In response to the John Edwards thread started earlier today

[Ken Burch]

Yes, the man has some serious personal issues. But can we at least agree that, putting those aside, it's been a disgrace that this party has essentially abandoned the poor since the 1970's?

If distancing our party from those on the bottom actually helped us, wouldn't we have won in 1980, 1984 and 1988?

And the truth is, our candidate would have been elected in 1992 simply on his healthcare stand, not because of the George Wallace code words about the "forgotten middle class".

We never needed, as a party, to accept the Republican spin that the poor were just another "special interest group" who were only looking for handouts. They never wanted handouts, they wanted jobs. The only reason they were given handouts was that handouts had the votes of "centrist" Dems in Congress and jobs programs(or a serious attack on redlining)didn't.

This Administration needs to include everyone in the New Deal legacy that the old "Southern Dems" forced FDR and LBJ to leave out.

[Ken Burch]

1. Besides, people that hate or look down on the poor don't vote Democratic anyway

there's no point in bothering to appease such people.

[question everything]

77. No, as Karl Rove (I think) said: the poor do not vote anyway (nt)

[Tansy_Gold]

2. I don't think anyone in that thread was arguing that point

They/we/I were simply saying that John Edwards' actions hadn't quite lived up to his rhetoric.

My comment was just that if he's really all about helping the poor, then he needs to get out there and do it, not just talk about it. That's all. But apparently some of his actions -- pulling funding from his college tuition program, not seeing through on his Katrina relief project -- indicate that he's not quite as sincere as he would like people to think he is.

He needs to stop whining about it and just do it.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

4. Yeah. I think he may have been using the issue almost solely for his own gain.

[PatSeg]

8. Yes, I think he was

His rhetoric did not match his history. I think he would have done or said anything to get elected.

[Ken Burch]

11. Well, then, take it away solely from Edwards the man

There is a larger point about this party and poverty. Starting in the late 70's, this party did basically abandon the poor. Jesse Jackson was the only candidate in the Eighties that spoke about those left out in the cold by Reaganism, and the party mocked him. Kucinich also raised it in his two campaigns, but people wouldn't listen to him because they couldn't handle him being a vegan and freaked out about trivial side issues like the UFO thing.

We need to let the poor back in. Obama gets this at some level, but he's facing a lot of resistance from the Beltway crowd.

[Tansy_Gold]

24. Andif I remember correctly, Rev. Jackson had some of the same

"issues" Edwards did when it came to keeping his pants zipped.

[Ken Burch]

33. And in discarding him, the party discarded the poor.

Social justice issues meant nothing at all to Mondale and Dukakis. And when Gary Hart attacked "special interest groups" we all know he meant "make the party whiter".

[karynnj]

25. You are ignoring many Democrats who did speak of the poor

and/or acted to help them. It wasn't just Jackson and Edwards. Mario Cuomo eloquently spoke of the same issue you attribute to Edwards, except Cuomo's actions matched his words.

Take President Obama. He came out of Harvard, as an editor of the Law Review, and took a job as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago - where his first boss was Michelle Robinson. He worked on the Illinois version of SCHIP. HRC had more in her past thasn Edwards in terms of helping the poor - starting with her work out of school for children.

From his 2004 oponents, Kerry has been the Senate sponsor for Youthbuild, that helps under priviledged youth, for decades. He also wrote the precursor bill for SCHIP with Kennedy and wrote and sponsored through at least 4 Congresses the affordible housing fund legislation that passes last year. Dean had programs in VT he could point to and Gephardt was a union backed Senator always voting for the poor.

Look at others beyond those who were his competitors - Sanders is a socialist. Brown is a real populist. Kennedy has been part of nearly every liberal piece of legislation for decades. Kennedy argued against the bankruptcy bill Edwards voted for.

Open your eyes. What is hard is realizing someone you believed in was not as good as he seemed.

[Ken Burch]

34. I was speaking more of presidential candidates

Teddy Kennedy was great of course. Cuomo gave a great speech in '84, but actually didn't do anything about poverty as governor of New York(check the stuff the Village Voice wrote about him in those years).

The poor were never mentioned at any Democratic convention in the Eighties or Nineties, other than in Jesse Jackson's speeches. And the 1980, 1984 and 1988 results proved that distancing the party from the poor doesn't gain us votes(as did Clinton's 43% in '92-a showing that would have been easily matched by a Democrat that wasn't viciously anti-Sixties).

