# John Edwards



10 days left: Will someone break out?

Dan Guild expects one of the Democratic candidates to surge in the closing days, most likely Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar. -promoted by Laura Belin

Ten days before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, I wrote a piece here entitled Front-runners Beware.

Four years later, there is not one front-runner, but four. Importantly, New Hampshire seems just as close. As I wrote last month, the winner of Iowa can expect a 12-point bounce in New Hampshire.

The simple truth is the winner in Iowa is very likely to win the New Hampshire primary eight days later. And no Democrat has won Iowa and New Hampshire when both were contested and lost the nomination.

The history with tables is below, but in summary:

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It's getting late for the lower tier in Iowa

What Dan Guild found after analyzing decades of Iowa caucus polling from this point in the election cycle. -promoted by Laura Belin

For candidates struggling nationally, Iowa is the last, great hope.

I have been on campaigns like those. You draw hope from stories of conversion. A vice-chair of a town committee announces their support, or a canvasser talks to someone who just converted from the front-runner to you. You think, just another debate, or a new set of ads. Then one fine morning, a poll will show…

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Obama's caucus victory 10 years later: A look back in photos

Many thanks to Jordan Oster, a public affairs consultant and clean energy advocate from Des Moines, for this review of a remarkable Iowa caucus campaign. -promoted by desmoinesdem

January 3 marked the tenth anniversary of Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 Iowa Democratic Precinct Caucuses.

Like a number of supporters and former staffers, I took to social media earlier this week to share photos and memories from his campaign. You can check out the full Twitter thread here.

As this anniversary approached, I began to gather photos and recollections of the Obama campaign. The Iowa caucuses have long captivated me, and I have tried to do my part to preserve and keep its unique history alive. A camera is usually a required accessory when I attend presidential events, and I have filled many memory cards with photos of presidential candidates since I first got involved with campaigns in 2003.

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How the Iowa caucuses work, part 4: What a precinct captain does

Continuing a six-part series. Part 1 covered basic elements of the caucus system, part 2 explained why so many Iowans can’t or won’t attend their precinct caucus, and part 3 covered Democratic caucus math, which sometimes produces strange results.

Axiom of Iowa politics: the key to winning the caucuses is to “organize, organize, organize, and then get hot at the end.” Although paid staff do much of the ground work, a successful presidential campaign needs a large number of volunteers at the precinct level. I haven’t been engaged as a volunteer this cycle, because for the first time in my life, I remained undecided until shortly before the caucuses. But I spent many hours trying to turn out neighbors for John Kerry in 2004 and for John Edwards in 2008. During the past thirteen years, I’ve talked with hundreds of Iowa Democratic activists who volunteered locally for presidential candidates.

This post focuses on how precinct captains can influence outcomes on caucus night.

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Front-runners beware

Thanks to fladem for this historical perspective on late shifts in Iowa caucus-goers’ preferences. If you missed his earlier posts, check out A deep dive into Iowa caucus History and Iowa polling 45 days out: Let the buyer REALLY beware. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This is a continuation of an article I wrote about Iowa polling in November. At the time I noted how unpredictable the Iowa caucuses are. This article will to look at the last 48 hours. There are two lessons you can draw:

1. Front-runners beware

1. Expect someone to come from nowhere

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Three thoughts on the first episode of the Des Moines Register's "Three Tickets" podcast (updated)

The Des Moines Register launched Jason Noble’s ten-part podcast about the Iowa caucuses last week. You can listen to the “Three Tickets” at the Register’s website or download the episodes through iTunes or Stitcher. After telling his own Iowa caucus “origin story” (hearing Howard Dean sing part of an Outkast song on a campaign bus in 2003), Noble devoted most of the first episode (“Peak Caucus”) to the 2008 Democratic contest. Roughly 240,000 Iowans showed up for Democratic precinct caucuses on January 3, mostly to support Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Hillary Clinton. Their numbers more than doubled the roughly 119,000 Iowans who caucused for Republican candidates the same night and nearly doubled the previous record-high Democratic Iowa caucus turnout, set in 2004.

Bleeding Heartland covered the 2008 caucuses extensively. Even so, “Peak Caucus” recalled some moments I had mostly forgotten and got me thinking about other aspects of the campaign I remembered well. So Noble succeeded in motivating this political junkie to listen to the rest of the “Three Tickets” series.

A few reactions to the first episode are after the jump.

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Weekend open thread: John Edwards indictment edition

A grand jury indicted former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on June 3 on six counts of conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions, and false statements. Read the federal government’s case against Johnny Reid Edwards here (pdf). The charges revolve around more than $900,000 used to support Edwards’ mistress and a campaign staffer who claimed paternity of Edwards’ child. Prosecutors say that money, provided by the late Fred Baron and the heiress Bunny Mellon, should have been considered campaign contributions, in which case they were way over the legal limit for a presidential campaign.

Edwards looks ready to fight the charges in court. He told journalists in a brief statement that he “did wrong” but “did not break the law” and “never ever thought that I was breaking the law.” Federal election law is unusual in that violations are only considered criminal if the offending politician knew he or she was committing a crime. So prosecutors will have to prove that the gifts in question should be considered campaign contributions, that Baron and Mellon would not have made those gifts if Edwards had not been a candidate, and that Edwards knew he was breaking the law by submitting false reports to the Federal Election Commission. Edwards will contend that he had a longstanding friendship with Baron (who is deceased) and Mellon, and that they would have helped him conceal his extramarital affair from his family in any case.

So far legal analysts aren’t impressed by the prosecution’s case: see comments from Richard Pildes, Rick Hasen and Jeralyn Merritt. A 2002 FEC opinion involving a $25,000 loan to pay a divorce lawyer representing a member of Congress may support the Edwards defense. Looks like Bleeding Heartland user ragbrai08 was right to say Edwards should wait to see the indictment rather than cut a deal with prosecutors.

The Washington Post editorial board (never fans of Edwards) criticized the “novel application of the law” underlying this prosecution, adding, “It is troubling that the Justice Department would choose to devote its scarce resources to pursuing this questionable case.” Considering that no one has been prosecuted for systemic foreclosure fraud, making torture official U.S. policy or various other abuses, one does wonder why the Department of Justice has gone down this path. My theory is that the U.S. attorney in North Carolina is looking for a popular case to boost a future political career. The DOJ doesn’t mind the media circus and may even welcome the distraction from more pressing national issues.

This is an open thread. What’s on your mind this weekend? Bleeding Heartland readers of a certain age will remember Lawrence Eagleburger and Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who both passed away this week.

UPDATE: J. Andrew Curliss and Joseph Neff report more details about the plea bargaining negotiations preceding the Edwards indictments. Merritt thinks Edwards was right to turn down the government’s offers and predicts that there will be further negotiations before court proceedings begin.

Potential John Edwards indictment discussion thread

James Hill of ABC News reported this week,

The United States Department of Justice has green-lighted the prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards for alleged violations of campaign laws while he tried to cover up an extra-marital affair, ABC News has learned. […]

Edwards has been the focus of a lengthy federal investigation focusing on hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly provided by two wealthy supporters. The government will contend those were illegal donations that ultimately went to support and seclude his mistress, Rielle Hunter.

Some unnamed sources suggest Edwards’ legal team is working on a plea agreement so that he would not have to stand trial. But a high-powered attorney for Edwards, former White House counsel Greg Craig, sounds ready to fight, asserting that “not one penny from the Edwards campaign was involved,” there is “no civil or criminal precedent for such a prosecution,” and the “Justice Department has wasted millions of dollars and thousands of hours on a matter more appropriately a topic for the Federal Election Commission to consider, not a criminal court.” Ben Smith reports for Politico that Craig

is said to be pushing for a trial and arguing that prosecutors will not be able to win in the vague and untested terrain of campaign-finance law – as he made clear in a defiant statement to reporters Wednesday. Edwards’s longtime friend and lawyer Wade Smith, a fellow veteran of the North Carolina courts, is said to be more inclined to settle. And Edwards himself appears, associates say, to be sorely tempted to take his chances in an arena that made his career and his fortune.

“John needs money. He needs to work, so he can’t give up his law license,” said a source who knows Edwards but who requested anonymity. “He thinks, ‘I get in that courtroom, I get in front of a North Carolina jury…’ “

For the sake of Edwards’ three children under age 18, I would advise him to settle in order to avoid jail time. But I don’t know the legal terrain and have no idea what his chances would be to escape conviction. If conducting an affair during a presidential campaign is any guide, Edwards isn’t risk-averse. Then again, Craig may just be posturing to negotiate a better plea deal for his client.

As far as I know, the money allegedly used to cover up Edwards’ affair came from large donations to his One America Committee (a PAC)–not his 2008 presidential campaign funds. I don’t know whether that makes any difference as a point of law.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: Defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt discusses the case here:

If the U.S. Attorney is demanding a plea to a felony count, I suspect John Edwards will fight. I hope he does. Regardless of your opinion of John Edwards and his personal life, he’s the sole parent now to two young children. Mistreating a donation as a gift (particularly if you relied on the advice of your legal counsel in doing so), when there is a paucity of court decisions defining the difference between them, seems over the top.

If Edwards is offering to plead to a misdemeanor and probation, the Government should grab his proffered ounce of flesh and forego insisting on a pound. The only reason to demand a felony is to justify the cost of the Government’s absurdly lengthy and intrusive investigation.

Jan Crawford reports for CBS News on the arguments underpinning a potential Edwards defense:

Edwards’ legal team argues that the prosecution’s theory is unprecedented and wrong. They say there is only one case involving gifts to federal candidates that’s even remotely comparable — and it not only is distinguishable, but also was merely an advisory opinion by the FEC that never has been cited as authority for a criminal prosecution.

In that case, the FEC said a proposed gift to a federal candidate was illegal because the donor wouldn’t have made it if the candidate weren’t running for office. Edwards, on the other hand, had long-standing personal relationships with donors Fred Baron and Bunny Mellon that continued after he withdrew from the race. In fact, Edwards had lunch with Mellon on Thursday.

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Rest in peace, Elizabeth Edwards

Elizabeth Edwards has died of breast cancer at the age of 61. Her cancer was diagnosed in the fall of 2004, and recurrence was found in March 2007. Click here for the New York Times obituary.

Many Iowans got to know Elizabeth well during John Edwards' two presidential campaigns. I saw her speak many times but met her only once, at a crowded fundraiser in a private home during the summer of 2007. My kids were with me in a stuffy, overcrowded basement, and Elizabeth spent a surprisingly long time entertaining my bored four-year-old. I remember thinking it was above and beyond whatever time she needed to spend to acknowledge everyone while "working the room." She was good with kids. I feel sorry that the last few years of her life were so difficult for her and her family, as if fighting cancer weren’t stressful enough.

My thoughts tonight are mostly with her surviving children, especially Emma Claire and Jack. When I was about their age, I lost my mother to cancer. Elizabeth's death will always affect their lives, although other family members may ease the blow if they step up to the plate in the coming years. I feel for Cate, who as a teenager had to cope with her only sibling's death, and now will need to help her two younger siblings deal with a major bereavement.  

The Edwards family has asked that memorial contributions go to the Wade Edwards Learning Lab, a non-profit they set up in memory of their son Wade, who died in a 1996 car accident. I never knew before tonight that a few weeks before Wade died, he received an award at the White House for writing this essay.

Elizabeth Edwards posted a "farewell" message on Facebook this week, and I've reproduced it after the jump, along with reaction from various Iowa political figures.

P.S.– Elizabeth reportedly advised her husband to vote against the resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq in October 2002. If he’d had the guts to listen to her advice, he may have become the Democratic nominee in 2004, as a more electable alternative to the main anti-war candidate in the field, Howard Dean. Elizabeth also said in the summer of 2007 that she thought same-sex marriage should be legal, although her husband disagreed.

UPDATE: The Edwards family created a new website where people can share memories of Elizabeth, whether they knew her well or only met her once.  

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Oh good, a top ten list to argue about

John Deeth’s latest blog post for the Des Moines Register reviews the ten worst campaigns waged in Iowa during the past 20 years. I didn’t observe all of those campaigns first-hand, but he makes a convincing case for including most of the candidates on his list.

Two campaigns don’t belong on Deeth’s list, in my opinion. He ranked Congressman Neal Smith’s 1994 effort as number seven. Maybe Smith was slow to realize that Greg Ganske was a threat, but one thing destroyed Smith in that race, and it wasn’t incompetence. Redistricting after the 1990 census took Story County and Jasper County out of Smith’s district, replacing them with a bunch of rural counties in southwest Iowa he had never represented. Smith brought incalculable millions to Iowa State University over the years, and union membership in the Newton area was very strong. If Story and Jasper had still been in IA-04, Smith would have easily survived even the Republican wave of 1994.

Number two on Deeth’s list is Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Iowa caucus campaign. As I discussed at length here, I feel that Barack Obama won the caucuses more than Clinton or John Edwards lost them. Remember, Clinton started out way behind in Iowa. Whatever mistakes her campaign made, and they made plenty, you have to give them credit for getting more than 70,000 Iowans to stand in her corner on a cold night in January. That included many thousands of people who had never attended a caucus before. In the summer of 2007, almost anyone would have agreed that 70,000 supporters would be enough to win here. The turnout for Clinton is even more impressive when you consider that she did worse on second choices than Obama or Edwards. She didn’t win Iowa, but this wasn’t one of the ten worst Iowa campaigns by a longshot.

I want to share one anecdote about Jim Ross Lightfoot’s gubernatorial campaign in 1998, which rightfully claimed the top spot on Deeth’s list. Lightfoot blew a huge lead over little-known Tom Vilsack in September and October. Here’s how stupid this guy was. According to several people who witnessed the event, Lightfoot advocated for school prayer at a candidate forum organized by Temple B’Nai Jeshurun in Des Moines. Not only that, Lightfoot told that room full of Jews that majority rule should determine the prayer. For instance, in a town that’s 90 percent Danish, why not let them say Lutheran prayers in school?

Terry Branstad showed horrible judgment by endorsing Lightfoot in the 1998 primary, when he could have supported his own highly capable Lieutenant Governor Joy Corning.

Go read Deeth’s post, then share your own thoughts about the worst Iowa campaigns in this thread.

Also, check Deeth’s own blog regularly this month for updates on Iowa candidate filings. March 19 is the deadline for state legislative and statewide candidates to submit nomination papers.

Year in review: Iowa politics in 2009 (part 1)

I expected 2009 to be a relatively quiet year in Iowa politics, but was I ever wrong.

The governor’s race heated up, state revenues melted down, key bills lived and died during the legislative session, and the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Varnum v Brien became one of this state’s major events of the decade.

After the jump I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from January through June 2009. Any comments about the year that passed are welcome in this thread.

Although I wrote a lot of posts last year, there were many important stories I didn’t manage to cover. I recommend reading Iowa Independent’s compilation of “Iowa’s most overlooked and under reported stories of 2009,” as well as that blog’s review of “stories that will continue to impact Iowa in 2010.”

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Year in review: national politics in 2009 (part 1)

It took me a week longer than I anticipated, but I finally finished compiling links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage from last year. This post and part 2, coming later today, include stories on national politics, mostly relating to Congress and Barack Obama’s administration. Diaries reviewing Iowa politics in 2009 will come soon.

One thing struck me while compiling this post: on all of the House bills I covered here during 2009, Democrats Leonard Boswell, Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack voted the same way. That was a big change from 2007 and 2008, when Blue Dog Boswell voted with Republicans and against the majority of the Democratic caucus on many key bills.

