The Case for Edwards

[womzilla]

My first political post of the year! Huzzah!

I've been mostly supporting John Edwards since the beginning of primary season, for reasons to which I've alluded before, which boil down to "his priorities are similar to mine." He's the only candidate directly confronting the fundamentally broken nature of political news coverage in the US; he's the only candidate directly engaging the problem of economic inequality at any length; he's the only candidate I've seen directly address the ongoing catastrophe in New Orleans; and his repudiation of his early support for the war on Iraq leads me to believe he's interested in a less interventional foreign policy than any of the other candidates (except Ron Paul and Dennis Kusinich). He made many of these points while running for VP, of course, so I was inclined to like him when the primaries began. He's not afraid to be a liberal, and he's not willing to parrot Republicans' rhetoric to bash Democrats, both of which are habits that drive me nuts about the other leading Dems. He's charismatic and smart and a good campaigner--it's really not easy for a bleeding-heart liberal to win a Senate seat in North Carolina, as I know from watching the state close-up for nearly twenty years.

But yesterday I had pointed out another reason why I support him: The entrenched power elites are really scared of him. Glenn Greenwald pointed out this letter to Sunday's New York Times Week in Review which I had already seen, from Theodore Frank of the American Enterprise Institute:

There is a critical distinction between Mitt Romney's and John Edwards's wealth. Mr. Romney, as a businessman, made investments that created wealth. Mr. Edwards, as a trial lawyer, made his money through lawsuits that merely took from one pocket and gave to another, and probably destroyed wealth in the process. (Mr. Edwards's multimillion-dollar medical malpractice verdicts almost certainly hurt the quality of health care in North Carolina.)

Little wonder that Mr. Romney understands that to improve the economy, one needs to expand the pie, while Mr. Edwards's policy proposals focus entirely on the redistribution of the existing pie without thought for the future adverse consequences to the size of the pie.

[Greenwald:] Anything that results in accountability for our largest corporations is inherently bad, even when they're found under our legal system to have broken the law or acted recklessly. Thus, John Edwards' self-made wealth is deeply dishonorable and shameful because it came at the expense of our largest corporations and on behalf of the poor and dirty masses, while Mitt Romney's wealth, spawned by his CEO-father's connections, is to be honored and praised because it benefited our establishment and was on behalf of our glorious elite.

The true message of the "conservative" movement is "there should be no accountability for the powerful". John Edwards has spent his entire life making the opposite case, literally. I have such a big man-crush on him right now.

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

if Richardson does decide to go VP, he'll likely go with Clinton.

Pretty much negating any good he might be able to do.
Hilarity has the reputation of not listening to anyone.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true. She's certainly not high on my list. Richardson would give a lot of people a reason to vote her ticket, making her more palatable.