And please, accept this: I am NOT a John Edwards apologist. OK?

[karynnj]

41. Try Kerry in 2004 -

In fact compare his 2004 platform to Edwards' 2004 platform. He slammed Kerry (and Dean) in debates for having near universal healthcare plans.

If you limit it to 2008, Obama was a community organizer on the South side of Chicago. THese issues have real meaning to him - more than to Edwards.

[Tansy_Gold]

40. Again, my regrets that I can't recommend a single post

:yourock:

[Ken Burch]

10. Well, Edwards had his shortcomings

I was trying to get back to what I think was the larger point behind that thread's OP.

This is about much more than one man.

[bigwillq]

3. John Edwards turned out to be a big zero.

So did his wife.

[Ken Burch]

13. Cheap shot. Elizabeth was the victim in that story.

n/t.

[bigwillq]

14. She pimped herself out

with her "book tour". :puke:

[Ken Burch]

15. "pimped herself out"? You say this about a cancer victim who's husband cheated on her?

Christ, what did Elizabeth Edwards ever do to you? Grow a heart, willya?

[bigwillq]

18. Many people have cancer. And many people

get cheated on. That is besides the point. She choose to go on a lot of tv shows and appear in many print articles. It's my choice to criticize that decision. I wish the entire family would just leave the public eye.

[Oregone]

5. Yeah, disgraceful, but you didn't actually expect him to do anything about it, eh?

[emilyg]

6. Nope.

[Ken Burch]

12. Then let's deal with the larger issue about getting the rest of the party to do something about it.

This isn't JUST about Edwards. And the point of the other thread wasn't just about Edwards.

[JI7]

7. i don't see any Edwards thread from earlier today

[Ken Burch]

21. This was the one:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6049520

[geek tragedy]

9. Irresponsible, deadbeat dads are a big part of poverty.

Johnny boy is a poor example in that aspect.

[Ken Burch]

16. True, he was a lout. But again, this isn't JUST about John Edwards

It's about this party and poverty, and the responsibilities this party has abandoned since the late 70's.

[karynnj]

26. Pick a different hero - or rather fight for the issue

Edwards as Senator did less than nearly any other Democratic Senator on this issue.

[Ken Burch]

32. Edwards isn't my hero.

My point is that the party needs to take up what he was saying in 2008 about poverty. We can't keep making it all about "the 'burbs".

[bobbolink]

75. I'm a woman whose child was STOLEN. It caused me health problems,

and now at 63, I'm homeless.

So, you want to dismiss ME also with your broadbrush?

You want to say that I don't deserve to live and be treated as a human being?

And you call yourself "progressive"?

You are IGNORANT and need a heart transplant.

[bobbolink]

79. Obviously you don't consider t hose of us who are hurting to even be worth a reasonable reply.

The death of compassion and the villification of empathy among "progressives" is completely DISGUSTING.

THIS is what is losing you votes, yet you will be back in a few months, begging people to vote again.

When you do so, remember the lack of concern you've shown for the very people you are asking to go vote.

Then do some soul-searching.

[Arkana]

17. The issues Edwards raised were never the point of objection.

It was the fact that he was such a narcissist that he decided to run for the nomination KNOWING that his affair would most likely become public if he became the nominee and torpedo any hope the Democrats had of taking back the White House that people object to.

[Ken Burch]

19. I agree that Edwards was a narcissist.

He wasn't my choice(I was a Kucinich supporter). But of the top 3, he WAS the only one who mentioned poverty. HRC didn't give a shit about it(as she proved by never trying to stop Bill from signing the racist, punitive "welfare reform" bill in the 90's). Obama, at the time, was being vague at best(although, unlike HRC's showed capacity for growth on the issue).

The point is, we should have had SOMEBODY in the race with a clean personal house that remembered what Cesar Chavez lived for and what Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King died for. Enough already with appeasing the smug jerks in the 'burbs(whose smugness, hopefully, has been at least partially knocked out of them by the banking collapse).

[karynnj]

27. I would bet that both Obama and Clinton were more affected by

Martin Luther King jr's death. They likely were closer to Chavez as well. I seriously doubt that Edwards even stopped eating grapes in the late 60s or early 70s. In 2004, it was clear that he likely voted for Nixon, who his college roomate, who voted against Nixon, said Edwards was for. Edwards said he "forgot" who his first vote for President was for. (Me, I KNOW I voted and canvassed for McGovern.)