No federal policy issue inspired more posts last year than health care reform. Rereading my earlier, guardedly hopeful pieces was depressing in light of the mess the health care reform bill has become. I was never optimistic about getting a strong public health insurance option through Congress, but I thought we had a chance to pass a very good bill. If I had anticipated the magnitude of the Democratic sellout on so many aspects of reform in addition to the public option, I wouldn’t have spent so many hours writing about this issue. I can’t say I wasn’t warned (and warned), though.

Links to stories from January through June 2009 are after the jump. Any thoughts about last year’s political events are welcome in this thread.

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Some things still run smoothly in Washington

Such as the revolving door between Congress and corporate lobbyists:

The nation’s largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records. […]

Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including  Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and  Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups. At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), both of whom represent a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm.

The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.

So corporate groups are spending $1.4 million a day on lobbying to block a real public health insurance option, which most Americans want.

That’s on top of the millions of dollars the same corporate groups have donated directly to Congressional campaigns. Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industries with the most at stake in health care reform.

Members of Congress claim lobbyists and campaign money don’t shape their opinions, but Grassley should know better. He understands that big money from pharmaceutical companies can influence the conclusions of medical researchers–why not elected officials?

Nate Silver has found strong evidence that special-interest money affects Democratic senators’ support for the public option in health care reform.

By the way, I wasn’t too cheered by Senator Chuck Schumer’s promise over the weekend that the health care bill will contain a public option. The current draft in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions excludes lots of people from choosing the public option over their current health insurance. That will limit competition for the private insurers that have near-monopolies in many markets.

Back in 2003 all the Democratic presidential candidates talked a good game on health care. Now Dick “this is a moral issue” Gephardt is lobbying for a pharmaceutical company. I’ll stand with Howard Dean and hope that John Edwards was wrong about the system being rigged because corporations have too much power in Washington.

Final note: Moveon.org is organizing health care rallies this Thursday, July 9, at senators’ offices in their home states. Sign up here to attend a rally near you.

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Mark Penn is wrong about why Clinton lost Iowa (w/poll)

I saw at Iowa Independent that Hillary Clinton’s former pollster and adviser, Mark Penn, is claiming there could have been a “different outcome” in Iowa if John Edwards had been out of the race.

My conversations with hundreds of Edwards supporters suggested that many preferred Barack Obama or one of the longshot Democratic contenders to Clinton. David Redlawsk has data to back up my anecdotes:

University of Iowa political science professor David Redlawsk conducted a caucus night survey on second choices. “We asked people ‘If your candidate is not viable, what will you do?’ 82 percent of Edwards supporters said they would support another candidate and 18 percent would not,” said Redlawsk. “When we asked which candidate they would then support, 32 percent said Clinton and 51 percent said Obama. Had this actually happened statewide, Obama would have been even further ahead of Clinton.”

“As the campaign progressed few Edwards people gave any indication that Clinton was their second choice,” said Redlawsk […].

I stand by my contention that given the Obama campaign’s almost unlimited resources and well-executed strategy, there is little Clinton or Edwards could have done differently to win the Iowa caucuses.

Incidentally, Clinton still has debt from her presidential campaign, including unpaid bills to Penn. I don’t think he deserves to collect, given the bad advice he gave his client, like pivoting to a “general election strategy” in October 2007 and having no “plan B” in case the campaign went beyond Super Tuesday.

UPDATE: Please take the poll after the jump on the Clinton campaign’s biggest strategic error.

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Could Clinton or Edwards have beaten Obama in Iowa?

On January 3, 2008, roughly 240,000 Iowans attended Democratic precinct caucuses, and at least 90,000 of them ended up in Barack Obama’s corner.

However we felt about Obama during the primaries or the general election campaign, whatever we think about his substantive and symbolic actions since the election, we can all agree that he would not be taking the oath of office tomorrow if Iowa caucus-goers had put him in third place, or even a distant second.

I started writing this diary several times last year. I kept abandoning it because emotions were so raw on Democratic blogs that I felt the piece would only ignite a flamewar. Since more than a year has passed, I decided to try one more time.

I do not mean to start an argument or pretend that I have all the answers. I just enjoy thinking about counterfactual history (such as this or this).

After the jump I will try to figure out whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards could have beaten Obama in Iowa.

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Jennifer O'Malley Dillon will be the DNC's executive director

Congratulations to Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who according to the Washington Post is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be the new executive director of the Democratic National Committee. She will be “running the party’s day-to-day operations, including fundraising.”

The job is particularly important because Obama’s pick for DNC chairman, Tim Kaine, still has a year to serve as governor of Virginia and presumably won’t be a hands-on manager at the DNC.

Many Iowans know O’Malley Dillon from her work on John Edwards’ presidential campaigns. She worked in field before the 2004 caucuses and was Edwards’ Iowa campaign director before the 2008 caucuses. After Edwards left the presidential race, she became the director of battleground states strategy for Obama’s campaign.

O’Malley Dillon is married to Patrick Dillon, whom she met while both worked on Edwards’ first presidential campaign here. Patrick Dillon later managed Chet Culver’s gubernatorial campaign and became the governor’s chief of staff.

Anyone have any idea who’s likely to replace Dillon at Terrace Hill?

Here’s O’Malley Dillon’s Facebook page, for those who are into that kind of thing.

Regarding the news that Obama wants Kaine as DNC chairman, Bob Brigham made some persuasive arguments against the choice, while Jonathan Singer was “more than content with the pick.” Singer noted,

in recent years the DNC Chairmanship has been split into two posts while the Democrats have controlled the White House, with a dignitary serving as General Chairman and a strategist running the day-to-day operations of the committee. Under Bill Clinton, this strategy predominated, with Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Colorado Governor Roy Romer and then-former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell serving as General Chairmen — the spokesmen of the party — while others were left to handle the details. Indeed, this appears to be the thinking of Obama in tapping Kaine, also choosing the director of his battleground state strategy, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, to run the committee’s operations.

Kaine wouldn’t be my first, second or third choice to run the DNC, but if Obama wants him there no one is going to stop him. The Virginia Democratic bloggers who know his record are not fans (a few links are in this post). I’d much rather have Kaine at the DNC than as vice president, though. I’m relieved Obama passed him over for that job.

O’Malley Dillon is highly capable and makes me feel better about the future management of the DNC.

My main concern is that the committee not abandon the 50-state strategy after Howard Dean leaves. Washington insiders attacked Dean for sending organizers to red states in 2005, but that strategy contributed significantly to Democratic gains in Congress in 2006 and 2008.

UPDATE: At Century of the Common Iowan, noneed4thneed observes that O’Malley Dillon’s appointment “probably solidifies the Iowa Cacuses’s first in the nation status.”

SECOND UPDATE: Marc Ambinder’s take on what this means:

O’Malley-Dillon is seen by the team as a manager with an organizational background that appeals to Obama.  She is large measure responsible for Sen. John Edwards’s solid caucus performances in 2004 and 2008.  She was recruited by Steve Hilderband to join Obama’s campaign as battleground states director and spent the general election overseeing state field budgets and figuring out where to send the principals.

The DNC will retain traditional responsibilities, like planning the convention and political research. But it will significantly expand its campaign organizing capacity and probably its staff; think of it as current DNC chairman Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy on steroids.

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Iowa caucus memories open thread

A year ago tonight, nearly 240,000 Iowans spent a couple of hours in overcrowded rooms during the Democratic precinct caucuses.

Thousands of others came to freezing cold Iowa to knock on doors or make phone calls for their presidential candidate in late December and early January.

Share any memories you have about caucusing or volunteering in this thread.

After the jump I re-posted my account of what happened at my own caucus. I was a precinct captain for Edwards.

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Bleeding Heartland Year in Review: Iowa politics in 2008

Last year at this time I was scrambling to make as many phone calls and knock on as many doors as I could before the Iowa caucuses on January 3.

This week I had a little more time to reflect on the year that just ended.

After the jump I’ve linked to Bleeding Heartland highlights in 2008. Most of the links relate to Iowa politics, but some also covered issues or strategy of national importance.

I only linked to a few posts about the presidential race. I’ll do a review of Bleeding Heartland’s 2008 presidential election coverage later this month.

You can use the search engine on the left side of the screen to look for past Bleeding Heartland diaries about any person or issue.

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What did you get wrong? What did you get right?

We’ve had ten days to decompress from the election. It’s time for a little self-promotion and self-criticism.

What did you predict accurately during the past presidential campaign, and what did you get completely wrong?

The ground rules for this thread are as follows:

1. This is about your own forecasting skills. Do not post a comment solely to mock someone else’s idiocy.

2. You are not allowed to boast about something you got right without owning up to at least one thing you got wrong.

3. For maximum bragging rights, include a link to a comment or diary containing your accurate prediction. Links are not required, though.

I’ll get the ball rolling. Here are some of the more significant things I got wrong during the presidential campaign that just ended.

I thought that since John Edwards had been in the spotlight for years, the Republicans would probably not be able to spring an “October surprise” on us if he were the Democratic nominee. Oops.

In 2006 I thought Hillary’s strong poll numbers among Democrats were

inflated by the fact that she has a lot of name recognition. I think once the campaign begins, her numbers will sink like Lieberman’s did in 2003.

Then when her poll numbers held up in most states throughout 2007, I thought Hillary’s coalition would collapse if she lost a few early primaries. Um, not quite.

I thought Barack Obama would fail to be viable in a lot of Iowa precincts dominated by voters over age 50.

I thought Obama had zero chance of beating John McCain in Florida.

Here are a few things I got right:

I consistently predicted that Hillary would finish no better than third in the Iowa caucuses. For that I was sometimes ridiculed in MyDD comment threads during the summer and fall of 2007.

I knew right away that choosing Sarah Palin was McCain’s gift to Democrats on his own birthday, because it undercut his best argument against Obama: lack of experience.

I immediately sensed that letting the Obama campaign take over the GOTV effort in Iowa might lead to a convincing victory for Obama here without maximizing the gains for our down-ticket candidates. In fact, Iowa Democrats did lose a number of statehouse races we should have won last week.

By the way, please consider helping Bleeding Heartland analyze what went wrong and what went right for Democrats in some of the state House and Senate races.

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Big change is coming on health care

I’ve been consistently worried that Barack Obama would not set an ambitious domestic policy agenda if elected president. His post-partisan rhetoric has given me the impression that he would move toward compromising with the Republican position on various issues before negotiations with Congress have begun. Specifically on health care, I agreed with Paul Krugman of the New York Times that Obama’s proposal was not as good as the plans John Edwards and Hillary Clinton advocated during the primaries.

Obama hasn’t been sworn in yet, and the new Congress won’t meet for more than a month, but already there are signs of growing momentum for truly universal health care reform (and not just incremental progress toward that goal).

On Wednesday Senator Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the Finance Committee, released a “white paper” on health reform. You can get the gist by reading this diary by TomP or this one by DemFromCT. Ezra “Momma said wonk you out” Klein dived into the details in a series of posts this week.

The key point is that Baucus embraced the concept of mandatory health insurance, but with a public plan any American could choose to join. So, if private insurers kept jacking up premiums while covering less and less medical care, people could “vote with their feet” by paying into a public plan that would work like Medicare (the patient chooses the doctor).

This story explains Baucus’ line of thinking:

Baucus, of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a health-care blueprint released today that only a mandate could ensure people didn’t wait until they were ill to buy health insurance, forcing up the price for everyone.

The 89-page proposal revives a debate from the Democratic presidential primaries about how to overhaul the U.S. health- care system. Obama supported requiring coverage only for children, saying adults would buy coverage voluntarily if it were affordable. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York said insurance must be mandated for everyone.

“Requiring all Americans to have health coverage will help end the shifting of costs of the uninsured to the insured,” Baucus said today in his plan. The requirement “would be enforced possibly through the U.S. tax system or some other point of contact between individuals and the government,” he said, without spelling out possible penalties. […]

Because of the urgency of health-care reform, Congress should move on legislation in the first half of next year, Baucus said at a press conference today in Washington.

“There is no way to solve America’s economic problems without solving health care,” he said. The $2.2 trillion health-care system “sucks up 16 percent of our economy and is still growing,” Baucus said.

It’s hard to exaggerate the significance of this development. First, as many others have noted, if Baucus runs health care reform through the Finance Committee there is a good chance it will be the kind of bill not subject to a filibuster. That means the Democrats would need only 50 votes (not 60) to pass it in the Senate.

Second, Baucus is among the more conservative members of the Senate Democratic caucus (check out his Progressive Punch ratings here). If he is ready for big, bold health care reform, the ground has shifted.

Third, this development could be very discouraging for Iowa’s own Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. Traditionally, Grassley and Baucus have had a close working relationship. But this past summer Grassley was annoyed when Democrats rejected a deal he thought he had cut with Baucus on a Medicare bill, and Baucus denied having reached any prior agreement with Grassley.

This report from Wednesday quotes Grassley expressing skepticism about finding the money to pay for a big health care initiative.

If Baucus moves away from the habit of compromising with Grassley now that the Democrats will have a solid Senate majority, could Iowa’s senior senator decide to step down in 2010? We all know that Grassley’s seat is safe for Republicans unless he retires. He seems to like his job, but perhaps facing defeat after defeat in a Democratic-controlled Congress would diminish his desire to hang around for another six years.  

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Why $700 billion? They "wanted to choose a really large number"

I stand by my contention that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s bailout scheme is among the worst proposals to come out of George Bush’s very bad presidency.

So I am glad to learn that Iowa Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald wants some questions answered before urging Congress to pass the bailout. Click the link to read Marc Hansen’s column about a conference call Fitzgerald and other state treasurers had on Thursday with acting U.S. treasury undersecretary for domestic finance.

I am no economics whiz, but I can help answer Fitzgerald’s first question:

Why $700 billion?

From his office at the Capitol, Fitzgerald listened intently, waiting for the answer that never came. And what did he get instead?

“Nothing,” he says, “other than a lot of babble.”

What’s so magical about $700 billion? Fitzgerald still doesn’t know. It’s about 5 percent of the gross domestic product, if that means anything.

“Magical” is a good word for the number, because as it turns out, they just made it up.

I know this because a few days ago, Open Left diarist fladem posted this link from Forbes magazine:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

David Sirota has written two good pieces quoting Nobel prize-winning economists and others on why there is no crisis requiring a bailout package. Here is part 1, and here is part 2.

In an alternate universe where John Edwards hadn’t disgraced himself, he could have been an effective voice against the rush to shovel taxpayer dollars to Wall Street.

Instead, we have Barack Obama’s campaign letting Roger Altman speak for them in favor of Paulson’s scheme. That’s

the same Roger Altman who was a Clinton Treasury official when the Clinton-backed deregulatory orgy was taking place, the same Roger Altman who is now an investment banker who stands to make bank if this bailout passes, the same Roger Altman who Bloomberg notes “is advising a group of investors who are trying to prevent their shares from being diluted in the U.S. takeover of American International Group Inc.” – that is, who have a direct financial interest in Paulson’s bailout package.

Watching this train barrel down the track is quite discouraging.

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The EENRblog is now the Progressive Blue Blog

Six months ago, a group of bloggers who had been producing the “Edwards Evening News Roundup” at Daily Kos created a new community forum to focus on issues and strategies for building the progressive movement. They called it the EENR blog because the EENR “brand” name was already well-known to hundreds of bloggers who considered themselves “Edwards Democrats.”

