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John Edwards Channels Ralph Nader
John Edwards channels Ralph Nader and Nader isn’t even dead. Perhaps Nader is John’s choice for running mate (should John get that far).
Bonus Quote of the Day — Political Wire
“And we can say as long as we get Democrats in, everything’s gonna be O.K. It’s a lie. It’s not the truth. Do you really believe if we replace a crowd of corporate Republicans with a crowd of corporate Democrats that anything meaningful’s gonna change?”
– John Edwards, in a new television ad running in New Hampshire.
3 Responses to “John Edwards Channels Ralph Nader”
Did he go absolutely loony, talk about “corporatized nation” or of the “corporate plutocracy”? [chuckling]
Yeah that’s, uh, crazy talk, our nation isn’t corporatized, right… (glances @ DLS from the corner of his eyes)
Nader has said he may or may not run in 2008, depending on who the democrats nominate; he said he will definitely run if Clinton’s nominated. I always figured that Nader was tacitly endorsing Edwards in that statement (they’re both lawyers), though I could be wrong.
Frankly, I’m pissed at Obama for splintering the non-Hillary vote. Edwards would be a shoo-in right now if it weren’t for him. But Obama has as much right to run as anyone, though it seems like both he and Hillary are using increasingly irrelevant ideas to propel their campaigns: Hillary the hawkish centrist, Obama the bipartisanish optimist. People want peace, they want to (continue to) throw the rascals out, they want health care and jobs. The mood in the nation is decidedly left-wing, even if decades of business propaganda leave most people allergic to the term.
A great deal of it isn’t. Not really even commercialized, unlike Christmas. [casting "adversary vs. adversary or Spy vs. Spy in the same room" equally-cynical-or-even-condescending look back at the Beav]
The non-Hillary vote? Maybe. But doesn’t that still split the field? Not that I believe the end would be any different (I believe Hillary Clinton will get the Dem nomination).
That’s her appearance for now, anyway. Just speaking tough on Iraq and Iran doesn’t make her into a big hawk. She’s just appealing to the mainstream and to swing voters, because by appealing to the far left, for every vote she gains she loses multiple votes. Wait until after she is elected (and especially if she is re-elected to a second term) and see how far left she goes. (May still apply the brakes if it prevents her from being re-elected; she can go her normal left after election and then gauge if the public accepts how far she goes by the 2010 elections, which I don’t believe would be as strong a rejection necessarily as in 1994.)
How bipartisan? He’s a typical Chicago-area Democrat.
It has nothing to do with business propaganda and everything to do with the old-line Democratic Party and that legacy, as well as the radicalism (often now hip as well as PC; note the celebrities and their outrageousness) that turned off even many liberals and Democrats after the late 1960s.
Throw the rascals out, yes (other than Iraq, that was the main driver behind the switch from GOP to Dem in 1996, GOP was acting too much like entrenched Dems). Some will continue to vote for the incumbent (a species that has a strong future, still), sometimes out of self-interest (history of getting lots of goodies from Washington).
Peace? Yes, in general; Americans always have. An end to the Iraq war? Yes — and to its problems (Iraq was the main driver behind the 1996 pro-Dem elections), but obviously it doesn’t mean an instant complete withdrawal (which would lead to disaster).
No to attacks on Iran without real justification, but not screaming for “dialogue” and appeasement (in large part just to slap at Bush).
Health care and jobs? Not by definition to be looked at government for, either first or at any time. In reality it’s more complicated than that; federal provision of health care is now a mainstream idea (“Medicare for All” is useful as a characterization as well as an actual political objective), if for no other reason than insurance companies cherry-pick and engage in other harmful practices (denial of claims, fishing for pre-existing condition definitions to deny present-day-all-new-condition claims).
Certainly it’s not a mandate for the federal government to provide jobs for anybody, though good government policies hopefully lead to better economic conditions. (New laws about health insurance portability would help as well.) Such policies (and goals related to them) affect whom someone would vote for.