[Ken Burch]

31. Both Clintons abandoned ALL Sixties values

That was the point of the DLC-to try to wipe out the Sixties from the Democratic Party's sense memory.

If you were in the DLC, it means you don't give a shit about the poor and are willing to sacrifice them for short-term personal gain.

And, while I ended up strongly backing Obama, a good point of his appeal was in the implication that he felt contempt for the Sixties activist tradition.

[karynnj]

42. Rather a broad brush there - not to mention, Edwards was DLC

[Ken Burch]

44. One of the most sickening experiences I had during the '08 campaign

Was going to HRC's website and seeing her running RFK actualities. How dare she, when what he stood for meant nothing to her?

[karynnj]

70. Several of my most sickening moments of the 2008 campaign were

seeing the Edwards lie straight faced about various things that happened in 2004 and seeing many here believe them even when there was plenty of reasons to know that what they were saying was not true. To take the gift, of Kerry and of the powers in the party that pushed Kerry to pick him, and turn around and attack him, is the lowest level of character I have seen on the Democratic side.

That was bad, but the worst action didn't involve the Kerrys. It was EE telling a crowd in a prepared speech that Obama's plan wouldn't have covered her because her cancer was a pre-existing condition. This was not true of any Democratic plan. That it was in her speech - not in response to a question - and because it was the eve of the Iowa Caucus - too close for Obama to adequately respond made this the worst dirty trick of 2008 - because it cynically used EE's cancer and credibility. It was sickening then in its dishonesty, knowing now that the bombshell they knew was there - including a baby expected in a month or two is revolting. All former Edwards' fans, need to ask themselves if this is consistent with their view that EE and JRE stayed in the race just to push their issues.

As to comments on the Kerrys and 2004, one of the worst things was Elizabeth's attack in her book on Teresa - even saying that Teresa's comment on a doctor, that Teresa (even by EE's account) did not know EE had chosen caused EE to be depressed was pathetic. EE didn't bother to note that Teresa has hosted an annual conference on women's health concentrating on environmental toxins and cancer and her foundation funds research and a chair at a Pittsburg University related to this. She has an unusually good network to get inside assessments. If EE already had made her choices and didn't want input, she simply could have told Teresa that she was not interested in any recommendations, even from people involved in state of the art research. To write something scapegoating Teresa, who was only trying to help for what was her own reaction to the stress of having cancer and the reality that there was uncertainty involved with every choice is pathetic.

Ask yourself a question. Why did EE include this story in her book naming Teresa - and why did she go on many interviews speaking of the down home "regular" Edwards versus the "elite" Kerrys? Now, why to I think the attacks on Teresa the worst - Teresa was badly smeared in 2004 and EE purposely used those RW stereotypes. Teresa, unlike her husband never had a platform to challenge those characterizations.

These actions are all worse than a Democrat speaking of a Democratic icon, no matter how short he or she fell from living up to that Democrat.

[Raine1967]

20. John who?

[Ken Burch]

22. Again, Edwards isn't the point. The point is this party and poverty

Can people please deal with the REAL issue here?

[Raine1967]

29. Wait... didn't you bring him up in OP?

So I am going to ask you -- why would you ask me, and others to discuss the "real Issue" by bringing up JE?

If you want to talk poverty, good-- but why the insertion of John Edwards? He isn't doing anything about this issue these days...

What the hell is the real issue here? I supported this man. I got over it real quick.

You presented Edwards in your OP -- YOU made him the point. What is the issue? Why attach it to Edwards?

[Ken Burch]

30. I had to bring up the thread he was in to make the point about how the other thread went wrong

n/t.

[Raine]

23. Edwards gave that issue a bad name

I would bet every Democrat will stay clear of it for fearing of bringing up the spector of John Edwards ... Thanks a heap Edwards. x(

[bobbolink]

80. So, we poor folk can die for his sins???????

And, I may remind you, which I shouldn't have to do, that is EXACTLY what we are doing....DYING.

Does it matter?

[saltpoint]

28. I'm one of those pro-labor Dems from way back. I inherited the

pro-labor gene from ancestors who distinguished themselves in passionate political alignments with Fighting Bob and RFK and any number of others inbetween and since.