Since its creation, the EENRblog has become a great source for substantive diaries about issues you may not read much about elsewhere. It’s not a place where people obsess over tracking polls or Barack Obama’s campaign strategy. Diaries about campaigns are more likely to be about electing some of the “more and better Democrats” running for federal or state office.

This past weekend, the editorial team announced that the blog’s name had been changed to the Progressive Blue blog (www.progressiveblue.com):

Hello fellow EENR members –

We wanted you to be the first to know that EENRblog will be undergoing some changes beginning this weekend.

First, we want you to know that in its essence, the blog will remain the same. The reasons we are all here, the agenda that we all support, the need to promote it as well as push to elect More and Better Democrats who will further that agenda in Congress, the community we’ve all built here – these things will remain the same.

However, we will be making a few changes – most of them fairly subtle, and we want to share with you why we decided to make these. You are the community, and we don’t exist without you.

EENRblog originated out of the desire to advance the agenda John Edwards promoted during his campaign.  And just as we all had to deal with disappointment and even some anger at the end of his campaign, we’ve gone through an emotional roller coaster again with John Edwards’ revelation in early August. We decided to let things settle down so we wouldn’t make any rash decisions regarding the blog.

John Edwards gave us the most progressive agenda in years and he was the reason we had all come to know each other. He was the reason things like Universal Health Care and Poverty were even being talked about during this campaign season. We are proud to have been able to work with him to further those issues.  However, we chose to look at the bigger picture:

• Most of us had gotten on board with the Edwards  campaign not because of the man, but because of the issues – the Two America’s speech, etc… We wanted to elect John president because he was  an outspoken champion for those issues. In the bigger picture, the point  of this blog has never been to promote Edwards, but to promote and further  the progressive and populist agenda he had put forth. It’s not about him;  it’s about advocating for the agenda.

• Another part  of the discussion was about political perception and Edwards. Many of us  agree that he is down but not necessarily out; it will take a long time  for him to recover and be politically viable again. If the political  perception of Edwards in general is not good, then it hurts our ability to  promote the agenda for which we fought so hard.

This perception may also hurt us with guest bloggers and prospective candidates – politics is largely based on perception and whether we like or not or agree with it or not – Edwards tainted his brand – and candidates and guest bloggers may not want to risk being associated with him right now.

• Finally, if there are any other shoes left to  drop, it could taint him even further. That could really hurt our ability  to be effective advocates for the agenda. JRE always talked about how it  wasn’t about him, it was about us, the people… It was about the issues… We’re taking him up on that. We’re just taking the Edwards  Agenda and making it the People’s Agenda.

And so, we have decided to make some changes that you will notice over the next couple of days. The blog will retain most of its current layout, but will have a different name and logo with perhaps slightly different coloring and perhaps a new banner along the top. We will be adding a variety of progressive events to the event calendar, and the link colors will change as will the quote in the quote tile.

With this new name and logo, we will also be instituting a new web address, www.progressiveblue.com. We will keep the EENRblog.com address active for a while longer so everyone can still get to the blog if they forget the new name in the beginning.

We wanted to let our most active EENR members know first – give you a heads up on what is coming up and why. The changes are mostly cosmetic in nature; we are the same blog, with the same emphases and the same goals, all the regular columns (and maybe a few new ones), the same wonky nature, and the same love of snark, and we hope you all will still feel right at home, here at Progressive Blue.  

Respectfully,  

The EENR Editorial Board

     now The Progressive Blue Editorial Board

Whether or not you ever supported Edwards for president, I encourage you to bookmark the Progressive Blue blog and join the community there. I guarantee you will learn something every time you read the front page or the recent diary list.

Progressive Blue is also a good place to cross-post any diaries you have written about strong Democratic candidates or issues progressives should be concerned about. For instance, in the past month I have cross-posted diaries about reforming the caucus system, my son’s school encouraging parents to buy Tyson chicken products, and the Environmental Protection Commission’s decision to reject two CAFO applications in Dallas County.

Use this thread to tell us about the blogs you enjoy and find valuable.

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Smart move

John Edwards cancels all speaking engagements before the November election:

“Nothing is more important than electing Barack Obama and Joe Biden,” Edwards, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina, said in a statement released by the agency. “I don’t want my appearance at these events to be a distraction from the important issues of the election, or from the important purpose of these meetings.”

Last month he canceled plans to deliver the keynote at Iowa first lady Mari Culver’s Conference on Solutions to Poverty on September 16. That event was originally scheduled for June but had to be postponed because of floodwaters threatening downtown Des Moines.

Keeping a low profile is the right thing for Edwards to do now. The unfortunate side effect is that we don’t have any nationally-known Democrat talking about poverty or what to do about it.

In one of his last public appearances before admitting his extramarital affair, Edwards delivered the opening remarks at the AARP Foundation’s Poverty & Aging in America Symposium. Click the link to read edgery’s post about that speech and the policies that the “Half in Ten” poverty eradication program is advocating.

UPDATE: On the other hand, the Buffalo News says Edwards still plans to debate Karl Rove at the University of Buffalo on September 26. Perhaps Edwards’ representative has not yet informed the university about the change in plans, or perhaps he is making an exception for this event. I would think it prudent to cancel this appearance too, although when it was first announced I thought it would be fantastic to watch Edwards take on Rove.

SECOND UPDATE: Wesley Clark will debate Rove in place of Edwards. Should be worth watching, although it is scheduled for the same night as the first Obama-McCain debate.

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AT&T got its money's worth from the Blue Dogs

AT&T threw an invitation-only party on Monday night for the “Blue Dogs” in the House of Representatives. Matt Stoller found a blurb in the newspaper about this party:

Just because the Blue Dogs are fiscally conservative doesn’t mean they can’t have a good time, especially when AT&T is picking up the bill.

Why would AT&T want to throw an expensive party for the Blue Dogs? Maybe it’s because most of those Blue Dogs (including my own Congressman Leonard Boswell) voted with the House Republicans to pass a version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act containing retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that spied on Americans.

A group of well-known bloggers showed up outside the exclusive Denver restaurant to see who turned up. Glenn Greenwald of Salon, who wrote a book’s worth of material this year on FISA, tried to interview the people going into this party. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake was there:

It was remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it, really.  Glenn would announce that he was from Salon.com, ask them if they would be interviewed about the party, and nobody wanted to say who they were or even acknowledge that they knew what the party was about.

Almost every single person we talked with had the good sense to be ashamed of being there, but that didn’t stop them from going in.

I haven’t been able to confirm whether Boswell attended this party. Think Progress quotes the San Francisco Examiner, which reported that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was there:

Hoyer spokeswoman Stacey Bernards said Hoyer was not aware of any connection between the party and his work on the legislation.

“I’m sure Mr. Hoyer didn’t even know who the sponsor was,” she said.

Right. He had no idea who sponsored the party, even though numerous reports named AT&T as the sponsor. I’m sure Hoyer goes to parties all the time without asking who invited him.

From the San Francisco Examiner report:

AT&T is just one example of how political conventions have become a virtual bazaar where corporations and other special interests can peddle their wares, showcase their products and make a case for their favorite (or least favorite) piece of pending legislation.

The Texas-based company has the most high-profile corporate presence in Denver. It is a major sponsor at the convention, it is holding daily lunches for state delegations at the Pinnacle Club, with its startling views of the Rocky Mountain range, and co-hosting hip parties for the likes of the Screen Actors’ Guild and the New Democratic Coalition.

I seem to remember someone talking about the system being rigged because corporations have too much power in Washington, and how it wouldn’t be enough to replace corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats.

Oh yeah, it was that guy whose personal screw-up cost him a speaking slot at the convention. With him out of the picture, AT&T and the Blue Dogs can rest easy, because no prime-time speaker is going to be spreading that message in Denver.

Nor, I fear, are we likely to hear it from Democratic leaders in 2009.

This yellow-dog Democrat is not looking forward to checking the box next to Blue Dog Boswell’s name in November.

My best advice to those who are still angry about the FISA capitulation is don’t buy an iPhone. Getting one locks you into AT&T phone service.  

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Obama adopts Edwards' old slogan

Apparently the new and improved slogan for Barack Obama’s campaign is “The Change We Need.”

I like that a lot better than “Change We Can Believe In.” People believe in religion. I am not looking to “believe in” a candidate, I am looking for a candidate who can deliver what Americans need.

But I suppose I would say that, since John Edwards frequently used “the change we need” on the stump and in debates.

Admittedly, Edwards put a bit of a different spin on the slogan:

As President, I will make sure the voices of all Americans are heard in Washington. If we fight together, we can get the change we need and America will rise.

Similarly,

Where some of the other Democratic candidates use the language of compromise or are in fact taking money from and in support of the corporate interests who are blocking real change, I think the policies I’ve released and the way I’ve spoken out show that I’m more willing to fight to achieve the change we need.

Obama doesn’t position himself as a fighter, which is probably just as well. It wouldn’t suit his temperament.

Another difference is that Edwards didn’t necessarily portray himself as the agent of “the change we need.” He often used the expression in reference to the forces preventing that change, as in this speech on restoring our democracy:

To actually create change, we should start by telling the truth.

Here’s the truth: the system in Washington is broken. Money is corrupting our democracy. Lobbyists and the special interests they represent are pouring millions of dollars into the system, and stopping the change we need dead in its tracks.

I’ll be the first to admit that “the system is broken” was not as appealing a message for many Americans as the more upbeat “we are the change we’ve been waiting for.” But despite my deep disappointment regarding the recent revelations about Edwards, I still feel that his campaign message was more honest and to the point.

That’s water under the bridge. I’ve got no problem with Obama using “The Change We Need.” Heck, I’m even considering sending in $15 to get an Obama-Biden magnet for my car.

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One precinct captain's reflections on the John Edwards story

Like many people who volunteered for John Edwards last year, I’ve been working through conflicting feelings this weekend.

Natasha Chart voiced some of my frustration in this piece about our ridiculous standards of public morality. Ethical lapses that affect the lives of thousands or millions of people are not career-enders for politicians, but marital infidelity is supposed to be–if you’re a Democrat. Once again, it’s ok if you’re a Republican.

Many Edwards supporters are angry about the publicity surrounding this story. It’s infuriating to see journalists more interested in Edwards now that he has admitted to an affair than they were when he was a presidential candidate talking about substantive issues.

David Mizner loathes the “American sickness” of needing to know about the sex lives of politicians, adding:

I supported Edwards not because I loved him and not because I thought he had sex with only his wife. I supported him because I believe in progressive populism.

Many bloggers I respect, from TomP to MontanaMaven and RDemocrat made similar comments on Friday. After all, we were backing Edwards for president, not husband of the year.

Ellinorianne put it well:

What John did in 2006 has no bearing on Universal Health Care.  What happened in 2006 does not make poverty in this County any less of an urgent issue.  The corporate media would love to believe that what John did in 2006 would mean one less powerful voice talking about the strangle hold that corporations have on every facet of our lives in this Country.

Nothing can take away from these issues unless we let it happen.

On one level, I relate to what Ellinorianne wrote, because Edwards undoubtedly put topics on the agenda that would barely have been discussed had he not run for president. While he was in the race, at least one candidate was talking about the excesses of corporate power. After he dropped out, that issue disappeared from political discourse.

For that reason, I never regretted the time I spent volunteering for Edwards. Of course, I was sorry that Iowans did not give him the boost he needed in the caucuses. I was disappointed that I failed to deliver a third delegate for him from my own precinct. But watching the campaign devolve into identity politics in February and March, I was more convinced than ever that helping this longshot candidate was worth the effort.

These past few weeks have caused me to question for the first time whether I would back Edwards if I had it to do over again. Edwards’ policies and rhetoric were a necessary condition for my support, but they would not have been sufficient had I not also believed that he was the strongest general election candidate. Otherwise I could have backed Dennis Kucinich, who was even closer to me ideologically than Edwards.

Here and at other blogs, I advocated for Edwards as the most electable candidate because of his communication skills, his appeal to small-town and rural voters, his way of evoking broad themes in his answers to specific questions, and so on.

Speaking to potential caucus-goers, I often noted that Edwards had faced intense national scrutiny for years, making it unlikely that the Republicans could spring any “October surprise” on us.

Now I realize that the whole time, Edwards was hiding a story that would have reinforced the most devastating narrative about him: he’s a phony who talks about one set of values but lives a different set of values.

How damaging was this narrative? Last year I used to joke that if I ever came into possession of a time machine, I would go back and persuade John Edwards to hire Sarah Susanka (the Not So Big House woman) to design his Chapel Hill home.

It appears that Edwards had no game plan other than to hope that Rielle Hunter wouldn’t tell anyone and/or that journalists wouldn’t pick up on the rumors as long as he lied.

I empathize with Elizabeth Edwards, who wrote on Friday:

This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well.

I agree with BruceMcF, who observed that our country would have lost a great leader if sexual immorality had ended Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s career.

But presidential candidates have to run in the world that is, not the world that used to be or the world that should be. I simply can’t imagine how this affair could have remained under wraps throughout a long campaign.

To my mind, Edwards owed it to all Democrats to either step aside or find some way to make this story old news. I understand the desire to avoid a media circus, but it wasn’t realistic to hope that journalists would cover for him or that Hunter would keep a secret.

Responding to a commenter at Daily Kos, Elizabeth Edwards wrote on Friday:

Each of us has a day we wish we could take back. We are all imperfect beings, Denny. Here’s what I know, looking back: poverty, a truly aggressive and progressive environmental platform, universal health care would not have been part of the discussion if someone of force and vision had not been there to make them part of the conversation.

An imperfect man with a truly progressive vision who spoke to and for those whom others ignored? Yes, that is who I supported.

An imperfect man who had come to face his own imperfections and was seeking to redeem himself to those closest to him? Yes, that is who I supported.

With the Supreme Court and so much more riding on the outcome of this election, helping someone redeem himself to his family is not high on my priority list. Ultimately, I have to agree with Ezra Klein:

No one forces you to devote your life to national advocacy of important issues. But if you decide to do follow that path, with all the plaudits and moments of roaring applause it entails, you have to make certain sacrifices, and shoulder certain realities. Among them is that if you falter, you can harm all that you’re advocating and deny help to all whom you claim to represent.

If Edwards wanted to face his imperfections, he should have found some vague way to disclose marital problems that he and Elizabeth had worked through. Let voters decide whether that should be a deal-breaker or whether his potential contribution to American life outweighs the mistake.

If he could not bear to get ahead of the story, the least he could have done was to tell the truth when first asked about rumors of his affair. DrFrankLives (who has devoted far more volunteer hours to Edwards than I have) hit the nail on the head in this diary:

I want to know two things.  How the hell could you, a man who ran everything through a careful filter, allow that to happen during a political campaign in which so many people had so much riding on you?  And what the hell were you thinking when you denied it when asked about it?  You’re a lawyer.  You know that questions keep coming.  And nothing delights a cross-examiner like a false answer.

Which candidate would I have supported knowing what I know now? Probably I would have held out for Al Gore for a few more months. Maybe I would have settled on Chris Dodd or Joe Biden. Neither of them were as strong on my key issues as Edwards, though. I suspect that I would have come around to Edwards eventually if the affair had been revealed early in the campaign. It wouldn’t be the first time I voted for someone who was unfaithful to his wife.

Had I known that Edwards was recklessly hiding a story with the potential to destroy his campaign, I would have found a different candidate for sure.

What makes me more angry than anything else is that this scandal appears to have derailed Elizabeth Edwards’ plans to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. We need her voice on health care reform.

Feel free to share your own reflections in the comments.

