compare with Romney, who has taken whatever sensible-centrist reputation he might have had and chucked it out the window with extreme prejudice.
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p>The stupid part of the primary season is when people try to pry open what daylight exists between the candidates and turn it into a gaping chasm.
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p>Furthermore, I’m interested in how Bob would characterize the relationship of corporate power and our democracy. Rather than simply asserting that Edwards sounds extreme, or angry, or whatever, how about addressing what he’s saying? Is he wrong in his diagnosis?
The whole business environment has accelerated to the outsource/short-term profits of selling the country off to the highest bidder. The fact that he’s trying to do something better is contrary to Romney’s shift to a fear monger and highlighting his business skills that somehow don’t get told. He took apart companies and displaced workers for profit. Nobody but the few made out in this transaction.
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p>To cast Edwards as some kind of demon is laughable. Worry about the real enemy. Edwards’ Huey Long impression won’t last long.
He started out as a New Democrat, but his liberal conversion occured years before the ’04 campaign cycle
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p>(http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2967)
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p>By 2003, Edwards was the fourth most liberal Senator according to the National Journal. The DLC clearly did not want anything to do with him by 2004.
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p>So I would rather vote for someone who endured a long-term political conversion (politically-driven or not) than the leader of the DLC and a DLC rising star (http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=251658&kaid=104&subid=210)
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p>both whom now pretend to be “progressive”.
I seem to have heard it about Edwards before, maybe as far back as 2001…
And those haircuts! Damn, that should eliminate any and all of his ideas right there, no?
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p>All of your vaguely familiar criticisms of Edwards aside, the fact that he’s made a lot of money doesn’t eliminate him from running on a populist theme, or change his record. In fact, he ran against the insurance industry lobby way back in ’98.
If you’re going to throw this up, Bob, please do an actual count of the number of times Edwards, Obama and Hillary use the pronouns you attribute to them, and get back to me. Until then, put it in a room with lots of curtains and incense and charge $20 for a five minute rendition.
How entertaining to be taunted like this! As an angry BMG reader, I really enjoy being taunted. Delightful!
“I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.”
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p>”The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable – and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.”
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p>”The United States prefers that Iraq meet its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative.”
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p>”Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are.”
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p>”I can hear you, and soon the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
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p>Dubya says “us” and “we” and “our” all the time! We must be an awesome president cuz all it takes is the right words!
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p>A lotta Democrats are giving the Republicans quite a run for their money on the race to the bottom these days…
This NYT article is not illuminating at all.
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p>Pronouns have antecedents, and because the candidates choose different things to talk about, differences in pronoun usage will happen. No deep meanings.
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p>This NYT article is just another waste of space that could have been spent explaining differences in what candidates would actually do.
there is any way to anticipate “what the candidates would actually do”. There is a big leap between candidate rhetoric and actuality. Not disagreeing with you and Sabutai about the article. Divining meaning is verrrryyyy difficult with candidates (unless you’re high enough in the ranks of the campaign to know what’s behind the words).
I disagree on two counts here. First, there are simple position differences (i.e. health care with mandates, specific antipoverty and Iraq plans, etc.)
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p>But also, I’m starting to think rhetoric is important. This is something I’ve been considering for awhile. I supported Deval Patrick for the primary. But not for his rhetoric, not because I was “inspired” by his rhetoric, but because of his positions. I believed that concrete differences in his positions would result in him making the right decisions on those issues. Pretty straightforward, really.
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p>Once he got into office, with some exceptions, he has mostly done what I expected. Fiscally, I anticipated him being progressive, especially on revenue issues. He has been. The MPA and the tax loophole closings are both very good pieces of legislation.
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p>But the legislature is stonewalling him, and there is little outcry. Why? Because he didn’t run on the issues. It’s not his fault that the legislature and Sal Dimasi opposes him. But I think the fact that Patrick never really emphasized specifics is making it difficult for him to get people to put any real pressure on their legislators. I want to see progressives like Jason Lewis and Paul Casey all over the state, challenging stonewalling legislators. It hasn’t materialized as much as I would have liked. These progressive pieces of legislation seem to be dying quiet deaths.
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p>I think this absolutely applies for the presidential race. I believe Edwards has the most progressive specific ideas and plans. And I believe that his rhetoric is good, as it does focus on issues that will actually make a difference in peoples’ lives.
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p>However, all of the leading candidates do not talk specifics nearly enough. On an issue like climate change, for instance, at current levels of focus, it seems that, despite having very good plans in general, none of the leading candidates will be able to push in Congress very hard, having focused on climate change and having talked about climate change very little.
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p>So yes, I think rhetoric does play a very important role in a campaign. I’m hoping that during the general, when policy differences will undoubtably be wider, the Democrat will push on Iraq, climate change, and poverty: specific issues that really make a difference.
in agreement on most of this (notice use of “we”). Isn’t that interesting? The point I was trying to make (ineffectively at first try) is that candidates will say and do a lot of stuff to be elected. It’s their “primary” focus. Sometimes, it’s easier to divine what their actions might be following an election, sometimes not. In some instances, words might lead you to believe there’s something behind their rhetoric when there really isn’t. Policies and rhetoric can be invented by a campaign staff and not represent a candidate at all.
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p>I, too, supported Deval. I listened to his extemporaneous answers to questions far more than the stump speeches. I believed, and still believe, that he believes in and understands issues that are critically important to progressives and making change happen. That said, how many would have predicted that Deval would offer up three casinos as a major policy initiative? I suspect not too many.