John Edwards' marital conflict, presumably owed to his extramarital affair, does not subtract from the emphasis he placed on pro-labor issues and does not diminish the dignity of fighting for pro-labor outcomes within the Democratic Party or the country at large.

I'm long-time and deep-boned pro-Labor and I still like John Edwards.

[Ken Burch]

35. And, as I've said repeatedly, it isn't about what you think about John Edwards

The point is, the party should never have started treating the poor as a "special interest group" that had no right to expect anything from us. At the least, the poor had the right to expect that we'd defend them against right-wing slurs.

[saltpoint]

36. Hi, Ken Burch. Yes, I follow. I usually stake out a pro-Labor position,

no matter the topic!

[Ken Burch]

38. Glad to hear it, fellow worker!

Solidarity.

[saltpoint]

39. A thumbs up and a big hug back atcha.

[Tansy_Gold]

43. Then start a new thread about poverty and the poor and forget about

John what's his name.

Tansy Gold

[Ken Burch]

45. This thread was about trying to do just that

Is there a reason you can't trust that?

I never supported Edwards. I don't now. Edwards' political career is over. OK?

[Tansy_Gold]

47. Yes, but your subject line made it about John Edwards.

Maybe if you referenced something like Michael Harrington's "The Other America" and the influence it had on starting Johnson's War on Poverty, or Piven & Cloward's "Poor People's Movements: Why they succeed, how they fail?" or something similar and just leave Edwards out of it, then people won't get distracted.

It's been a while since I read Harrington, and though I have PPM I've never read it, but I suspect that it's more than just the obvious issues already raised here. Maybe poverty doesn't lend itself to over-arching legislation that grabs media attention. Although, to be fair, Johnson's "Great Society" programs were catchy enough. Head Start, of course, is about the only one left, but I think you get the picture.

But another problem is that poverty doesn't involve a single issue. It's not like DADT or single-payer health care. It's affordable housing. It's education. It's childhood nutrition. It's prenatal care. It's family planning. It's jobs. But it's also an issue that affects and can be effectively addressed one family -- even a family of one -- at a time. This makes it very complex, because it's so easy for the RW to point to any individual success story coming out of poverty and say, "See, that individual made it out of poverty on her/his own merits. It's all about personal responsibility, not government hand-outs."

And there are many different types of poverty: rural, urban, old, young, just to name a few of the more obvious.

It's also about media. when the national news networks -- broadcast and cable -- essentially shut down for a week to cover the death and funeral of a controversial pop culture icon, there's something wrong with the media. Who would air an update of Edward R. Murrow's Harvest of Shame? Who would watch it?

Poverty, however, is necessary to the working of a capitalist/corporatist economy. The efforts to "fix" the current economic crisis are of course designed to help the economy, and therefore NOT designed to help the poor. But you already knew that.



Tansy Gold

[Ken Burch]

49. Poverty requres, to used an overused word, a wholistic approach, as you say

And what I was trying to do in starting this thread was to rescue what seemed to be the thing that was lost in the other one.

The crucial blunder LBJ made was to imply that not only could government reduce poverty(which it could, and which it did-the Great Society programs, despite underfunding and neglect for most of their existence, were actually quite effective) but that it could wipe it out almost instantly. This set the Great Society up for expectations it couldn't possibly fulfill in the time Johnson allotted for it. Then, Johnson compounded the mistake by refusing to passionately defend the programs against right-wing attack, and especially to defend the idea that programs that benefited people of color were worth creating, and then escalating the war(despite the fact that, having just BEEN reelected in a landslide, he'd have had little to lose in quietly getting out in, say 1965) which dried up funds that could have gone to the programs.

Also, Johnson made the crucial mistake of not actually listening to the poor themselves about what they needed. If he had done this, he would have realized that jobs programs, not increased welfare spending(although there was a case for this as well)were what was needed, as well as the removal of the pointless and destructive rule that only single-parent homes could get AFDC. It was this last requirement, not welfare itself, that caused the problem of family breakup that made the situation far worse.

[Nedsdag]

37. What John Edwards thread? nt

[Forkboy]

46. I can't form an opinion without cali's input.

[grantcart]

48. I think that you should assume that Cali supports this thread

[Ken Burch]

50. Are you sure you want to put cali under that kind of pressure?

n/t.