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Ten words I thought I would never write

I am glad John Edwards is not the Democratic nominee.

I will have more to say on this story in the next day or two. Meanwhile, here are some links for you.

Edwards talks to ABC News about the affair and denies he is the father of Rielle Hunter’s child:

Edwards blamed the affair on the adulation surrounding his remarkable rise into presidential politics.

“I went from being a senator, a young senator to being considered for vice president, running for president, being a vice presidential candidate and becoming a national public figure. All of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want. You’re invincible. And there will be no consequences.”

Elizabeth Edwards says she and her husband began “a long and painful process” after he told her about the affair in 2006. She adds:

John has spoken in a long on-camera interview I hope you watch. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame.  

David Mizner says, “Stop Moralizing, You Sickening Scolds:

So another human showed himself to be human, and nominal progressives hop on their high horses and moralize and judge and get all dewey-eyed in support of Elizabeth, as if you have any idea what went on in their marriage, and in their bed. As if you have any right to know.

This is none of our business.

This is an American sickness, this need to know–the belief that we’re entitled to know–about the sexual lives of politicians.

But but but, you don’t have a problem with the sex, you say, you have a problem with his lying about it. Yeah, that’s what Ken Starr said too.

Meteor Blades speaks for many in this angry response to Mizner’s diary:

One can argue persuasively that it shouldn’t matter.  But should isn’t the real world, and it’s delusional to operate these days as a politican with the idea that what you have done doesn’t affect how some people might vote.

You knew when you declared for the presidency that this affair hung over you, that it might easily come to light. That it could, had you gained the nomination, have wrecked the party’s chances for winning the White House, tamped down support for Democrats running for seats in Congress, and set progressives back a decade. You knew that when you kept your name in the hopper for the vice presidency.

But you kept running anyway. You lied. And you got others to lie for you. You did this knowing full well the damage that could be done, not to your marriage, but to the party and the aspirations for better governance of those who looked to you as a leader who could help bring it about.

Ezra Klein uses less colorful language than Blades but makes a similar point:

No one forces you to devote your life to national advocacy of important issues. But if you decide to do follow that path, with all the plaudits and moments of roaring applause it entails, you have to make certain sacrifices, and shoulder certain realities. Among them is that if you falter, you can harm all that you’re advocating and deny help to all whom you claim to represent. I don’t know if it’s true that Edwards’ affair started and ended in 2006, but if so, that’s actually the most morally unforgivable of possible timelines.

Matt Stoller still believes Edwards is a phony but doesn’t get “the rush to vilify him as the worst person ever.”

Meanwhile, Cenk Uygur asks some important questions:

Does John Edwards care less about poor people today than he did yesterday? Would his affair lead him to change his position on NAFTA? How would it alter his policy on Iran?

Some will claim, as they did with Bill Clinton, that it’s not the affair but the lies that went along with it. Really? Did JFK come out and tell the American people – or his wife – “by the way, while my wife was in the hospital I was having an affair with not one, but several women at the same time”? No, of course, he lied too. Every man that has ever cheated on his wife has lied (and so has every woman who has ever cheated). It is part and parcel of the affair.

Now, we get to the most relevant question – if John Edwards’ political career is done, why isn’t John McCain’s? John McCain had a well-documented affair on his first wife, with his current wife. He has admitted in the books he has written about his life that he ran around with several different women while still married to his first wife. And don’t forget that he left her for a younger, richer woman – multi-millionaire Cindy Hensley who is now Cindy McCain – after she had been severely hurt in a car accident.

So, why are McCain’s actions any more excusable than Edwards’? Because it was thirty years ago? Does that wash it away? Will we be fine with Edwards running for office again in a couple of years because then it will all be in the past? What is the statute of limitations on an affair?

Digby wants to know why journalists haven’t followed up on the New York Times story about McCain’s alleged affair:

I personally don’t care who and of these people are sleeping with (especially McCain). Marriage is a very complicated institution and I don’t pass judgment on how others conduct theirs. I think this is all bullshit. But if the media has decided that even a failed politician who has no chance at the presidency can be subject to this kind of scrutiny, then they need to be a little bit more vigilant about pursuing someone who is the nominee of his party and has been very publicly linked to a specific woman by the paper of record, not the National Enquirer. If these are the rules, then this guy is a far more likely subject of scrutiny than Edwards.

In theory, I agree with Mizner that what goes on in a politician’s marriage is none of our business.

But in reality, I see no way that this affair could have been kept secret during a long campaign. If it was important to John and Elizabeth Edwards to prevent this media circus from happening, then he should have declined to run for president.

I also feel embarrassed to have inadvertently misled people in the course of advocating for Edwards.

I can’t count the number of times I said it would be less risky to nominate him, because he’s been under intense national scrutiny since 2004, so the Republicans would not be able to dig up new dirt on him.

Or in the words of another precinct captain I know, who used this line many times, “He’s been in the spotlight for years, and the worst they can say about him is he has a big house and paid too much for a haircut.”

Tonight I’m feeling more sorry than ever that Al Gore sat out this presidential campaign.

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New VP speculation open thread

Virginia Senator Jim Webb withdrew his name from consideration as a vice-presidential candidate. That’s a relief from my perspective.

According to Marc Ambinder,

A Democrat close to Webb confirms that a request for documents preceded his declaration to the Obama campaign. The Democrat said that Webb did not want to relive the vigors of a campaign so soon after his election to the Senate.

Like I’ve been saying, Webb does not like campaigning enough to be a good running mate.

Meanwhile, John Edwards will debate “Bush’s brain” Karl Rove on September 26. Some people have interpreted the scheduling of that event as a sign Edwards knows he will not be Obama’s running mate.

I still think Wes Clark would be an excellent choice for Obama, despite the recent dustup over comments he made about John McCain.

Some smart people think he will pick Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, but I still think that it would be a mistake for Obama to choose a woman other than Hillary Clinton.

VP search teams for Obama and McCain have both begun vetting candidates. McCain is said to be considering Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

I tend to agree with Douglas Burns, who wrote that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would be a good running mate for McCain.

If McCain is feeling pressure in Florida (a state he must win in order to get 270 electoral votes), he might consider selecting Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Rumors that Crist is gay could be a problem with that scenario. Crist was married to a woman in his early 20s and just got engaged to his current girlfriend.

Put your predictions or opinions about either candidate’s VP choice in the comment section.

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Obama VP speculation open thread

Paul Rosenberg still wants John Edwards on the ticket, citing new opinion polls that show he helps Barack Obama more than many other possible running-mates.

Virginia Senator Jim Webb seems to have taken himself out of the running by co-sponsoring a bill to allow offshore oil drilling in Virginia.

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold seems to have taken himself out of the running by criticizing Obama for opting out of public financing for his general-election campaign.

General James Jones has to be off the list after he accompanied John McCain to a campaign event in Missouri.

As I’ve written before, Obama must above all do no harm with his VP choice. That means he can’t choose anyone who would alienate the Democratic constituencies that favored Hillary Clinton in the primaries. If I were in his position, I would probably choose someone close to the Clintons, like Wes Clark.

However, if Obama doesn’t want to tap someone from the Clinton circle, a number of other choices, including Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and John Edwards, would be ok by me.

If he wants an “old wise man,” I much prefer former Florida Senator Bob Graham to someone like former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn.

I am absolutely, implacably opposed to putting any Republican (such as Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel) on the Democratic ticket. The next president is going to appoint several Supreme Court judges, and I don’t want any conservative to have any chance of becoming president.

Make the case for the running mate of your choice in the comments.

UPDATE: Good discussion about the pros and cons of Biden on the ticket in the comment thread under this diary: Biden Drank Graham’s Milkshake: Veep Audition?

Events coming up this week

As always, please send me an e-mail or put up a comment if I have left out any significant event.

In many communities, this week will be dominated by flood clean-up activities. Stay safe if you are volunteering for any of those.

Note that First Lady Mari Culver’s Poverty Conference in Des Moines, which was originally scheduled for June 19, has been rescheduled for September 16. John Edwards was to be the keynote speaker for that event. It is not yet clear whether he will deliver the keynote in September.

If you already registered for this conference but won’t be able to attend in September, go here to update your registration:

http://www.iowaworkforce.org/p…

Tuesday, June 17:

Rob Hubler, Democratic candidate for Congress in Iowa’s fifth district, will be at a picnic with the Schaben family at Pleasant View Park in Dunlap 6:30pm. BBQ and an auction, including a signed copy of Obama’s book! Call (712) 352-2077 for details.

Congressman Bruce Braley will hold a first-ever telephone town hall meeting at 7 pm “to discuss gas prices and the need for a new direction in our energy policies.” Iowans who wish to call in to the town hall themselves should contact one of Rep. Braley’s district offices for a call-in number and passcode.

Thursday, June 19:

Johnston’s Green Days weekend begins on Thursday evening and runs through Sunday with a long list of events and activities:

http://johnstongreendays.org/s…

Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa is holding its annual event from 5:30 to 9:00 pm at the Marriott Hotel in West Des Moines. The special guest will be the “Shoe Lady,” Miss Meghan Cleary. Miss Meghan, author of The Perfect Fit: What Your Shoes Say About You, can tell your personality just by looking at your shoes. How fun! Plan on kicking up your heels at Celebrate Shoes! Tickets cost $125/person or $75/person for 35 years old and under. To reserve your seat at the event, call 515-235-0406 or e-mail JGood AT ppgi.org.

Friday, June 20:

Ankeny Area Democrats annual Garage and Bake Sale will be held at the home of Arvid and Mary Oliver 1709 NE Lowell Court, on June 20 and 21. Start gathering the items you would like to donate to the sale. These items can be delivered the any time during the week of the sale. Your help is invaluable to a successful sale. We will be setting up and pricing on Thursday the 19h.  For further information either email Ankenyareadems@msn.com or, call Arvid or Mary at 964-1227.

Johnston Green Days events begin on Friday at 5 pm. More details are here:

http://johnstongreendays.org/s…

Saturday, June 21:

Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa and the Healthy Families project will be at the Des Moines Farmer’s Market this Saturday, June 21st. Volunteers will represent the Planned Parenthood mission, and help educate people about the need to reduce unintended pregnancies in Iowa.  Of course we’ll be handing out lots of goodies as well! Past Farmer’s market volunteers have had a lot of fun, and say it’s one of the best volunteer opportunities available. Help educate the public and have fun too. Any time you can give is much appreciated: work for a couple of hours, or the whole time. Shifts are available from 8am – Noon. Click here to e-mail Chelsea Hammond to volunteer or call (515) 235-0415

Congressional candidate Rob Hubler, Council Bluffs Mayor Hanafan, Senator Gronstal, Representative Shomshor, Kurt Hubler (house district 99 challenger), other local candidates, and the Pottawattamie county democrats will be at the grand opening party of the county office at 722 Creek Top in Council Bluffs. Rob Hubler will be speaking and answering questions from 5-7pm. Details 712-352-1192.

As part of the Juneteenth celebration in Des Moines, Neighbors Day will run from noon to 7:00 pm on Saturday at Evelyn Davis Park, 14th and Forest Avenue in Des Moines. Come out, enjoy some tasty food and listen to some great performances from the Ambassadors of Praise Choir of Cornerstone Family Church(directed by Rev. Tina Williams), Big Bang!, Comfort Zone, Des Moines Boyz, Sumpin’ Doo and more.

Johnston Green Days event schedule:

http://johnstongreendays.org/s…

Sunday, June 22:

Last day for carnival at Johnston Green Days event from 1 pm to 5 pm at the Johnston Commons.

Edwards asks Iowa delegates to support Obama

A John Edwards supporter who is a delegate to the Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention received this letter from Edwards and posted it on a bloggers’ e-mail loop. She said the letter arrived on Barack Obama letterhead:

June 10, 2008

Dear State Convention Delegates and Alternates:

I want to thank you for all that you have done to support Elizabeth and me over the years. It has been an honor to have your support.

We are now at a critical time in this nominating process. And I know that Barack Obama is a good man who will stand up for what matters for the future of this country. I know he carries the same hope in his heart that you and I do. The hope to make this country better, to end 8 long years of division, and to build one America instead of two.

I am asking you today to join with me in publicly supporting Barack Obama. We need you in this cause and in this movement. I always said that our campaign was not about me — it was about a vision for true change in American and the strength to fight for it.

In their search for a candidate to fulfill this vision, the Democratic voters in America have made their choice — and so have I. Barack Obama is the leader we need, and it’s up to each one of us to make sure we elect him President. I hope that I can count on you to join me in this cause.

Again, many thanks for all your past and continued support.

Sincerely,

John Edwards

The Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention was to have been held today, but it was postponed because of the catastrophic flooding in many parts of the state. Party leaders have rescheduled the event for June 28 in Des Moines.

Edwards delegates were able to form viable groups at four of the five district conventions held in Iowa two months ago, but that was before Edwards endorsed Obama.

David Redlawsk, an Edwards supporter from Iowa City who is also a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, had previously said he would encourage Edwards delegates to stay together at the state convention. Redlawsk explained that although he will vote for Obama at the DNC in Denver, he wants to help get more Edwards supporters chosen as Iowa delegates to the convention.

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Obama not ready to "turn the page" on Clintonomics

Though you wouldn’t know it from reading various blogs that support Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee was barely distinguishable from Hillary Clinton on most issues.

TomP reminded me of this in his diary yesterday about Obama choosing “centrist economist Jason Furman as the top economic advisor for the campaign.”

Click the link to learn why labor unions and many progressive organizations, such as Wake Up Wal-Mart and Public Citizen, are “seething” over Obama’s selection of Furman. Among other things, Furman has defended Wal-Mart’s business model and published a 2005 paper labeling Wal-Mart “A Progressive Success Story.”

The Steelworkers’ Union and AFL-CIO are not happy either about Furman’s support for global trade agreements and other writings as head of the Hamilton Project (a centrist economic group started by Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin).

Some Obama supporters say choosing Hillary Clinton as his running mate would undercut his whole message of getting beyond the 1990s.

Until Obama demonstrates that he is committed to getting beyond Clintonomics, that argument won’t be very convincing.

Obama talked a good game in his speech last week to the Service Employees International Union, but actions speak louder than words. Wall Street and other corporate interests have too much power in the Democratic Party already. Putting Furman in charge of Obama’s economic policy team is a very worrying sign.

By the way, Colin Kahl is still the chairman of Obama’s advisory task force on Iraq:

Kahl is one of the authors of [the Center for a New American Security’s] new report, “Shaping the Iraq Inheritance,” which proposes a policy called “conditional engagement” for Iraq that would leave a large contingent of American forces in Iraq for several years, and which would make America’s presence in Iraq contingent on political progress in Iraq toward reconciliation among the country’s ethnic and sectarian groups and parties.

It’s been two months since reports emerged about Kahl’s support for leaving 60,000 to 80,000 U.S. troops in Iraq at least through the end of 2010. Why won’t Obama fire this guy?

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Bumper stickers open thread

MoveOn.org is offering a free Obama ’08 bumper sticker to anyone who orders one here:

https://pol.moveon.org/obamast…

For now, I am keeping my Edwards bumper sticker on the car, along with my Buy Fresh, Local and Organic sticker. My husband’s car still has the Denise O’Brien for Secretary of Agriculture sticker!

A month or two ago I saw a pickup truck that had an Edwards sticker paired with one I’d never seen before: “Thou Shalt Not Scab.”

If Jerry Sullivan’s campaign produces bumper stickers, I’ll pick up one of those this year too.

