The Only Post I Care To Do On the Edwards Story

I really meant to not post anything on the John Edwards story. It's trashy from the act to the coverage.

But I cannot resist just this one...

Why am I not reading more speculation about the odd timing of this?

Doesn't it seem curious that Barry's people are doing all their veep vetting, Edwards' name has been dropped by some journalists as a possible choice (admittedly, not a guarantee that the campaign is actually considering him) and then, right at the beginning of the time when Obama will be away and un-harrassable by the press, the Democratic dirty laundry is dumped?

There was ample opportunity over the last week, let alone year, for Edwards to come clean on this if he was going to. It seems to me that this was timed to do the least damage to the candidate or Democratic party as possible.

Maybe I just need to search more, so if someone has seen better-written speculation on it, please let me know.

Stuck on You

The Edwards endorsement announcement last night seemed to be another nicely-timed move by Team Obama.

This picture in the Washington Post, though, reminded me of the poster for the Matt Damon/Greg Kinnear flick, Stuck on You.

If Only I Had That Winning Combination of More Cleverness and Motivation...

...I'd pen some lyrics about the John "Pretty Boy" Edwards campaign to the tune of Beauty School Dropout.

Regardless, listening to it, I'm sure you can see generally where I'd go with it.

John Edwards...Kingmaker?

While the theory rests on some considerably long odds, Politico had an interesting article about how John Edwards' position in the polls could bring him some dividends come the convention in Denver this summer.

The skinny of it is this...if he sticks it out, as he claims he will, through the convention this summer and continues to pick up something more than 15% of the primary/caucus vote per state, Edwards is going to show up at the convention with too few delegates to win, but potentially enough to push Obama or Clinton over the edge.

If this happens, he's going to have some considerable bargaining power in getting some promissory notes out of whoever he may decide to help out.

It's unclear, of course, if Edwards can continue to pull this much of the vote as it becomes clearer and clearer that he's simply not going to win the delegate race. Even though I think the sophistication of IA and NH voters is a little bit overblown, I don't know that the voters on Super Tuesday and beyond are going to be calculating enough to engage in this strategy (which he's not commenting on or admitting to).

Further, we are still early on in the process and natural momentum or big events could create a mass movement of Dems to one leader or the other, rendering him essentially irrelevant.

Nonetheless, it was an interesting process piece and those interested in the nuts and bolts of what's going on may agree with me.

Say Goodnight, Johnboy

John Edwards is a competent guy.

I have no doubt that he's smart, organized and disciplined

But his decision on how to insert himself into the Bhutto assassination aftermath this week approaches the old GOP stunt of going to Bob Jones University in terms of annoyingness.

I just had him on CSPAN, giving a speech at the Gigglin' Goat (the pride of Boone, IA) where he still insists on relating to the crowd the details of the talk he had last week with Pervez Musharraf.

Look, I understand the urge one must feel to convey that they, too, are already a player on the world stage, but can you imagine the eye-roll that Pervy must have done when informed that a 1-term former Senator from Nawth Caro-lahnah was on the phone to offer his expert advice on maintaining the relative calm of his military dictatorship in the aftermath of the suicide-bomber assassination of his chief power rival?

Puhleeze.

You wear big-boy pants just like Hillary does...we get it.

The Most Dangerous Political Ploy of the Day

I was reading an article in the Politico this morning about a little spat brewing in the Hawkeye State centering around a 527 labor group getting ready to air some Edwards-friendly advertisements.

The problem is, of course, that 527s fall under the Edwards' Screw Anything I Can Remotely Associate with Washington DC in My Effort to Pander (read:Patronize) to Joe Lunchbox campaign strategy.

Obama called him on this hypocrisy and, backed into a corner, John Edwards declared, "I would encourage all the 527s to stay out of the political process."

Now, let's sit back and think about that for a moment.

Sure, if you're stupid enough to buy the argument that the only people who are supposed to talk about politics are those who register to run for office and those who show up at carefully-organized (by the campaigns) town hall meetings...fulfilling some sort of Norman Rockwell fantasy we all have, then he's right.

But if you think that it's dangerous for someone to argue that it should be illegal (or even grounds for an explanation) for some friends or otherwise-ideologically-bound people to get together and make a statement in the pubic square about our beliefs, then you're with me.

Shame on Edwards for treating the American people like idiots...whether he's right or wrong in doing so.

Democratic Baby Mama Drama!

Haha, well, the rumours about John Edwards' liking his pie and a piece on the side as well may have started to come up again.

BigheadDC is messing around with the story again...and saying that little Ms. Friendly may be pregnant with Mr. Charming's baby.

As much as I dislike his finely-packaged campaign and big-mouthed wife, it does kind of bring down the debate from the civic mountaintop on which we'd been sitting discussing how Barack paid his for his schoolbooks and just how many cops Giuliani had protecting him at his Long Island stabbin'-cabin.