[dionysus]

54. oh damn...

:spank:

[scheming daemons]

51. The poor definitely need an advocate... but JE showed he's not the one to do it

[Lord Helmet]

52. Who cares? He pooped where he eats.

[Ken Burch]

64. But did his mask slip while he was pooping?

And was the perfection of his masked pooping an enemy of the good?

(Just thought I'd work the three most overused expressions on DU into the same post).

[dionysus]

53. however ken, lookoing at his voting record, there is a credible school of thought that his whole

populist thing was a false front.

[glitch]

57. Sadly true. However we the people could have held him to his rhetoric

if he hadn't self-destructed. At least he brought poverty to the discussion. That was a good thing.

[Kalyke]

55. What does John Edwards have to do with the party abandoning the poor?

Edwards used "the poor" as a campaign issue.

It was part of a speech that took off, by accident. Then, after losing in 2004, he decided to use that popular portion of his speech to start a so-called Poverty Center, that he completely abandoned after losing again in 2008.

He was never about poverty.

However, Democrats do need to focus on the working poor and their needs - such as healthcare coverage for all, jobs and progressive tax structures.

[Orsino]

56. Edwards' peccadilloes became another excuse for party leadership...

...to ignore the poor. However cynical you think he was about fighting poverty, he at least kept the issue alive when on the campaign trail.

This, presumably, is one reason he was so eagerly and thoroughly un-personed by top Democrats.

[bvar22]

60. Nailed It!

:thumbsup:

[karynnj]

61. Many of the main topics of 2008 - such as the economy and healthcare

were about poverty. What did Edwards bring to it that was different other than rhetoric and a New Orleans photo op?

There are many Democrats quietly working to restore the safety net that was weakened in the last 2 decades.

Edwards was actually hyped for years - his coverage in 2004 was far more than his ONE primary win dictated. He thengot mostly positive coverage through the end of 2006. He was already not a force by February 2008, but with the scandal, he is an embarrassment to the party.

[Orsino]

63. Edwards brought only exposure...

...making poverty the center of his campaign.

[karynnj]

66. the center of his campaign was John R Edwards

He had no more in the way of policies to deal with these issues than most Democrats. He did not introduce significant legislation - or even speak with unusual frequency about poverty. Back in 2005, for the fun of it, I took a group of poverty related words. One was poverty, the others I forget. I used the search function on the Thomas site which keeps the Senate record. I search for those words and "Kerry" "Kennedy" and "Edwards". I used 2000, 2001 and 2002 - because in 1999, it would be understandable if he did not speak much and in 2003 and 2004 - he was not there much. On each word, Kennedy, then close behind Kerry - easily beat out Edwards.

It is true that Edwards constantly said that poverty was his main issue, but in terms of speaking about the underlying issues - he did NOT speak any more about health care, housing, jobs, unemployment than the others. Additionally, he gets minus points because he and Elizabeth lied about the positions of at least one competitor and his 2004 position on healthcare.

- Elizabeth said on the eve of the Iowa caucus that Obama's plan would not cover him because of pre-existing conditions. This was NOT in an off the cuff statement - it was part of prepared remarks. Having it said on the eve of the caucuses and by cancer suffer, Elizabeth make this sickening.

- Elizabeth, on Daily Kos, wrote that even before she was diagnosed with cancer, she had been part of why Edwards thought universal health care was needed. Now, before she was diagnosed with cancer means before fall 2004 - and Edwards in 2004 covered just kids and attacked Kerry and Dean, at different points, for having near universal plans that he thought were too expensive.

[Orsino]

67. Every candidate makes himself the center.

Hate on his hypocrisy all you want--I will, too!--but his campaign was about poverty, more so than was any other candidate's, with the possible exception of Kucinich's. Up until Edwards dropped out, he brought the most attention to the vast inequities of wealth in America. that issue that our TVs try so hard to conceal got a little more exposure, thanks to the Edwards campaign.

[karynnj]

69. No one doubt that that was his number one spiel

what I said was that the difference was just rhetoric. The fact is many of his competitors in both 2004 and 2008 DID FAR MORE actually working to alleviate poverty issues.