What stickers do you have on your vehicle? Are you one of those people who keeps driving around promoting candidates long after they’ve lost an election, or do you get those stickers off your car ASAP?

What are the best and worst bumper stickers you’ve seen lately?

A few years ago I stopped at a light behind a car with a sticker that said something like, “Raised Republican–I can help myself, thank you!” The funny thing was, the same car had a handicapped emblem hanging from the rear-view mirror. I felt like stopping the driver to say he should thank Tom Harkin for the fact that he can find a convenient place to park.

If anyone should come into possession of a time machine

Please go back and persuade John Edwards to hire Sarah Susanka (the Not So Big House woman) to design his Chapel Hill home.

Failing that, please go back and convince Barack Obama to resign from Trinity United Church of Christ before running for president, instead of right before the general election campaign.

Seriously, if Obama was going to leave his church to limit the potential damage to his political ambitions, he should have done it a long time ago. Doing it now, after everyone has seen Reverend Wright’s rants on television, just looks like pandering.

EENR Blog Endorses Kevin Miskell for IA-04

Desmoinesdem has been posting some links from the EENR Blog.

 A brief history: EENR initially stood for Edwards Evening News Roundup. Edwards supporters posted nightly diaries about John's campaign and what he stood for on the Daily Kos from April 4, 2007-Feb 1, 2008. When the campaign suspended and most of the other progressive blogs focused on the horse race, some JRE supporters decided to start our own blog to discuss issues facing all of us, and not just be a support group blog for disenfranchised JRE supporters.  The EENR editorial team believes that along with the issues, they (we) should advocate for more and better downticket candidates that support a more bold, progressive agenda on Capitol Hill and in some instances, state races.  That is why EENR endorsed Ed Fallon.

Tonight EENR proudly endorses Kevin Miskell, IA-04 who is a true John Edwards Democrat.  Here's why.

Miskell is a fifth generation Iowa farmer from Story County, Iowa.   See One Carolina Girl's video of Miskell from last year:

 

 EENR invited Miskell to come by last week and talk about the issues the community was interested in, which included international issues besides the war in Iraq that blogs and the M$M don't pay as much attention to; some would have been curve balls for many candidates.  EENR discovered Miskell has been following human rights and other international issues as its bloggers have.   That's rare.

  More below the fold….(text courtesy of Sarah Lane and also from Kevin Miskell's diary last week)  

Disclosure: I am on the EENR editorial team.

  

 

 

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An argument for Edwards as VP

I don’t think Barack Obama will pick John Edwards as a running mate (the endorsement came too late for that), and I would probably rather see Edwards in a cabinet position with real authority than as a ribbon-cutter for Obama.

However, Open Left contributor Paul Rosenberg disagrees and has written three lengthy diaries making the case for Edwards as the best possible pick for Obama.

If you are interested, here are the links to the three diaries. Rosenberg explains his main thesis here:

This is not an “Edwards for VP” candidate diary series.  But it is a very candid look at why Edwards makes a strong choice, the better to discuss the underlying forces at play.  The foundations of my argument comes from two different diaries Chris wrote, years apart.  The first-discuissed in this diary-concerns the need for connecting Democratic Party liberalism with a more non-idelogical reform tradition.  The second-discussed in the next diary-concerns the logic a reinforcing VP pick.  After discussing those two diaries, I’ll review some recent polling data that shows Edwards as a very strong VP pick for Obama.

The Deep Logic of Edwards for VP–Part 1

Part 1 goes over “the need to supplement the Democratic base with an appeal to those who were non-ideological in the traditional liberal/conservative sense, but rather, were ideologically committed to reforming government to make it more responsive to the people.”

The Deep Logic of Edwards for VP–Part 2

The main argument of part 2 is that Edwards would be the best person to “reinforce” the ticket (as opposed to balancing the ticket).

The Deep Logic of Edwards for VP–Part 3

Part 3 has a lot of polling data to support Rosenberg’s argument.

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Which presidential candidate had the best celebrity supporters? (w/poll)

Ben Smith put up a post about Barack Obama’s prominent early supporters, who came on board when he was seen as having little chance of beating Hillary Clinton. Here is his list:

Senator Richard Durbin

Former Majority Leader Tom Daschle

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller

Oprah Winfrey

Iowa Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald

Former Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Gordon Fischer

Ted Sorensen

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine

Alabama Rep. Artur Davis

New Hampshire Rep. Paul Hodes

It’s easy to forget now that Gordon Fischer was on the fence between Clinton and Obama for some time last summer. He told the story of how Obama’s campaign hooked him in an interview with New Yorker journalist Ryan Lizza:

Obama, who had sometimes seemed to eschew the details of campaigning which Clinton appears to revel in, has become more enmeshed in the state’s idiosyncratic politics. Consider the conquest of Gordon Fischer, a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. Every campaign wanted Fischer’s endorsement, but the Obama campaign pursued him relentlessly. At a recent lunch at the Des Moines Embassy Club, a restaurant on the forty-first floor of the tallest building in the state, Fischer explained how Obama’s Iowa operatives used his closest friends to persuade him to back Obama. One, Lola Velázquez-Aguilú, managed to decorate part of Fischer’s house with photographs of Obama that featured thought bubbles asking for Fischer’s endorsement. (“Has anyone told you how great you look today?” an image of Obama taped to a mirror said. “So, are you ready to sign a supporter card?”) When Obama staffers learned that the late Illinois senator Paul Simon was a hero of Fischer’s, they asked Simon’s son-in-law, Perry Knop, to call Fischer and make the case for Obama. At one point, Obama himself invited Fischer onto his campaign bus and told him that he had to stay aboard until he agreed to an endorsement. When Fischer insisted that he had to make the decision with his wife, Monica, Obama demanded Monica’s cell-phone number, and he called her at once. “Monica, this is Barack Obama,” he said when her voice mail came on. “I’m with your husband here, and I’m trying to go ahead and close the deal for him to support my candidacy. . . . Discuss it over with your man. Hopefully we can have you on board.” The Fischers were sufficiently impressed to endorse him, two weeks later. “I think the Iowa campaign has been run better than the national campaign,” Fischer said.

When I read Lizza’s article last November, I showed that passage to my husband, who remarked, “That’s actually a really good argument for scrapping the caucuses.” I’m sure that wasn’t Fischer’s intention, though!

But I digress.

Ben Smith’s post reminded me that I’ve been meaning to put up a poll about which candidate had the best celebrity supporters.

For the purposes of this diary, I am focusing on celebrities who publicly endorsed or campaigned for a candidate. Lists of famous donors can be deceiving, since many rich and famous people give large sums to multiple candidates:

Actor Michael Douglas, for example, has contributed to five current and former Democratic presidential candidates. As of Sept. 30, the latest reports available, he had donated the maximum $4,600 $2,300 for the primary campaign and $2,300 for the general election to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, and $1,500 to Dennis Kucinich.

[…]

Another serial donor in the current election is Paul Newman, who gave the maximum contribution to Obama, Clinton, and Dodd, and $2,300 to Richardson.

Some donors have spread the wealth around but have decided to back one candidate. Barbra Streisand gave $2,300 each to Clinton, Edwards and Obama, and $1,000 to Dodd, but recently endorsed Clinton for president.

[…]

Steven Spielberg and Rob Reiner are two other celebrities who donated to multiple presidential candidates four a piece before settling on Clinton. Reiner also shot a spoof video for Clinton’s Web site.

Actress Mary Steenburgen gave money to both Edwards and Clinton, but has backed Clinton, a friend for three decades, from the get-go. Steenburgen, a native of Newport, Ark., met the Clintons when Bill Clinton was in his first term as governor of Arkansas.

Last month the Huffington Post published this piece on the top ten celebrities for Clinton and Obama. Here is their list for Obama:

1. Oprah

2. will.i.am

3. the Kennedy women (Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and Maria Shriver)

4. Ben Affleck

5. George Clooney

6. Scarlett Johansson

7. Samuel L. Jackson

8. Chris Rock

9. Robert De Niro

10. Jennifer Aniston

At least I have heard of these people. When I first saw will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” video, I swear that the only person I recognized was Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

HuffPo’s list of top ten Clinton supporters:

1. Ellen DeGeneres

2. Elton John

3. Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen

4. Jack Nicholson

5. Natalie Portman

6. Mario Lavandeira (I never heard of him, but apparently he is the celebrity blogger Perez Hilton)

7. America Ferrera (star of “Ugly Betty”)

8. Magic Johnson

9. Barbra Streisand

10. Eva Longoria Parker (star of “Desperate Housewives”)

The list of other famous people who have donated to Obama or Clinton is of course very long. I know that Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks are also public Obama supporters. If I’ve left out celebrities who played an important public role in either candidate’s campaign, please let me know in the comments.

John Edwards: A bunch of big Hollywood names donated to his campaign, but most of them did not play any public role, and many also gave money to other Democratic candidates.

I was fortunate enough to see one of the mini-concerts Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne did for Edwards in Iowa last November. They also campaigned for him in New Hampshire. Tim Robbins came to early-voting states to stump for Edwards as well. I heard from a friend who saw Robbins in Des Moines that his first comment to the crowd was, “I’m not Oprah.” Ben “Cooter” Jones, former Congressman and star of the tv show “Dukes of Hazzard,” also campaigned for Edwards in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

UPDATE: I can’t believe I forgot that Madeleine Stowe, Kevin Bacon, and James Denton (of “Desperate Housewives” fame) also came to Iowa to help out Edwards. In addition, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte endorsed Edwards. Jon Mellencamp not only supported Edwards, he also invited him on stage during a concert in Des Moines.

Bill Richardson: Again, a lot of big Hollywood names maxed out to his campaign, but most of them didn’t endorse him. The exception was Martin Sheen, who came to Iowa in December to go out on the stump with Richardson. Sheen endorsed Obama after Richardson dropped out.

Joe Biden: The famous people listed here as his donors mostly contributed to other candidates as well. I cannot recall any celebrities coming to Iowa to campaign with Biden, but please correct me in the comments if I am wrong. He was often accompanied by family members, especially his sons Beau and Hunter. (UPDATE: I forgot that Richard Schiff, who played Toby the communications guy on “The West Wing,” came to Iowa to campaign with Biden.)

Chris Dodd: Many of the famous people who donated to his campaign also donated to other candidates. However, it is worth mentioning that singer-songwriter Paul Simon campaigned with Dodd in Iowa last July, and former Democratic Senatorial candidate Ned Lamont campaigned with Dodd in Iowa last November.

Dennis Kucinich: Viggo Mortensen came to New Hampshire to campaign with Kucinich after the candidate was left out of the last presidential debate before that state’s primary. Apparently Sean Penn gave Kucinich money during the 2004 campaign.

I am not aware of any celebrity supporters of Mike Gravel.

Click “there’s more” to take the poll after the jump.

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Edwards finally endorses...Obama

I figured that if John Edwards hadn’t endorsed by now, he would wait until all of the states had held their primaries, but he proved me wrong today.

The video of his speech endorsing Barack Obama, as well as his interview on Larry King Live this past Monday, can be found here in NCDem Amy’s diary.

I find it interesting that they chose Michigan as the venue for the big endorsement rally. Obama may realize that he could be in some trouble in Michigan, since he didn’t campaign there before the January primary and didn’t get behind any re-vote plan for the state.

The timing of the endorsement stepped on Hillary Clinton’s big victory in West Virginia yesterday. Still, I am glad that Edwards paid tribute to Hillary today as well:

It is very very hard to get up every day and do what she’s done. It is hard to get out there and fight and speak up when the odds turn against you. What she has shown is strength and character and what drives her is something that each and every one of us should appreciate. She cares about working people…men and women in Iraq…she is a woman made of steel and she is a leader in this country not because of her husband but because of what she has done…When this nomination battle is over, brothers and sisters, we must come together as Democrats and in the fall stand up for the future of America to make America better. We are a stronger party because Hillary Clinton is a Democrat…and we will have a stronger presidential nominee in the fall because of her work.

I don’t think Edwards is a good match for Obama as a VP candidate, but I would like to see him out there campaigning for Obama in the coming months. I believe that he could help Obama in states such as Michigan and Ohio.

According to the electoral vote counter on the upper left side of the front page at MyDD, John McCain is currently projected to defeat Obama 290-248. Obama would win the Kerry states minus Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire, plus Iowa and Colorado–not nearly enough.

Ironically, Hillary is currently in a much stronger position against McCain, even though she has in essence no chance of winning the Democratic nomination anymore. The electoral vote counter for her, on the upper right side of the front page at MyDD, has her beating McCain 291-247. Hillary would be projected to win the Kerry states minus Wisconsin and Michigan, plus Ohio, Florida and Iowa.

UPDATE: At MyDD, Josh Orton notes that Elizabeth Edwards was not up on the stage with her husband tonight. One might interpret this to mean that she disagrees with the endorsement (she has already said she prefers Hillary’s health care reform plan). However, my hunch is that she is limiting her overnight travel away from their two school-age children. There was no compelling need for her to be there. After such a long campaign, during which the kids traveled with Elizabeth much of the time, she may just prefer to be at home.

At TalkLeft, Big Tent Democrat had high praise for Edwards’ speech and made an interesting point I hadn’t thought about:

John Edwards, populist hero with a proven record of connecting with white working class voters has vouched for Barack Obama. Does Kentucky buy it?

The Kentucky contest, previously a foregone conclusion for the Media, now becomes a test. For Barack Obama. He needs to go in to Kentucky, WITH John Edwards, and fight for their votes. He needs to show he cares about the voters of Kentucky. Particularly white working class voters. An interesting development indeed.

My money is still on a Clinton blowout in Kentucky next Tuesday.

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Should John Edwards have stayed in the presidential race?

Joe Trippi wrote an interesting piece for Campaigns and Elections called “What I Should Have Told John Edwards.”

Trippi regrets that when Edwards asked him if he should drop out of the presidential race, he

didn’t go with my gut.

I didn’t tell him what I should have told him: That I had this feeling that if he stayed in the race he would win 300 or so delegates by Super Tuesday and have maybe a one-in-five chance of forcing a brokered convention. That there was a path ahead that would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda. And that in politics anything can happen-even the possibility that in an open convention with multiple ballots an embattled and exhausted party would turn to him as their nominee. I should have closed my eyes to the pain I saw around me on the campaign bus, including my own. I should have told him emphatically that he should stay in. My regret that I did not do so-that I let John Edwards down-grows with every day that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continues.

[…]

It was a longshot, to be sure, but there remained the chance of a three-way battle going all the way to the convention. I thought we could make a big dent in Ohio by appealing to middle-class working people. The same in places like Kansas, Colorado and the Dakotas. It was possible to make those a dead-heat for all three candidates in terms of delegate wins. And today, as I write this, I realize we might have had as many as 500 delegates heading into Pennsylvania and North Carolina, two states that would probably be strong for Edwards.

That would mean Edwards, Obama and Clinton would go into the convention without any of them close to sealing the nomination. You would have had months of Obama and Clinton banging away at each other, with Edwards able to come across to weary Democrats as a welcome, fresh face. You’d have the electability argument begin to play to Edwards’ advantage, since he always did well against McCain in polling. These possibilities and more played through my mind.

Let me make clear that in January, I was 100 percent behind Edwards staying in the race until the convention, even though it was obvious after the New Hampshire primary that his chance of becoming the nominee was virtually zero.