Edwards' Attempt to Clean Things Up

Obama's getting bad coverage this week. The story seems to be how Hillary is running away with it and that the Junior Senator from Illinois may be resorting to some traditional jab-politics.

Reality check time.

But the story that's bothering me this morning is a new proposal by Potsie Edwards. Now he wants to shrink the cap on how much an individual can give to a presidential campaign to $1000 from $2000.

At first glance, this seems like the honorable thing to do. If we reduce the amount of "influence" an individual can inject into a political campaign then we reduce the number of monkeyshines going on. To raise the same amount of money, a candidate has to appeal to twice as many people willing to open up their checkbooks now. We have a bit more of a shared destiny.

On a very high level, I get the logic. It ain't rocket science.

But the question I'd love to ask Edwards is this...They've shown every willingness to restrict the right of individuals to give to campaigns in the name of cleaning up the system. They've been willing to say that money is not speech and that it's perfectly OK to restrict folks' rights to talk about certain things when leading up to an election if we do it in the name of something unquestionably holy like campaign finance reform.

But what if we decided to reform the system from the other end. What if we told candidates that they have the right to put up as many ads as they want until the point at which they become candidates for President. When they do, they will only be allowed to show 2 paid advertisements per week. If they want to get their messages out to people they will have to beef up their internet sites or hold lots more in-person events where they can talk with individuals one at a time and convince them to vote for them.

While my proposal sounds capricious and arbitrary, is there any cosmic significance to a $1000 or $2000 limit on donors? Further, what's so wild about reducing the need for donations as a means to removing money from politics? It's certainly more responsible than keeping demand at a constant (or raising it) while forcing the gathering of funds to feed the beast into more and more creative solutions.

I won't hold my breath.

The Democrat Who Shagged Me

Heh heh heh...as if the Democratic race wasn't good enough on this Friday, there's now a story making its way through the mill that John Edwards has been dipping his pen in the campaign ink!

Actually, Counselor, Have You Considered That We Might Just Not Be Paying Much Attention to You?

John Edwards, relying on his finely-tuned Atticus Finch schtick is out with a Youtube this week that's doing what it was supposed to.

It got him the top story on Drudge, at least at this hour.

Ben Smith at The Politico covers the new video, with Johnboy talking with Just-Folks at a little meeting how the anonymous power structure 
in this country is trying to shut him up.  They don't want the people to hear what John has to say about poverty and class in this country.

But rest assured, Mr. and Mrs. Previously-Unaware-That-Some-Of-Us-(including Edwards)-Are-Better-Off-Than-Others, he will not be silenced.

Logically, of course, Edwards' point is ridiculous.  People were scared of John Kerry running on his military record, so they Swiftboated him.

Edwards, on the other hand, seems to have cricket sound effects around him.

But, again, he got Drudge talking about him and he got me to post something other than a quirky music video on a Saturday.  And I do have to give him the comeback of the week award, too.  If you saw the debate on Monday night when he decided to make himself a hero, telling viewers,

"If you won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman and Barack because he's black, please don't side with me;  I don't want your vote."

paraphrasing John Edwards at the 7-23 CNN/YouTube Demoratic Debate

( in Henry Hill voice...):  Puhleeze!

The Duplicitous Elizabeth Edwards

Yesterday, I lamented that few people seemed to be treating Liz Edwards like a grown-up.

Slate columnist John Dickerson is not one of the hombres I'm complaning about.

He took issue with a recent Edwards campaign ad with Elizabeth making a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to her cancer...after, of course, the campaign went out of its way to say that people should not give him a sympathy vote.

Mrs. Edwards is now feigning dumb and pretending that anyone who inferred that their ad claim (That John can "can stare the worst in the face and not blink") referred to her cancer is either mistaken or cynical.

Shame on them.

Will Someone Please Start Treating Elizabeth Edwards Like a Big Girl?

I'm no expert on warefare, but I know that it's pretty much considered to be a human rights violation for an army to fire out of a preschool, church or crowded shopping mall, for instance.

The argument being, of course, that you are engaging in just as nasty a game as the other guy, but you are banking on the other guy being decent enough to not fire back into the school.

If The Fonz were here, he'd tell us that that's not cool.

The Edwards campaign, however, is just the latest group to do the metaphorical equivalent in their campaign. They send poor, inoperable-cancer-ridden Elizabeth out to campaign events, to take on that wench, Ann Coulter and now to claim that her husband cares more about women than does Hillary Clinton. And her ramblings, with limited exception, are immune to any scrutiny because of Elizabeth's protected-class status.

Frankly, I don't care if John Boy or Hillary are better for women in this country. My point is that it's high time the other candidates take off the gloves and stop treating this woman like the Virgin Mary.