Remember the labor debate. Biden called Edwards out several times because Edwards was going on about being the candidate there for labor, having been out fighting for them to get an increase in the minimum wage. Biden's question, asked nearly every time Biden got the mike was what did Edwards ever do pre- 2005 (or 2006 - my memory is vague)? Edwards NEVER asked this even as Biden became more and more aggressive on it. Biden's obvious anger was justified - nearly everyone on that staged had fought for the minimum wage and other normal Democratic issues for decades. Edwards was not just stating his work since his rebirth as a liberal after 2005, he was arguing that only he was for things that many had fought for all their careers.

That Edwards succeeded with many of his followers in instilling the believe that he was uniquely good on this issue harms nearly everyone else in the party. That is why I respond in every thread where people argue that Edwards was some kind of hero in fighting poverty.

Many people have argued the vast inequities of wealth in America. Ted Kennedy has all his career. I can find Kerry speeches doing so back to 1993 in the Senate record and he addresses the issue brilliantly in his 1971 speech speaking about disadvantaged veterans. (Edwards, in contrast, forgets who he cast his first vote for in 1972, though his college roommate remembered that Edwards was for Nixon. McGovern was the Senator behind the food stamp program as well as anti-war.) Obama acted on his concern of that vast inequity, by taking a job to help those on the bottom - he could, more easily than Edwards, have gotten a big corporate law job or, like Edwards, made millions as a trial lawyer.

Edwards had great stump speeches in the 2004 and 2008 primaries and he used the same persuasive skills that made him a fortune as a trial lawyer to make himself seen as an advocate for the poor - but he was not the only one. There is no need to diminish every other Democrat as not caring or speaking out on this issue just because they spoke in different ways than John Edwards. Take just one state's Senators. Kennedy working on Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, minimum wage, and the recent service program did not just talk, but acted. So, did Kerry with his work on the precursor bill to SCHIP, his more than a decade sponsorship of Youthbill and other programs to help disadvantaged youth and his more than a decade of pushing the affordable housing fund. Their words on poverty - and they did say many - are clearly sincere as are matched by actions.

[Orsino]

72. The spiel itself was significant...

...getting a lot of play for the problem of poverty that They don't want it to get. That Edwards was about the only candidate to make it was also significant.

I think his time out of the Senate did him some good.

[femrap]

58. I'm starting to think that

Edwards was simply alleviating his guilt by preaching about the poor.

A man who is cheating on his wife who is going to die from cancer which he probably caused demanding she go on hormones to give him another son....his legacy....makes me fucking sick. She has the first child, a girl. So she has to take more hormones to get the boy.

Elizabeth was menopausal when their first son died. I'm 99% sure that is what caused her cancer.

I can't stand the man. And I gave him $25 which I am going to try to get back. Since he worked for a Hedge Fund, I bet he can afford it.

I wish Elizabeth the best.

[bvar22]

59. One thing is certain.

The Poor, as a voting block, will be getting much larger.
Edwards DID inject "The Poor" and the "Two Americas" into the political debate, and I commend him for doing so.
"The Poor" ceased to be mentioned when he dropped out.....a non issue.
I will back anyone who gives a voice and draws attention to the "Two Americas".

Goldman Sachs is already well represented in the Democratic Party.

The Poor, as a voting block WILL be getting much larger.

[Wednesdays]

62. K&R

:kick:

[spiritual_gunfighter]

65. The poor has been completely forgotten

and left out of the political dialogue. It is just too bad that John Edwards was the messenger carrying the message.

[karynnj]

68. Several of my most sickening momemnts of the 2008 campaign were

seeing the Edwards lie straight faced about various things that happened in 2004 and seeing many here believe them even when there was plenty of reasons to know that what they were saying was not true. To take the gift, of Kerry and of the powers in the party that pushed Kerry to pick him, and turn around and attack him, is the lowest level of character I have seen on the Democratic side.

That was bad, but the worst action didn't involve the Kerrys. It was EE telling a crowd in a prepared speech that Obama's plan wouldn't have covered her because her cancer was a pre-existing condition. This was not true of any Democratic plan. That it was in her speech - not in response to a question - and because it was the eve of the Iowa Caucus - too close for Obama to adequately respond made this the worst dirty trick of 2008 - because it cynically used EE's cancer and credibility. It was sickening then in its dishonesty, knowing now that the bombshell they knew was there - including a baby expected in a month or two is revolting. All former Edwards' fans, need to ask themselves if this is consistent with their view that EE and JRE stayed in the race just to push their issues.