I wrote front-page diaries for the national blog MyDD on Ten Reasons for Sticking with John Edwards and why all Democrats should be glad to see Edwards stay in the race. That second piece included the following passage:

The bottom line for me is that Edwards is talking about the issues in a way that Clinton and Obama never have and never will. In the debates, his campaign rallies, and his television advertisements, he is calling attention to problems that the corporate media filter out all too often.

Many Obama supporters are frustrated that Edwards has not dropped out of the race and endorsed their candidate. They think he is only splitting the anti-Hillary vote.

I think everyone should be happy that Edwards will hang in there, even though others are currently favored to win the nomination. I believe that the Republican hate machine will not unload on Clinton or Obama until they are certain that Edwards is out of the race. Since Obama has not yet faced tough scrutiny from the media, it is all the more important for Edwards to stay in the mix.

Since January the Democratic primary race has degenerated into identity politics and personal attacks, with little focus on issues Edwards brought to the table, like the excesses of corporate power.

Nor has his departure brought the Democratic contest to a rapid conclusion. When Edwards was on one of the talk shows in late March (I think it was Leno), he said that when he dropped out, he expected that the Democratic nominee would have been decided by mid-March. So quitting the race didn’t achieve the goal he had in mind.

In my heart, like Trippi, I feel disappointed that Edwards did not stay in for the duration. If he had been there for the debates, the moderators might have asked a few more substantive questions, or the Clinton and Obama campaigns might have altered their own strategies.

On the other hand, I doubt very much that given the media environment of late January, Edwards could have won 300 delegates on Super Tuesday, as Trippi suggests. If he had won fewer than 100 delegates, the pressure on him to drop out would have been so overwhelming (with major donors and superdelegates jumping ship) that I doubt he would have had a very good showing in Ohio on March 4.

My head tells me that one way or another, the media and the Democratic power-brokers would have been able to force Edwards out long before the primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina.

What do you think? Leaving aside whether you think Edwards had any chance of winning the nomination at a brokered convention, do you think the Democratic Party and our eventual nominee would have been better served by having him stay in the race longer?

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Clinton campaign reaching out to Edwards delegates in Iowa

This morning I saw a friend who is an Edwards delegate to the third district convention coming up this Saturday. He was complaining that he’d received no direction from the Edwards campaign, or from prominent Iowans for Edwards, about what he should do.

Before the county conventions in March, the Edwards campaign did almost nothing to shore up support from delegates elected on January 3 at the precinct caucuses (besides an e-mail from Roxanne Conlin and Rob Tully that went out two days before the county conventions, urging delegates to stick with Edwards).

Today Lynda Waddington reported at Iowa Independent that

Yesterday, Iowa delegates that are pledged to Clinton and those who remain pledged to the suspended presidential run of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards received a full-page, full-color reminder of the upcoming Democratic district conventions.

Click the link to see the visual of the mailer, but here is a key excerpt aimed at the Edwards delegates:

“John Edwards ran his campaign with compassion and conviction and lifted this campaign with his deep concerns for the daily lives of the American people. He and I both put forth universal health care plans, not because it was easy, but because health care for every man, woman and child is vital to giving every American family the opportunity for the American dream.

Together, let’s make universal health care a reality. I would be honored to have your support at your Congressional District Convention.”

It will be interesting to see if this works. At the county conventions, most of the Edwards delegates who switched moved toward Obama. I know of some like my friend who favor Clinton, though, partly because the Clinton health care plan is closer to what Edwards proposed.

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Fraud did not determine the winner of the Iowa caucuses

Every once in a while on one of the national political blogs, a supporter of Hillary Clinton or John Edwards will assert that Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses by busing in thousands of ineligible voters from out of state.

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am no fan of Obama, and I’ve strongly criticized some aspects of the Iowa caucus system.

But I have yet to encounter any serious observer of Iowa politics who believes Obama won Iowa by cheating. I have been talking to many volunteers for the Clinton and Edwards campaigns in Iowa, and a few staffers, while researching a future diary on how those candidates might have beaten Obama here. Literally no one I’ve talked with has claimed that Obama did not legitimately win the caucuses.

No doubt there were some people from out of state who fraudulently registered to vote here on caucus night. I’ve heard that may have been a particular problem in some areas of Scott County. But I haven’t seen any evidence that the Obama campaign orchestrated any fraud, and there’s no way the cheaters were numerous enough to account for Obama’s margin of victory here.

If you don’t believe me, read this story from the Des Moines Register: Caucuses drew few ineligible voters:

The Register review of voter registration data from all 99 counties reveals a low rate of new voter applications filled out on caucus night by people whose addresses later could not be verified.

Only 1.5 percent of the new voter identification cards mailed to voters who registered on caucus night were returned to county auditors as undeliverable. That’s an indication that the vast majority of new caucus-night voters had a bona fide address in Iowa.

State officials say the low error rate is impressive, especially since caucus-night turnout vastly exceeded expectations and overwhelmed local party officials around the state.

The other argument I hear from the occasional conspiracy theorist on a different blog is that Obama’s campaign bused in large numbers of students from out of state. First, that would have affected turnout in a relatively small number of Iowa’s 1,800 precincts.

Second, as long as those students attend Iowa colleges and live in state most of the year, I have no problem with a campaign helping them get back to their campuses in early January. What’s the qualitative difference between that and my giving someone in my neighborhood a ride to the caucus if he or she can’t drive?

The caucuses never should have been scheduled during the winter vacation of most colleges anyway.  

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Must-see TV

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards were all on the Colbert Report on Thursday.

The whole show was hilarious, so catch the rerun on Friday if you’ve got cable. But I just had to post this You Tube of Edwards doing “The Word” segment (thanks, NCDem!):

Too funny.

On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart absolutely skewered the moderators of that ABC Clinton-Obama debate. Also well worth watching the rerun. I couldn’t find that video on the Comedy Central site yet, though.

Recommended reading for Obama supporters

David Mizner has written a diary I recommend to all supporters of Barack Obama. It highlights behavior that inadvertently harms Obama’s campaign by driving away some Democrats who otherwise lean toward him.

Mizner was an active supporter of John Edwards for president, as his diary history shows. Like me, he wrote regular front-page posts advocating for Edwards at MyDD. But after Edwards dropped out, Mizner voted for Obama in the New York primary on February 5.

On its surface, Mizner’s latest piece is an inside-baseball critique of editorial bias at the Daily Kos. He demonstrates how Markos Moulitsas has in recent months become an uncritical cheerleader for Obama, after being skeptical toward all the Democratic candidates in 2007.

But I recommend this diary not because you should care about what some blogger thinks of Markos. Rather, I think Mizner has touched on the alienation many Democrats feel when they encounter the overheated Hillary-hating and Obama-loving rhetoric from Obama fans:

It’s no coincidence that in the last two months the site has devolved into a propaganda organ for the Obama campaign. Although it’s aggravating to come across Drudgery at the top of the rec list and casual claims that Hillary is a sociopath, it’s not the nastiness that’s worrisome (freedom is untidy); it’s the laziness, the unquestioning partisanship, the lack of brainwork. These days at Daily Kos there’s no exchange of ideas, no debate. Obama is good, Hillary is bad, case closed.

It’s probably not wise to go looking to Daily Kos or any other political blog for Truth, but the progressive blogosphere fancies itself the reality-based community, and that commodity is in short supply at the mothership. If you’re a progressive untouched by enthusiasm for Obama or hatred for Hillary, you must be wondering what race Kossacks are watching. In the race I’ve watched, Obama has not campaigned as a transformative progressive. In the race I’ve watched, he has failed to offer a single bold policy initiative, coddled a virulent homophobe for political purposes, voted to fund the war in Iraq and justified doing so by parroting a disgusting rightwing talking point, echoed the GOP claim that the Social Security system is in crisis, refused to join Edwards in opposing the Global War on Terror framework, joined George Bush in seeking to expand the size of the military by 92,000 troops, said he would increase the military budget, supported corporate free trade, enlisted Tom Daschle to assemble a base of support on K-Street, raised buckets of cash fromlobbyist-law firms, and bashed unions for helping Edwards until he himself was the beneficiary of labor’s largesse. Et Cetera.

A dozen links in that passage didn’t come through when I copied and pasted, but click to the original diary and you’ll see that Mizner has the links to back up what he is saying.

This passage also made a crucial point that Obama supporters rarely acknowledge:

I’m not going to defend the Clinton campaign’s race-baiting or its praising of McCain at Obama’s expense. Nor, though, will I defend the Obama’s campaign sexism, or its willingness to claim race-baiting where there is none. I believe history will show both that the Clnton campaign wanted to turn Barack into the “black candidate” and that the Obama campaign wanted to turn Hillary into the racist candidate. They both exploited racial resentment.

Several links in that paragraph didn’t come through. The most important one is to the memo that the Obama campaign distributed in South Carolina, which sought to portray the Clintons as using racially divisive rhetoric. That memo was designed to give Obama an edge among blacks and white liberals, and it worked, but it also distorted Hillary’s comments about Lyndon Johnson and Bill’s comments about the “fairy tale.”

My impression is that intense Obama supporters can’t understand why everyone isn’t as outraged as they are over the latest stupid comment by some Clinton supporter. First, the Obama campaign has crossed lines too, as Mizner points out. Second, many progressives have, according to Mizner,

abdicated the job of trying to hold Obama accountable. Both Move On and Blue Majority gave him endorsements without offering so much as constructive criticism. Kos himself hasn’t written one word critical of Obama in several weeks, during which time Obama has sent nothing but alarming signals on the sphere’s signature issue: Iraq. Unlike Hillary, he wouldn’t ban corporate mercenaries and his advisors are describing his modest withdrawal plan as a “best case scenario” and calling for a large residual force. Also unmentioned by Kos and the other Daily Kos front page bloggers is Obama’s attempt to denythat he once held certain liberal positions.

Again, the links did not come through, but you can find many in the diary.

When Obama puts up red flags, and onetime reasonable progressives have nothing but praise for him and condemnation for Hillary, it turns off a lot of Democrats.

Speaking of the devolution of political discourse lately, I can’t resist linking to a diary Mizner wrote last month: “Do You Miss Edwards Yet?” The opening paragraph was a classic:

Ah, 2007. How I long for those halcyon, pre-Ferraro days when a major issue in the primary was the dangerous influence of corporate power. Thanks to Edwards, the Big Three battled over who would be more willing and able to take on corporations. There was reason to doubt that the policies proposed by Obama and Clinton–and even by Edwards, perhaps–would deliver the bold change they promised, but at least the issue of corporate power was front and center. Now, though, with Edwards gone, the issue is barely an issue, and somewhere CEOs and Wall Street execs are laughing.

Ain’t that the truth.

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The New Race for Vice-President: Part I

A lot has changed since I offered my last predictions on who the next vice president. For starters, both parties are fairly certain of who their nominees will be. Alliances have shifted; political fortunes have risen and fallen. We've seen some early signs of what the general election will bring. Therefore, there's no reason not to start talking vice-presidents. In Part I I'll take a look at possible Obama vice-presidental picks, and in the interest of fairness, I'll look at some McCain picks in Part II. The links are to some YouTube videos that illustrate the person's personality and style.

 

Heavyweight contenders: 

VA Sen Jim Webb: There's a lot of buzz surrounding Sen. Webb right now, and for good reason. He brings a lot to the table, first and foremost of which is deep military and government experience as a Vietnam vet and fmr Sec. of the Navy. He's a fresh face, from a swing state, and a macho Democrat who personifies change. Plus, what better for a candidate who looks to heal the racial divide than a Vietnam veteran who is happily married to a Vietnamese-American?

BUT, Webb does have a few black eyes. He is often gruff, and could have the possibility of making gaffes on the trail. He also has been married three times and may have skeletons in his closet. Plus, considering a sitting senator hasn't won the presidency since Kennedy–should we run a Senator/Senator ticket?

VA Gov. Tim Kaine: Gov. Kaine was one of the first public officials to jump on the Obama bandwagon…before there was a bandwagon. He's a popular and successful governor of a southern swing state to boot. On top of that, he has a sterling record: missionary in Honduras, graduate of Harvard Law, lawyer specializing in cases of people denied housing based on race or disability and crime-busting mayor and governor who got the state through the Virginia Tech tragedy. On paper, he's perfect.

BUT, he's only been governor for two years, bringing up the experience question. Also, he carries little name recognition outside of Virginia. Further, he's only passable on the stump–not a great orator.

NM Gov. Bill Richardson: Recent convert to the Obama camp, Gov. Richardson has long been touted as vice-president to whoever the nominee would turn out to be. To make a long story short, he's got experience out the wazoo. He's also Latino, offering the potential to make a historic candidacy even more historic. He's also well-known around the country, can be firebreather on the stump and a generally good-humored person with a very fashionable beard.

BUT, a lot of the country has an opinion of him as a political sycophant (as seen best on a pre-Iowa SNL skit). He's also known to make gaffes and is often hit-or-miss when he speaks. Also, it remains to be seen if a Richardson veep run would alienate the Clinton camp, still sore over his defection.

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John Edwards on Jay Leno's show

I missed the Leno show last night, but NCDemAmy came through with the YouTube, as usual. Here it is, for those who are curious to hear what John Edwards has been up to:

No big news in the interview–he wisely is not endorsing either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and says both would be excellent candidates, far better than the alternative.

Parents may appreciate his story about his son Jack!

Counterfactual history open thread

Bleeding Heartland readers, I would be interested in your views on how the Iowa caucuses might have turned out differently.

Let’s assume that Barack Obama runs the exact campaign he ran last year in terms of strategy and execution, and has the same monetary resources he had available.

What, if anything, could other candidates have done to beat Obama in Iowa? Keep in mind that both Clinton and Edwards executed their strategies pretty well in Iowa (in my opinion), with

both of them getting more than 70,000 people to stand in their corners on January 3. That “should” have been enough to win, even if turnout had been “only” 50 percent greater than the previous record for Iowa Democrats.

Given the Obama campaign’s excellent strategy and execution, as well as their virtually unlimited monetary resources in Iowa, what could other candidates have done to win the Iowa caucuses?

These are examples of the kinds of questions I’m interested in:

Should Hillary have used Bill more, or used him less?

Would it have helped Clinton or Edwards to go negative on Obama?

Were there better methods Clinton could have used to identify and turn out supporters?

Was there anything Richardson could have done in the summer to build on the bump he got from his television commercials in May?

Would Edwards have done better if his stump speech and advertising had focused on different issues?

Should Edwards have spent some money on advertising in the summer, when he slipped behind Clinton in the Iowa polls, rather than keeping his powder dry?

Feel free to post your insights about these and similar questions on this thread.

Alternatively, if you have thoughts you’d rather keep off the record, please e-mail them to me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com, or e-mail me your phone number and I will call you to chat. I will keep your views confidential.

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Rob Tully and Roxanne Conlin urge Edwards delegates to stick with him

I just got this e-mail from the co-chairs of John Edwards’ campaign in Iowa and wanted to post it for the benefit of you Edwards delegates who read Bleeding Heartland:

Dear Friend,

Many of you have called and written seeking guidance about what those of us who were elected as Edwards’ delegates in the precinct caucuses should do in the county conventions this weekend.  We are writing to you today to ask you to stand up for John this weekend.

Senator Edwards has been talking with both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama on a regular basis.  But he has not endorsed anyone and will not endorse anyone before this weekend.

John is spending most of his time working on the issues that were at the center of his campaign.  In fact, on Wednesday, John had an extended meeting with a group people from across the country about a national effort to keep the poverty issue in the public dialogue and to find real solutions to deal with this fundamentally moral issue.  On Thursday, he participated in a MOVE ON conference call to keep the political pressure on candidates on the need to end the war.  

