Hell, it wouldn't even be story.
The facts are that the days when a presidential candidate can drive down town to the local barber shop for a haircut are long over. If the candidate doesn't want to tie up traffic for hours in most cities, with security details with him, everywhere he goes, he simply pays for the barber to come to him. John Edwards, like many professional men of today, have their hair styled, if they have any hair.
Has anyone in the news-media checked out Romney's barber bill? Perhaps his hair is sprayed on. It seems to never move.
Of course, the point the corporate media is trying to make is that John Edwards is not like you and me. Well, of course he isn't. No one is like another, except that we are all human. But they want us to believe that John Edwards is to wealthy to be president to the rest of us poor schmucks, as he cannot possibly understand our lives.
What an amazing assumption, especially after they backed George H.W. Bush, a man so out of touch with the real world he had never seen a grocery store scanner.
What have they got against Edwards? Why do they want him out of the election before it even starts. He scares the living bejesus out of them. We all know that corporations hate trial lawyers with a passion, with the exception of the hundreds they employ. John Edwards made his money fighting extremely negligent ones.
Under Bush and Cheney it has become harder and harder for ordinary Americans to have their day in court no matter how wronged they have been. They like to say that tort reform is for the sake of physicians ( so that, as Junior said, OB-GYN Docs can spread their love around on American women without fear of being sued. That was almost a pretzel moment for me, personally!) But it isn't physicians that really concern them. It is fortune 5oo companies.
The corporate media would have us believe that John Edwards is an ambulance chaser, making gobs of money off the misery of others. I, personally, haven't met that many ambulance chasers who have made a fortune off such activity. They get a bad reputation fast, not only in the legal community, where it is most damaging, but in the community in which they live as well, and their corn-pone TeeVee advertising doesn't help much either.
We all know that our system of justice is broken; that the wealthy, elite and, yes, the corporate often win when they should lose. We know that if one can afford a dream team of lawyers, one can, literally, get away with murder. Occasionally, a nutso case makes headlines, because it is unusual and weird, even for our justice system, like the overheated coffee in the crotch case.
But how many of us know how it feels to have a dead or horribly maimed child, as the result of faulty equipment made by a large company with a fleet of lawyers on retainer. You feel very alone, insignificant, and overwhelmed. What if the main breadwinner for the family is disabled because of shockingly unsafe working conditions? Who do you turn to.
I would want someone just like John Edwards sitting in that courtroom next to me, not just because he is a damn good lawyer, but because he is, I believe, a man of principle and with the highest of integrity, maybe the most decent human being we have had run for president in a very long time.
Does he have faults? I feel sure that he does. Can anyone point to any candidate and say that that candidate is flawless? They are all only human.
If there is one thing we cannot afford to do in this election, if ever, is put another business man in the White House. We need a president of the people, not another CEO, failed or otherwise.
The day we elect a Baptist preacher is the day I leave here or call for a revolution. I grew up around those types, as a kid in the deep south. Preachers ought to stick to preaching to their flocks and the U.S.A. is no man's flock. Having read the Book of Mormon, well, Romney is definitely out as far as I'm concerned. He is either a hypocrite or he is nuts. We have had a belly full of that, for a long time now; too long.
The corporate media would have us believe that Edwards is a phony. I wish someone would ask just one of these talking heads to give one example of Edwards' phoniness. Actually, I have watched these candidates, all of them, since the day they announced and I believe that Edwards is one of the most authentic people I have ever seen. He is authentically a good man, with the interests of our country and its people at heart, and though we may not have her for as long as we would like, Elizabeth Edwards will make one of the finest first ladies this country has ever seen.
Please, Dems, don't get duped again! Now is not the time to make history simply for the sake of making history, by attempting to elect either an African American or a woman.
The author of the article below is right, though I hate to admit it. Sexism and racism are still very much alive in America. From Maine to California, there are people who would sooner throw themselves from a cliff than vote for either Obama or Clinton. They might well not admit to such feelings, but they have them, nonetheless. They might not even be aware of the feelings that would lead them to stay home or vote Republican in the privacy of the voting booth.
So, I say, along with the author of the article below:
Edwards Is More Electable, Period!
Ok, enough with the BS "let's talk about the electability" idea that seems so prominent in the left-wing blogosphere. This isn't 2004, Kerry isn't the "electable" candidate preparing to cruise himself into the ground. It's almost 2008, we've got a different crop of candidates, and the most electable of the three top candidates is Edwards. This has been clear in poll after poll, the latest of which is CNN's poll, which shows Edwards crushing Republicans.
Versus McCain: Clinton loses by 2%, Obama is in a dead heat, and Edwards wins by 8%.
Versus Giuliani: Clinton wins by 6%, Obama by 7%, Edwards wins by 9%.
Versus Romney: Clinton wins by 11%, Obama by 13%, and Edwards wins by 22%.
Versus Huckabee: Clinton wins by 10%, Obama wins by 15%, and Edwards annihilates Huckabee by 25%.
Basically, current polling shows the popularity of the candidates in direct inverse relationship to how well they poll against Republicans in a general. Edwards polls better than Obama who polls better than Clinton.
Edwards is also the most liberal (or progressive, if you prefer) of the three of them. Democratic primary voters are supposed to be left-leaning, but they seem to support the most centrist candidate of the three -- Hilary Clinton, the woman who won't even say she'd shut down torture without exception.
Now, as long as we're talking turkey and breaking taboos, let's say the rest of what needs to be said.
Clinton has the highest negatives of any Democratic candidate, by a large margin. She's also a woman. Everyone plays up how that's an advantage, and sure, Americans claim they'd vote for a woman. But there's a well known polling bias on such social issues: people don't want to say they're sexist on the phone, but we all know sexism hasn't gone away. Some of Clinton's theoretical support in a general election is probably phantom popularity. It might only be a few percent, but given she already has razor thin margins against many Republicans, that could be the difference between victory and ignomious defeat.
And then there's Obama. Bill Clinton wasn't America's first Black President. Obama, on the other hand, would like to be. I fully expect a chunk of Obama's support would simply evaporate at the polling station, because a lot of Americans, no matter what they say, aren't voting for a black man. Shoot the messenger if you choose, but everything I know about America tells me America is still riddled with racism.
Edwards is male, southern and telegenic. He has run a populist campaign. He is probably as left wing as someone can be in the US and still run for President. He has been a friend to unions and to the poor. He has had the guts to admit he was wrong on the war and while his anti-war platform isn't as strong as I'd like (he should commit to pull out) it's better than Clinton's or Obama's.
He's electable. Of the big 3 candidates he's the most progressive.
And he's in third place.
This isn't 2004. Voting your beliefs (the poor and middle class are getting screwed) and choosing the most electable candidate aren't in opposition to each other this time.
So what I'm asking Democratic primary voters is to take a good hard look at Edwards again. Stop accepting the media's narrative of Edwards as "the number 3 guy". Look at the numbers, look at his positions and realize that this time you can have it all -- you can have a progressive candidate and you can have a nominee who will absolutely wipe the floor with the Republicans.
Vote your heart, but by all means also vote electability. And don't let political correctness blind you to political realities. Because the country simply cannot afford another 4 years with a Republican president.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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