And with cutesy Obama being the darling of the starry-eyed dupes in this election so far, provided he doesn’t wreck his chances with Clinton or Clinton has the ability for a change to share the limelight and attention, Obama is the obvious Vice President for Hillary Clinton. Edwards’s best bet without Obama would be to put up a pretense as long as possible, then somehow be “convinced” or have it be “discovered” that he and Hillary, working together instead of against each other, could truly make it a better and more wonderful America [insert stupid smile and cheers from Dimmie dupes].

Cynically viewed, most of those other Dims besides HRC and Obama have probably had the Vice Presidential position in mind from the start and that’s their real goal and the object of their real strategy. Whoever polls well behind HRC has an advantage to being the next VP (subject to HRC ego and other problems, of course). Obama has the VP slot locked up since the last party convention as long as he and HRC can devise a way to work together.

Edwards otherwise is VP at best. Now with Obama this year, he’s not the VP leader.

I wouldn’t simply dismiss the possibility that many Representatives and Senators really believed that the administration had compleeling evidence that was too hot to be disclosed to the public. Did they have to believe that officials were basing a decision of national importance on handpicked, flimsy data, disregarding all warning signs? Only throw the first stone if you never were ‘guilty’ of acting in good faith.

But at least Edwards made his motives much more transparent than Hillary did. And he admits his own responsibility in enabling the warmongering, something Clinton didn’t come up with so far. However, I think a candidate who was right on this matter, like Obama, would be a better choice for the most important job in the US. Why don’t you sign this petition to bring another candidate with reliable decision making abilities into the race?

This looks more like it makes sense than it actually does.

Did he have any idea of what the intelligence was? Many did.

Was he aware that intelligence was being manipulated to fit a political agenda? Many were.

Was he wrong because he wasn’t smart enough to figure this stuff out? That’s the part he’s glossing over, but isn’t that what he’s implying?

Hell, it’s obvious the vote was wrong, isn’t it? What I’m left with is that the acknowledgement of error is largely about politics, as indeed it seemed the original vote was. As such, I don’t care much about the acknowledgement.

Either Edwards believed Bush or he figured it was politically wiser to vote for AUMF without knowing whether he should believe him or not. His much ballyhooed acknowledgement of error doesn’t say which it is. He hasn’t crossed this bridge yet but he’ll have to eventually.

Huh?

“I was wrong. Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told — and what many of us believed and argued — was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn’t make a mistake — the men and women of our armed forces and their families — have performed heroically and paid a dear price.

America’s leaders — all of us — need to accept the responsibility we each carry for how we got to this place. More than 2,000 Americans have lost their lives in this war, and more than 150,000 are fighting there today. They and their families deserve honesty from our country’s leaders. And they also deserve a clear plan for a way out.”
John Edwards

Now compare this with Hillary’s brouhaha. Not good enough for you? Weird.

Of the major Dems running, Edwards’ stances are closer to mine than Clinton’s, and probably Obama’s as well. But I’m having problems warming up to him. He was pretty much of a cipher in the ‘04 campaign, and if he’s the same man that he’s always been, as he said in the linked article, how does he explain the mistake of his vote on AUMF?

In terms of that vote, I actually prefer Hillary’s treatment. Simply saying now that the vote then was “a mistake” doesn’t quite cut it. Edwards will have to come up with a more complete explanation if I’m to support him rather than Obama.

I’d say that Edwards is the only one that is going for the populist “let’s get together and ram this down their throats and we’ll be proven correct” route.

As for the other arguments, health care and reaching out to unions, I seem to remember that Edwards both proposed changes in health care in 2004 and tried to woo organized labor. It seems to me that he’s just doing it more successfully in this new campaign, being more detiled about his position. This may be a result of less triangulation, as Balz phrases it, I don’t know. However, I can’t understand how this translates into ‘moving to the left’. Where’s there a real shift in position? At least to me, Edwards is as liberal now as he already was in 2004, I can’t see any real difference.

On health care, he has proposed a plan for universal coverage that he says would cost $90 billion to $120 billion a year. He would pay for it by rolling back Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans. When he describes the details, he says matter-of-factly that it could lead to a government-run, single-payer health-care system, a position no other major candidate has come close to articulating.

Another one:

As some Democrats, including Clinton, call for a return to fiscal discipline in light of current budget deficits, Edwards takes the opposite view. What threatens the country is too little investment in health care, alternative energy sources, education and job security, he says, and he would rather do something about those than try to reduce the deficit significantly.

Please read articles I link to first. It might surprise you but I do not have unlimited time.

More:

In comparison to the 2004 campaign, Edwards has relentlessly courted organized labor and hopes to win some union endorsements. He campaigned last year for state ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage and appeared on picket lines with workers, and his health-care plan has won praise in the labor community. Campaign manager Bonior has close ties to labor.

Edwards also has wooed the Net-roots activists on the left.

And:

Last week, Edwards announced he would not participate in a Nevada Democratic debate, co-sponsored by Fox News, which Net-roots activists had been asking the candidates to boycott.

That should help you get going. He’s courting, quite obviously, the left wing of the Democratic party, that’snot a problem but denying it is a bit silly.

And the only evidence for this is that he now says his vote for the Iraq war was a mistake? Well, so you’re actually saying that ‘moving to the left’ has become synonymous for ‘drawing the right conclusions’?

Sry, Mike, but this is utter nonsense. Pls point out a single issue where Edwards is now more to the left than in 2004. The Iraq war doesn’t count, being against it isn’t a stance that’s exclusive for the left. It’s not a ‘left vs. right’ problem, it’s ‘hawkish’ vs. ‘reasonable’.