We all know that John was the leader on every issue during the campaign, from health care to climate change to poverty to economic inequality to the need to reduce the influence of money and lobbyists to reducing college costs to restoring America’s moral authority in the world and on and on.  

In that spirit, this weekend we will be standing up for John Edwards, and we hope you will, too.  

With the economy slipping more and more every day, the need to build One America is more important than ever.   We think it is vital that those of us who were elected as delegates for John Edwards support his candidacy and the issues he raised.  He was fearless in speaking about the underlying truth of where we are as a nation and we think it is incumbent on us to keep that spirit alive at this next stage of the process in Iowa.

Thank you,

Roxanne Conlin & Rob Tully

I am not a delegate, but if I were, I would also be sticking with Edwards this weekend.

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Advice on a Delegate Dilemma

This may run a bit long so bear with me, please.

After supporting John Edwards in 2004, my mother decided to get really involved this cycle. Of course, being in a small town, they threw her in the deep end right from the start. She worked hard all summer and fall for Edwards and co-captained her small town precinct for him on caucus night. It was a very successful night for her, and Edwards carried the precinct and the county. Some of the precinct old-pros asked her to be an alternate delegate to the county convention and she accepted, not thinking she'd end up having to go.

Well, now she has to go. 

Since John Edwards is out of the running and every delegate on every level counts more than ever now, she doesn't know what to do. She knows that she technically doesn't have any obligation to a specific candidate, but she feels a moral obligation to represent the wishes of the people who caucused in her precinct. 

She feels, on a policy level, that Obama best matches the interests and concerns that brought her personally to Edwards in the first place. Obama as well came in a close second in her precinct. She's also been trying to ask some of the people she coaxed into caucusing who they'd like best, and the majority of them so far are leaning Obama (although several suggest Clinton, and still more suggest an Edwards vote regardless).  She's been reading a mailing from Obama this week, and expects one from Hillary as well. As you know, there's no word from Edwards. I should add that both the Obama and Hillary captains have been quite friendly to her since she was told to report to the convention.

She really wants to do right by the people she worked so hard to bring to caucus and those she's representing and she genuinely is unsure what to do. Should she vote for Edwards, even though he's out of the race? Should she vote for Obama, who seems to be most of the caucus-goers second choice? Should she vote for Hillary? 

I look forward to any advice or suggestions anyone has that I might pass along to her. Also, I'll be down there for spring break, so I'll see if I can't report on it in some fashion.

New blog for progressives and "Edwards Democrats"

If you supported John Edwards, you probably are familiar with the Edwards Evening News Roundup at Daily Kos. The team who brought you those updates have created a new EENR Progressive blog, a forum for activists to talk about various issues and strategies for building the progressive movement.

Pioneer111 put up this diary about the new blog at MyDD. Key passage:

EENR is a community blog, and we hope you will be part of that community.  We’ve tried to set standards for discussion that reflect our desire for open communication, the search for truth, and that wonderful lesson we all learned in kindergarten, “Play Nice and Share Your Toys.”  There are lots of toys, too.  There’s a wonderful video wall, lots of diaries already there waiting for your comments, links to a mirror of the JRE campaign website, and much more.  We’ll have Open Threads, and special guest bloggers.  And we’re always open to suggestions!

EENR has a really unique feature.  We have 12 subject sections located on the left hand side.  This gives us twelve front pages and if you write a diary with one of the sections in your tags or use the drop down menu in creating it you can be a front pager in any section except the Home Page.   😉 Please join in creating the community discussions in all progressive areas. It also means that candidate diaries do NOT dominate the discussion.  Progressive issues do.  We hope that more contribute to that point of view.

There are diaries on a wide variety of topics at the EENR blog. I encourage progressives to join the conversation–even if you didn’t support Edwards for president.

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How will the Iowa superdelegates vote?

Thomas Beaumont wrote this article in the Sunday Des Moines Register on Iowa’s superdelegates. The whole article is worth reading, and it includes this useful sidebar:

Iowa is expected to have 12 superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August. They include all four Democratic members of Congress, Iowa’s governor and its six members of the Democratic National Committee. The 12th superdelegate will be chosen at the Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention in June.

Below are the names of those superdelegates, their titles and whom they have endorsed for the 2008 presidential nomination.

SUPPORTING HILLARY CLINTON

LEONARD BOSWELL, U.S. House member from Des Moines.

MIKE GRONSTAL, Iowa Senate majority leader from Council Bluffs and member of the DNC as chairman of Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

SANDY OPSTVEDT, Iowa labor union leader and at-large DNC member from Story City.

SARAH SWISHER, Iowa City nurse, labor union leader and member of the DNC as state Democratic Party vice chairwoman. Endorsed Edwards, but has backed Clinton since Edwards left the race.

SUPPORTING BARACK OBAMA

CHET CULVER, Iowa governor, endorsed Obama on Thursday.

MIKE FITZGERALD, Iowa treasurer and member of the DNC as member of National Association of State Democratic Treasurers’ executive committee.

DAVID LOEBSACK, U.S. House member from Mount Vernon.

UNCOMMITTED

SCOTT BRENNAN, Des Moines lawyer and member of the DNC as Iowa Democratic Party chairman.

BRUCE BRALEY, U.S. House member from Waterloo. Endorsed John Edwards in December, but is uncommitted since Edwards’ departure from the race.

TOM HARKIN, U.S. senator

RICHARD MACHACEK, Winthrop farmer and at-large DNC member. Was a longtime Edwards supporter, but now is uncommitted.

It was news to me that Swisher had committed to Clinton, although I’m not surprised, since Clinton has a better health care plan than Obama. I wonder if the other former Edwards supporters will be influenced by a possible Edwards endorsement, or if they will wait and see.

If you want to know what other states’ superdelegates are doing, keep an eye on the “Superdelegate transparency project”, which Chris Bowers announced yesterday at OpenLeft:

We are compiling the district-by-district results of the popular vote and pledged delegates, and then tracking these results against how superdelegates are currently pledged (or have publicly endorsed a candidate), and how they eventually vote. The aim of this project is to open up the Democratic nomination process, and to gauge what effect the superdelegates have on the nomination.

Bowers has a secondary goal, which is to persuade superdelegates to back the candidate who wins the pledged delegates and the overall popular vote:

Until a single leader in the popular vote and pledged delegate count emerges at the end of the primary and caucus season, superdelegates should not make a firm commitment to vote for any candidate at the convention other than the popular choice of their constituents. Endorsements can be made, but in order to uphold the principles of democracy within the Democratic Party, there should be no firm commitments from any given superdelegate to vote for anyone at the convention other than the candidate chosen by the constituents of that superdelegate.

[…]my democratic standard for super delegates is that if one candidate wins pledged delegates and popular votes according to all counts, then all super delegates should vote for that candidate. However, since we won’t know if a candidate achieves that standard until the end of the primary / caucus season, and since it is possible no candidate will ever achieve that standard, then in the interim all super delegates should pledge to vote their districts.

Will Iowa’s superdelegates go with the winner of all pledged delegates and the overall popular vote, even if that candidate is not their first choice? The Des Moines Register article includes the following quotes:

“If it’s as close as it stands today, I would still be casting my vote for Hillary,” said Sandy Opstvedt, a labor union leader and superdelegate from Story City.

Sounds like Opstvedt is leaving the door open to switching to Obama, if he becomes the clear leader in pledged delegates.

Governor Chet Culver, who endorsed Obama last week, cited Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses as a factor in his decision:

“I do think it matters too that Iowans have spoken loudly and clearly,” Culver said in a Des Moines Register interview Friday. “And because of that, in part, I felt compelled to also stand with him.”

“I’d love it if every superdelegate supported Barack Obama,” Culver also said, adding that he had begun making calls to the others.

Does that mean that Culver would not switch, even if Clinton finished the primaries with more popular votes and more pledged delegates than Obama?

Meanwhile, Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal

declined to comment on whether he would consider changing his support if Obama gathered more delegates than Clinton as the result of the upcoming nominating contests.

Gronstal said he can justify supporting Clinton in part because she got the most support, 43 percent, in Pottawattamie County on caucus night.

“Representing my constituents, I can make the case that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Gronstal said.

Representative Leonard Boswell (IA-03) seems more committed to sticking with Clinton unless she gives her superdelegate supporters the green light to switch to Obama. Speaking to the Register, Boswell

said the superdelegate system was not intended to reflect voter sentiment.

“It’s always important to respond to the voters, but I don’t think it was designed that way,” Boswell said.

He said he planned to support Clinton at the national convention, and would only consider a change after consulting her.

Expect Boswell to take a lot of heat for this position if Obama racks up a big lead in the pledged delegates later this spring. The Des Moines Register published this letter to the editor on Wednesday, written by a constituent in Des Moines:

Leonard Boswell’s pledge to cast his superdelegate vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton at the National Democratic Convention troubles me. Barack Obama won Boswell’s 3rd District by a large enough margin to win one more delegate than Clinton, who came in third in that district.

Yet Boswell’s vote, which he has only because he is our representative, will negate that margin of victory, rendering the votes of tens of thousands of us meaningless. That’s just not right. Maybe all of us whose votes Boswell will negate should return the favor by supporting his opponent, Ed Fallon, in the upcoming Democratic primary.

For the record, I agree with Bowers. Superdelegates should not be willing to hand the nomination to one candidate if the other candidate leads both the pledged delegate count and the overall popular vote. That would be disastrous for our party.

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Edwards endorsement prediction thread

John Edwards met with Hillary Clinton late last week, and he was scheduled to meet with Barack Obama today, but the meeting was postponed.

If I were advising Edwards, I honestly don't know what I would tell him. I see the logic of not endorsing, endorsing Obama, or endorsing Clinton.

If he's going to endorse, I would think it would have to come before the big primaries on March 4.

What do you think he will do? Take the poll and explain your choice in the comments, if you like.

A sad day for Edwards supporters

Just last week I wrote a front-page post for MyDD called Ten arguments for sticking with John Edwards. I was getting ready to post the revised version on Daily Kos today or tomorrow, when I saw the news this morning that Edwards had decided to leave the race.

I was hoping Edwards would stay in to keep his message out there. I hope that he decided to quit for political reasons, or because he ran out of money, rather than because of a change in Elizabeth’s condition.

I feel lucky to have caucused for Edwards already. I have no idea how I would vote now. For most of the past year I strongly preferred Obama to Clinton, but in the past few months I’ve grown disenchanted with Obama’s campaign and skeptical about his ability to win. Maybe I would write in Edwards or Al Gore rather than vote for either of the candidates left in the race–I don’t know.

As for how this affects the race, I also have no idea. In some states, Clinton clearly benefits, while in others, Obama may benefit. My own siblings who supported Edwards are split, with my brothers breaking for Obama and my sister strongly leaning to Clinton.

Since most Bleeding Heartland readers seem to be Obama supporters, I recommend this diary by the wonderful JedReport called Some tips for Obama supporters, from an Edwards partisan.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the text and video of Edwards’ farewell address:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Make News, Make History

Make the Media listen to the “Voice of the People”

The people of this Country are speaking up

for the Candidate that the Media “loves to ignore”

John Edwards !

And how are they speaking up?

In the one language the corporate Media understands

MONEY!

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Looking at the Iowa Caucus results

There has been a flurry of blog posts and news stories talking about the entrance polling and the results of the caucuses.  The basics we know include things like record turnout and a surge in the number of youth showing up to the Democratic caucuses, as well as ‘no party’ folks changing their registration to Democrat.

I don’t have the capacity nor the will power to significantly examine all of the results county by county, candidate by candidate.  But I can direct you towards some very interesting information.

First of all, if you’d like some detailed results and would like to see some maps, feel free to check out CaucusResults.com which has the detailed information about the results courtesy of the Iowa Democratic Party.  If you provided some information to the party prior to caucus night by visiting IowaCaucusResults.com then you should’ve received an email notification with a password so you could log in.  If you didn’t and would like to be able to see the information, feel free to email me and I can get you logged in.

Secondly, one of the big things that we’ve seen talked about is the amount of youth turnout for the caucuses.  Whether you call youth 17-24 year olds or 17-29 year olds it seems pretty clear that folks my age showed up and participated.  Iowa Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) put out a release talking about the numbers (which can be found here) and it clearly shows how the youth support was another cushion of support for Barack Obama.  The Register examined the same thing here, while also noting the evangelical Christian support that helped Huckabee.  The Register also provides a county map that shows which candidate won which county, including counties that are “ties” (at least according to percentage totals).  The breakdown follows like this:

  • Barack Obama: 41 counties
  • John Edwards: 29 counties
  • Hillary Clinton: 25 counties
  • Ties: 4 counties

Looking specifically at the four counties where there were ties, they were ties because the number of delegates for first place were evenly divided.  Three were tied for Clinton and Edwards; one was split for Clinton and Obama.

Finally, and I think this is one of most fascinating posts and discussion about the caucus results, go over to the Daily Yonder and read their post about how Democratic and Republican candidates did in rural Iowa.  Edwards’ strategy focused heavily on rural Iowa, and while it paid off for him a bit, it wasn’t the deciding fact simply because of the turnout Barack Obama was able to bring about in both urban and rural Iowa.  Fascinating piece of information alert:

“Both Edwards and Clinton won more votes in rural Iowa than in urban Iowa.”

I’ll leave that little bit of information to you guys to figure out what it means in the grand scheme of things in this presidential race.  Any other interesting demographics or information you think we should talk about?

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Surge in Edwards' online fundraising

UPDATE (3:40 PM): I just got a fundraising email from Joe Trippi on behalf of the Edwards campaign.  Seems like they’re going to keep piling on the money today. -Chris

I’m not one big on making releases front-page material here on BH, but I’ll try to condense this release from the Edwards Campaign to something we can talk about, with the full release available here:

“We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the response to Sen. Edwards’ strong finish in Iowa,” said Edwards’ senior strategist Joe Trippi. “We’re on track for our best online fundraising day ever, since www.JohnEdwards.com went up a year ago – and half of the contributions we’re seeing are from new donors to the campaign. That speaks volumes to the strength of John Edwards’ message of standing up and fighting for the middle class.”

The campaign first saw an uptick in online fundraising late last night, as the results from Iowa’s first-in-the-nation contest began rolling in. The surge continued overnight, and by 8:45am ET this morning the campaign’s online contributions had already topped the previous day’s day-long total. Between the hours of 10:00am and 11:00am ET today, the campaign experienced its best online fundraising hour ever.”

I’m not sure what this means in the grand scheme of online fundraising for the top-tier Democrats, or even the Edwards campaign itself since there aren’t really specific numbers and totals.  However, I think it will be really interesting to see what Obama and Clinton are seeing in terms of their own online fundraising and I hope they put out some information about those numbers soon.

A couple other quick facts from the Edwards campaign:

  • Half of those who have contributed are first-time donors to the campaign
  • More than ninety percent (92.6%) of today’s online contributions are for amounts less than $100

Those are some pretty impressive figures.  Let me know if you hear of any more numbers or interesting stories.

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Richardson throwing support to Obama?

Various media and blogs are reporting that Richardson's campaign is instructing precinct captains to advise supporters to go to Obama if Richardson is not viable.

So far no official confirmation from the Richardson campaign.

I find it hard to belive that most Richardson supporters will go to Obama, but who knows? I'll ask the captain in my precinct later today.

Anyone else have information on this?

A respectful question for John Edwards...