As to comments on the Kerrys and 2004, one of the worst things was Elizabeth's attack in her book on Teresa - even saying that Teresa's comment on a doctor, that Teresa (even by EE's account) did not know EE had chosen caused EE to be depressed was pathetic. EE didn't bother to note that Teresa has hosted an annual conference on women's health concentrating on environmental toxins and cancer and her foundation funds research and a chair at a Pittsburg University related to this. She has an unusually good network to get inside assessments. If EE already had made her choices and didn't want input, she simply could have told Teresa that she was not interested in any recommendations, even from people involved in state of the art research. To write something scapegoating Teresa, who was only trying to help for what was her own reaction to the stress of having cancer and the reality that there was uncertainty involved with every choice is pathetic.

Ask yourself a question. Why did EE include this story in her book naming Teresa - and why did she go on many interviews speaking of the down home "regular" Edwards versus the "elite" Kerrys? Now, why to I think the attacks on Teresa the worst - Teresa was badly smeared in 2004 and EE purposely used those RW stereotypes. Teresa, unlike her husband never had a platform to challenge those characterizations.

These actions are all worse than a Democrat speaking of a Democratic icon, no matter how short he or she fell from living up to that Democrat.

[karynnj]

71. Oops - this was meant to be in response to a later comment

[Bluenorthwest]

73. When one steps up to be a champion for others

and then fails them for simple pleasure, he has shown himself to be a user of others, not their champion.
In addition, John Edwards used his campaign platform to repeatedly oppose marriage equality specifically on the basis of his 'Baptist values' and his deep rooted sense of marriage being a sacred tradition for one man, and one woman. He would go on and on about how he is the son of a Deacon and how those strict marriage rules are an inseparable part of his being. He did not need to say any of that. He did not need to mount the high horse. He did not need to enumerate the ways in which his 'values' stress traditional religious marriage laws. He did not have to lie about himself, which was what he was doing, and in order to do that he used GLBT Americans as examples of those who are less moral, less beloved by God. The whole time he and his wife knew the truth. Neither one of these wealthy, powerful people have apologized for their use of our civil rights fight as a smokescreen for their own behavior in life.

[bobbolink]

81. So, what's YOUR excuse?

[beachmom]

74. If John Edwards actually had a RECORD of helping the poor, you might have a point.

But the truth is he only TALKED about it. We only have his Senate record to go on, which was decidedly conservative, having little to do with his 2008 campaign rhetoric.

It was not just his personal issues which were a turn off to many of us who actually did our homework.

[bobbolink]

76. Ken, I so much appreciate your efforts. It's sad and disgusting the replies that you are getting.

But it's not surprising. :(

Sapphire Blue got this crap too, and many times I would get PMs from her, so upset because of the ugly things that people said, and also that what she had spent a lot of time and effort on (and with her health, that was a BIG thing!), would get little attention at all.

Poverty has been "OFF THE TABLE" for many years now, and very few "progressives" give a damn.

The ugliness that you are seeing here in responses is exactly what I get everyday as a homeless person, and MOSTLY from "progressives"! The prejudice is horrible, yet it won't be discussed here, on Air America, or in any "progressive" venue.

We are ignored and villified, and it's literally killing us.

Thank you very much for your efforts! I see it and it means a lot to me. :applause:

[earth mom]

78. Handouts are just away for Congress to sweep the poor under the carpet.

So they can get on with their REAL business of kissing the ass of corporate america and making sure those corporate bastards have access to every fucking last taxpayer dollar. :puke:

[Hippo_Tron]

82. To a certain extent the poor and working classes abandoned us

In 1968 poor and working class white people went over to Nixon and in 1980 they went even more to Reagan. Many have stayed in the Republican Party because of social issues.

The New Deal Coalition worked because the vast majority poor and working class people voted for Roosevelt. Today that's not the case. Poor and working class people vote Democratic in the Northeast and part of the Midwest but they don't in the South and the West. Black and Hispanic working class and poor people vote Democratic and whites tend to vote Republican.

The fact of the matter is that until the large numbers of poor and working class white people that currently vote based on homophobia and racism stop doing so, the Democratic Party will (and has) found it easier to create a majority coalition that consists of minorities and educated suburban middle-upper class white people who don't like the religious right. And said coalition is inherently going to put less value in helping the working class and poor than a coalition that is made up almost entirely of working class and poor people.