My heart goes out to the Edwards clan and what they must be going through on a personal level, but as for her public life, she's a willing participant in the bloodsport just like everyone else and I've grown weary of the soft tones and sensitive manner in which the press speak about her. Again, without having walked a mile in her shoes, THAT seems to be demeaning to people suffering illnesses.

Democratic Establishment Whisperings

Democratic campaign strategist Bob Shrum is out pushing his new book and an excerpt appears in Time this week.

While we don't know yet whose side the man with the scarf is on, we know who he's against.

He's no fan of John Edwards. Shrum relates the "chilling" story from when John Kerry picked him to be his running mate in 2004 and Edwards told him how he crawled up on the slab with his dead child, embraced him, and promised to do everything in his power to make the world a better place.

The scary part of the story was Edwards' preface that he'd 'never told anyone else before.' Problem is that Kerry recalled Edwards telling him the same story, word-for-word a year earlier.

The Washington Times ran this item last week and it was linked up here at that time, too.

Shrum, a Kerry campaign honcho, also drops in a bit of a jab against current New Mexico governor, candidate and former Clintonista Bill Richardson. Offering a reason why Billy was not picked as Kerry's running mate, he mentions, "Richardson's prospects were shadowed by alleged womanizing. Publicly reluctant, he coveted the publicity of being considered, but withdrew before the process was finished."

Stay tuned.

Interesting John Edwards Item

As I admired the Clintons for never trotting Chelsea out as a campaign prop when she was growing up, I held at least equal admiration for John Edwards for refusing to publicly make much of his son's death before Edwards was elected to the Senate.

It would seem, at the very least, in bad taste to do so and his choice to keep this tragic episode in his life private was a breath of fresh air for me.

(Compare this to Al Gore's hypocrtical speech about the tobacco lobby at the 1996 Democratic Convention.)

However, an item in yesterday's Washington Times about a new Bob Shrum book makes Edwards out to be...downright creepy!  As Shrum tells it, Edwards had a little bit of a penchant for making several people 'one of the only people' he told about how he embraced his dead son's corpse on a slab and gave him a posthumous promise to make the world a better place.

He tried this on John Kerry, telling him the same story, with the same "you're one of the only people I've told this to" schtick twice.  It stunned even him!

Agreement with Handsome John and Big Mouth Biden

While it's by no means the first time we've had a semantics debate on what exactly the "war on terror" is, perhaps its resurgence is another benefit of the early Presidential cycle this time around.

Joe Biden and John Edwards get a write-up on this topic in the Politico today.

At issue is whether there actually is a "war on terror" going on and if we are, what exactly that means. The two Democrats would like to see the term go the way of the Edsel.

I, for one, agree with them.

It's no more intellecually honest to say we are at war with terror now than it would have been for FDR to declare a war on surprise attacks in December 1941.

"Terror is a tactic. Terror is not a philosophy."

Joe Biden, probably quoting someone else ;-)

If you happen to believe that we're at war with a bunch of backward-thining theocrats who are frustrated with how the world has passed them and their antiquated way of life by, then be a man and say it. Don't hide behind this insulting term that both allows you to not really say who you are at war with, but also allows you to do just about anything you want to any group or idea that can be broadly classified as "terrorist."

Joe Trippi Joins TeamEdwards

Mr. Two-Americas, the man with the expensive haircut, John Edwards, has a new notch on his bedpost this week.

Joe Trippi, the famed internet pioneer of Howard Dean's improbable rise to fame, joined the Edwards campaign this week.

Personally, I always thought that Trippi's genius was a little bit overrated when it came to just how important his role was. He's become a sort of sage that media outlets go to when the discussion turns to politics and the Internet.

But, if we can partially judge a campaign by the friends it makes, this certainly is a high-profile grab. Kudos to Edwards.

In researching this post, I also learned something I did not know....that Edwards' campaign manager is none other than former House honcho from Michigan David Bonior. He brings some left-wing and labor street cred to the team, as well!

Will John Edwards Bow Out of the Prez Race Today?

John Edwards cancelled an event in Iowa today to fly home to make an announcement on his wife's health. For those who don't recall, Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with breast cancer a while back. It was believed to have been in remission. The author's thoughts and prayers are with the family.

Update-->>  Mrs. Edwards is now suffering from complications due to bone cancer, but the campaign goes on.  Personal politics aside, one has to admire or at least recognize the Edwards' way of dealing with personal adversity.  Mr. Edwards' Senate campaign kicked off shortly after the couple lost their 16-year old son in a car wreck.

I had a funny conversation with my boss on the way out of the office last night.  We decided that it would be a shame if he had dropped out of the race because all this time out of Washington and on the stump has really improved his campaigning skills...particularly his delivery of the "Two Americas" theme.  We also agreed, after learning of his new home in North Carolina, that we'd be very interested in relocating to John's America.