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p>I believe that candidates who are willing to cite very specific details about existing problems are most likely to follow through once elected. It is much easier to hold them accountable in those instances. I’m also a big fan of a candidate who has gone through the process of defining vision, mission and goals of a campaign. I’ve got no horse in this race.
The time for a referendum on the issues of casinos is an election, not the middle of the term, where public input will be minimal.
… to be significant.
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p>The Times is analyzing retorical styles, which can be significant in and of themselves. After all, these are three individuals that speak for a living. All three are lawyers; all three are politicians and all three are obviously gifted speakers (Obama and Edwards moreso than Clinton, perhaps). The choice of retorical style (and focus) is entirely up to them and therefor the choice is indicitive of something.
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p>Clinton speaks in a way that puts the focus on her and her years of experience. That makes sense from the candidate with the “most experience”. It’s undoubtedly where she thinks her strength lies and it may be indicative of how she thinks of what a leader shoud be.
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p>Obama speaks in a way that focuses on group action, group responsibility, etc. It makes perfect sense coming from the candidate with a history of community organizing and it’s likely indicitive of a natural tendancy in Obama–the kind of thinking that lead him into organizing in the first place.
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p>Edwards speaks in a way that focuses on the “other”. Like Obama, his message is full of emotional appeal but, unlike Obama’s message of “unity”, Edwards’s message is one of “us vs. them”. Again, it makes perfect sense coming from this particular candidate. Edwards made a very successful career as a trial lawyer where, by the very nature of the legal system, he has been taught to think and speak in the terms of us-vs-them.
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p>Reasons in and of themselves for voting for any of the three? No. But they could help inform a thoroughly considered choice.
joeltpatterson, you’re spot on. The media will just continue to waste our time discussing who’s pro-noun and who’s pro-verb.
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p>More insults for the MSM at my home.
From the Times article:
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p>”I think you do it by working really, really hard,” [Ms. Clinton] said.
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p>clearly Clinton is the answer because its not just “hard work” as Bush would tell us, she recognizes its “really, really hard”.
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p>We could play these games all day… doesn’t make them any less childish, and it doesn’t help us make sound choices.
You look at Edwards’s quote. To your relief, the first person plural is indeed used. The difference? Edwards believes that there are interests who are not part of this grand coalition. Interests who do not have the best interests of the working class at heart. Yes, Edwards is a uniter: he is a uniter of people who want to see better conditions (and he has specifics for what this entails, but that is not what this post is about) for workers.
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p>He is uniting about something. And when you do that, you get this little issue: some people are not going to be supportive the idea you are pushing. When you have issue- and idea-driven campaigns, you’re going to have to expect that some people, some interests are just not going to be supportive.
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p>This is the crux of the matter. Eitherr say how you think Edwards can try and incorporate the “them” that he is talking about (large corporations who show no inclination, on their own, to push for workers’ rights-note that we are talking about the leadership of these corporations, not the workers in them), or drop this talk about pronouns. I would love to see more about Obama’s specific issues, specific things he stands for, not comparison between singular and plural, first person and third person.
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p>Because in the end, if Obama somehow “unifies” the country, if we never see another 51-49 vote in the senate, this will mean exactly nothing to the working class and the middle class. It will not affect quality of life one bit, unless you have specific things that you believe you can accomplish with this message about “unity.”
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p>Also, note that Edwards’s “we” is much more unifying than some populists’ messages. I’m talking about anti-immigration populists, who put Americans against the “them” of immigrants. Racists always try to appeal to working-class whites. Edwards actually has the right “them” this time.
We may indeed continue to see 51-49 elections in the Senate. The point is that Obama is positioning himself much better to win the general election for the White House than is Edwards. And, in my opinion, the Party nomination (although the Powers That Be are pretty solidly set behind Clinton, which is why she will win Iowa by a large margin unless something extraordinary happens).
Well, the electability issue doesn’t seem to be playing out that way now, based on head-to-head polling. But I will concede that this means little this far out.
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p>But I would argue that Edwards has a chance to do very well in the general. The way I see it, Obama is going out of his way to not say or propose much that would be controversial. So sure, he won’t alienate anybody. But I think that Edwards’ populist messages, positions, and rhetoric, which allowed a wealthy northern governor to win fierce devotion in the south 70 years ago, could win him a significant amount of support. I see this election, ideally, as a chance to move the Democratic Party back to being the party of the working class.
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p>As for Iowa…well, that’s not what the polling says, but I guess we’ll see.
But the embed thing doesn’t bleeping work.
http://www.theonion.com/conten…
…and you will see how Edwards lines up better against the Republicans than Clinton or Obama.
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p>The Rasmussen numbers are consistent with the CNN numbers from two weeks ago.
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p>I agree that with the post above that the parsing of a few sentences from the candidates is somewhat silly. The idea that someone who is running on compromise (Obama) will somehow stir a reaction from working families that have rejected the Democratic Party seems a bit naive. Somehow John Cornyn or James Inhofe will recognize evolution and global warming because Obama is charming and charismatic? Personally I think Obama’s ideas are better than his rhetoric. But in a general election I don’t think he will fool anyone. He’s a liberal Democrat from a very blue state.
I grant that eight years of being a very politically involved First Lady do count for something in terms of experience. So I do not mind about “I” and “me”.