As an Edwards fan of sorts (he's my second choice), I wouldn't be crushed if he won the caucus.  I'm not trolling here by any means, or looking for a fight, but I pose this as a serious question in search of an answer to our party's potential nominee.

I'm sure this question has been answered before, but maybe some Edwards supporters can clarify this for me here. 

How will it possible for him to: 1) Beat Hillary (or Obama) in other states with only $17 mil to spend until the convention, and 2) defend himself with negligable funds after the primary season is over from attacks? 

I only ask this, because I really wish that Edwards had foregone federal matching funds and just opened up his deep wallet, sold his house, etc., for this campaign.  Perhaps with his recent fundraising prowess, he could have remained competetive with Obama or Hillary through fundraising rather than relying on public funds.

Maybe "Greed is NOT Good" ... ?

The mantra of the 80's and 90's was “Greed is Good!”

The mantra of the 00's seems to be “The World runs on Greed and Fear — Get used to it!”

Well, here's some “Fun Facts” (about this never-ending  Pursuit of “Wealth for Wealth's sake”)

1. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries.

2. The Top 200 corporations' sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity.

3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10 [countries].

[ and those Fun Facts are from 2000! Just image where we are now after 8 years of the Bush Giveaways …]

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=377#key
—-

That's what “Business as Usual” really means.

The real problem with “Corporate Greed” … is they just “keep moving that darn Finish Line”  ….

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Edwards Evening News Roundup: Happy News Year Edition!

 

The sprint to the end had begun! We all know that Edwards is workaholic. He’s worked very hard for this nomination. He came prepared with plans, ideas, goals and ATTITUDE. This dude knows how to fight. He has been outspent by millions and millions of dollars by two celebrity candidates and he’s STILL in the race. That goes to a testament of how strong his message is and how much people are to take their country back. AGGRESSIVELY. He didn’t come to the table as entrenched insider and he brought a lot more than something and flighty and wishy-washy than hope. He came prepped with the plans and the fight to actually give REAL hope to millions of Americans.

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I want John Edwards to take our case to the American people

cross-posted at Daily Kos

In December 2003, as John Edwards yard signs were sprouting like weeds around Des Moines, I knew Edwards was coming on strong when I spoke to a friend who had described himself and his wife as firm Howard Dean supporters in the spring. Not only were he and his wife now backing Edwards, he had signed up to be a precinct captain.

I was surprised, because he had indicated that the war was his number one issue, and I wanted to know why he was willing to overlook Edwards’ vote on the AUMF.

I can’t remember his exact words, but they went something like this: I want Edwards to make the case against George Bush with the American people as the jury.

In other diaries, I have explained how I came to support Edwards for president, and have written about various policies he is proposing.

Today I want to focus on Edwards’ skills as an advocate. I think he’s the best in our field to make the case for Democrats and for the progressive change we need.

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Edwards Evening News RoundUp: the Big Mo Edition

Greetings and Salutations, to Edwards supporters far and wide.

This Edition is dedicated to that exciting phenomenon called Momentum! The Big Mo.  

All Candidates want it. Lately though it seems the fight and the message of John Edwards has captured it. So take a quick tour of all the hopeful signs that since the People are finally tuning in, that more and more People are connecting to what John Edwards is saying …

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Edwards Evening News RoundUp: the Something Happened Edition

I've noticed a lot of grumblings around “the Internets” lately, about all these “partisan” Candidate Diaries — hogging the limited real estate of the Recommended List.

Out of respect to that Audience, those who have had their fill of Candidate News,

Here's the Executive Summary:

“Stuff happened in the Edwards Campaign.”

And for the Edwards supporters, out there in audience, those who may be expecting a “little more detail” about your Candidate, continue reading please … well because “Something IS happening in the Edwards Campaign …”

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Three early contests, three winners?

As Bill Nye the Science Guy used to say, consider the following:

How would it affect the national race for the nomination were we to have three different winners in the big three early contests?

Consider the following scenario. In the Iowa caucus, John Edwards wins a squeaker of a contest, coming in first over Clinton and Obama–who pull down second and third respectively. The win is a major boost to the Edwards campaign, which gets a boon of positive press coverage and a donor rush. While seen as somewhat of a loss for the Clinton campaign, the press deems Obama the biggest loser of the night for his lackluster third place finish.

Iowa: Edwards

Going into New Hampshire, Edwards sees a small bump of supporters, a large amount of who are Obama defectors and fence sitters. It's not enough to put Edwards up over Obama, but it's enough to give the lead solidly to Clinton. On primary night, it's Clinton who wins a close contest, with Obama second and Edwards a very close third. 

New Hampshire: Clinton

Post New Hampshire, Clinton wins contests in Nevada and Michigan–but neither is the convincing victory the campaign needs and both are largely ignored by the media.

The media and the campaigns place a huge emphasis on South Carolina, looking to crown a winner before Super Tuesday. Obama has spent most of his time post-New Hampshire campaigning in South Carolina, including a few high profile events with Oprah. Edwards has also drawn on resources in his home state of North Carolina and spent a lot of time in the state, while Hillary has been in Nevada. When all is said and done, Obama wins a decisive victory, with Edwards coming in second and Clinton a close third.

South Carolina: Obama

Thus going into Florida and Super Tuesday it's a three way race. Clinton may have the lead on delegates, but that could all change. Not only have the big three early contests all gone to different candidates…but each has come in first once, second once, and last once. 

Nomination: ???

Do you think such a scenario is possible? How would it affect the national race to have the big three early contests (Iowa, NH and SC) go to three different candidates? By having three viable, energized candidates going into Super Tuesday could the stage be set for a convention fight the likes of which we haven't seen for decades? What do you think?

Please bear in mind that this is just a imaginary scenario, not a prediction.

Free Trade vs Smart Trade, Edwards takes on the Supply-Siders

Since the days of Reagan, America has been chasing a Theory.

Since the Clinton era, and the rise of NAFTA and Global Free Trade, our “Corporate Leaders” have been conducting an unprecedented Social Experiment.

The Experiment: Economic Darwinism

The Test Subjects in this Experiment: none other than American Workers and our “more competitive” counterparts, overseas.

Supply-siders have argued that Economic Growth comes from empowering Corporate Interests to become “More Productive”, by whatever means necessary. Be it “Tax-Give-aways to the Wealthy”, or “Job-Give-aways to Poor Foreigners”, well that's just fine with them, long is it results in Corporate Growth.

Supply-siders are happy to trade away American Dignity for the sake of short-term Profits: “American Workers just need some retraining. They just need to apply themselves.”

We just need to learn to Adapt”(to Global Markets?)

That's the Theory, that's the Spin.  What are the Results of this on-going plan to outsource the American Dream?

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Where the Iowa field offices are (final version)

cross-posted at Daily Kos and MyDD

A few weeks ago I wrote a diary on where the Democratic presidential candidates have field offices in Iowa.

My purpose was to document the information so that after January 3, we can see whether campaigns with the most field offices did better in the counties where rivals had field organizers and volunteers working without the visibility of an office.

I am publishing a new version of this diary because several campaigns have added more field offices this month. Also, someone at the Iowa Democratic Party informed me of slight adjustments to the number of state delegates awarded by a handful of counties.

More information than you probably wanted to know is after the jump.

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Mandates are Political Suicide in '08? That's why Obama's health plan is better

Why are mandates for health insurance coverage such a big issue at this point in the campaign? It's the biggest difference in health policy between the top 3 candidates.

Yet despite these differences, most experts agree that the plans are similar in their most striking elements. Both Clinton and Obama advocate creating a new federal group insurance program. Anyone happy with their current health insurance could keep it. Otherwise, they could join the national insurance pool, which, the candidates like to point out, offers the same benefits that members of Congress enjoy. Edwards has a similar national public insurance plan, but would also create regional pools of private insurance companies, increasing the number of choices available.

Seddon Savage, president of the New Hampshire Medical Society, noted that all three plans believe health care should be part of the “social contract of society.” All three emphasize cost controls and cost savings, and focus on disease prevention.

“The details of the programs have some minor and some significant differences, but what all the plans are trying to do is set a direction, set basic principles,” she said. “I suspect if any one of these candidates is elected, we'll have a commitment to addressing these issues. We'll have a national dialogue, and details may change.”

John Thyng, campaign director for the advocacy group New Hampshire for Health Care, said with the exception of the mandate, the three plans are virtually the same.

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID…

 

Robert Reich and others state that mandates will not ensure universal coverage, that at least 15% will still be uninsured becasue they cannot afford it.

in my view Obama’s would insure more people, not fewer, than HRC’s. That’s because Obama’s puts more money up front and contains sufficient subsidies to insure everyone who’s likely to need help – including all children and young adults up to 25 years old. Hers requires that everyone insure themselves.

Yet we know from experience with mandated auto insurance – and we’re learning from what’s happening in Massachusetts where health insurance is now being mandated – that mandates still leave out a lot of people at the lower end who can’t afford to insure themselves even when they’re required to do so.

HRC doesn’t indicate how she’d enforce her mandate, and I can’t find enough money in HRC’s plan to help all those who won’t be able to afford to buy it.

I’m also impressed by the up-front investments in information technology in O’s plan, and the reinsurance mechanism for coping with the costs of catastrophic illness. HRC is far less specific on both counts. In short: They’re both advances, but O’s is the better of the two. HRC has no grounds for alleging that O’s would leave out 15 million people.”

So all three will leave millions uninsured.

The big difference is mandates and polls are showing Clinton's and Edwards' mandates to be political suicide. The Republicans will use mandates like a club and could even defeat the Democrat with that as one of their top issues. Why give them that club?

One aspect of the healthcare debate that has divided Democratic candidates is whether individuals should be required to purchase coverage – Clinton and Edwards favor a mandate, while Obama does not. A slight majority of Democratic voters who were polled – including pluralities of Clinton and Edwards supporters – opposed such a requirement.

Opposition to the notion of an individual health insurance mandate — “should individuals be required to buy health insurance” — is greatest among the less well-educated and downscale voters that are the core of Clinton's base in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2007/1…

 

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Edwards Evening News RoundUp: Why I'm with Edwards Edition

(1) Here is an interesting Edwards Headline, from the Wall Street Journal:

WSJ

Iowa Farmers Union Embraces Edwards

Dec 21, 2007

John Edwards will get a welcome endorsement this evening from the Iowa Farmers Union, the state’s biggest advocacy group for family farmers and rural communities.

[Note: other Sources have Reported that it's only the President of this Farmers Union, and NOT the Union itself that is Endorsing Edwards — WSJ needs to hire back its Fact-Checkers, it seems.]

And the WHY behind the Endorsement?

“All the Democrats have good things about them,” Peterson said in an interview, but “Edwards cleaned house in rural areas in 2003” because “he’s against corporate farms and for localized economies.”

Here's a few more reasons from this “influential Iowa agriculture leader”, Chris Petersen:

Chris Petersen, who is currently the president of the Iowa Farmers Union, endorsed the former North Carolina senator at a Friday rally in Nevada.

Petersen said he picked Edwards because of his strong views on the enforcement of anti-trust laws and competition in the livestock industry.

A vocal critic of the agribusiness conglomerates that have rapidly changed the face of agriculture in the Midwest, Petersen said “it’s time we got some political courage and leadership” to solve those problems.

(2) Here is an interesting Edwards Headline:

Edwards Unveils Stimulus Plan To Strengthen Economy And Create New Jobs

Dec 22, 2007

On final day of the “Fighting for America's Voice” tour, Edwards urges Congress to pass $25 billion job creation plan

Lisbon, Iowa – On the final day of his “Fighting for America's Voice” tour, Senator John Edwards proposed an economic stimulus package to strengthen our economy and create new jobs. Edwards urged Congress to act immediately to pass at least a $25 billion jobs plan in early 2008 and be ready to pass $75 billion more if there is more evidence that we are entering a recession. Edwards believes that every American should have access to a good job and the chance to build a better life. …

the specifics

Yet again John Edwards is Leading with very specific comprehensive plans, to deal with REAL Problems faced by REAL Americans! One of those REAL Americans was there to speak up for Edwards' Plan today:

About Doug Bishop:

Today, Edwards will be joined on the tour by Doug Bishop who, in September 2004, was among the first wave of employees to be laid off at the Maytag plant in Newton, Iowa. … Edwards is running for president to make sure the voices of hard-working Americans like Doug get heard in Washington.

And the WHY behind the Endorsement?

John Edwards – Introduction by Doug Bishop – Newton, Iowa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stncVK7ANew
—-

Doug Bishop:

The American Dream is being taken away slowly, and surely, by some powerful people, who have No Respect for the American Workers in this country.

People like my grandfather, and hundreds before him, and hundreds after him, they didn't strive to be rich. They didn't strive to work their way through the Company and become the CEO …  at Maytag he was chasing the American Dream, and he was allowed to finish that out. … As of yesterday, I had several relatives and neighbors who had that Dream taken away from them.

It's happening all across this Country. We have tried, and tried, tried to get these unabated Trade Agreements — which are robbing Americans of their Livelihoods — stopped!

and most importantly, and this is something I'll never forget, he grabbed my 7 year old son by the hand, he dropped to one knee, and he looked him straight in the eye, and he said: 'I'm gonna keep fighting for your Daddy's Job, I promise you that.'  

Two years later, a man of his word — you know that stuff sticks with you —  
… with no media, no press, no big event, it was just one man being a good person. Two years later he sets up a meeting at the Maytag Plant after they announced the closing. …
He wanted to sit down with the People who were effected, in that Plant, that day. 'What are you going to do with your lives? What can I do to help? Where do we go from here?'

That's the kind of things we need in a Leader in this Country!

… I want a guy who's gonna sit down, and look a 7 year old kid in the eye, and tell him, 'I'm gonna fight for your Dad's Job'.  That's what I want!”

{applause} …

You know, fighting for the dignity of the American Worker, and their families, is at the very core of what it means to be an American. Or at least it used to be …

Franklin D. Roosevelt called for Four Freedoms …

They were the basis of FDR's vision of Economic Fairness. Unfortunately, not all of these Freedom were fully incorporated in the New Deal legislation, that pulled the Country out of the Great Depression in the 1930's

Here are those 4 Principles:

FDR's Four Freedoms:

   1. Freedom of speech and expression
   2. Freedom of every person to worship in his own way
   3. Freedom from want
   4. Freedom from fear

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
—-

A network of bloggers are carrying on with FDR's Vision today. And guess who they just Endorsed for their Candidate for President?

(3) Here is an interesting Edwards Headline:

Four Freedoms Announces Endorsement of John Edwards

12/21/2007

And the WHY behind the Endorsement?

WALTHAM, MA – December 20, 2007 – The influential non-partisan discussion board and blog ‘Four Freedoms’ (http://www.fourfreedomsblog.com/) announces its endorsement of John Edwards in the Democratic Primary.

Senator Edwards has been a longtime supporter of the downtrodden, from his early days as a litigator to his Senate track record. John Edwards dwells not on the past, but on the hope for the future, and is the only candidate that truly understands what is important to average Americans.

The founders of Four Freedoms urge all true Americans and Patriots to vote for Senator Edwards, and calls upon citizens to cross party lines if necessary in order to advance Senator Edward’s campaign and restore hope, decency, and civility to the American Political Process, something that has been lacking for quite some time. Senator Edwards may not have all the answers, but he is our best hope for true change and progress towards what all Americas believe in…that is, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now that's truly a New Deal Endorsement! That is quite the statement about exactly WHO is ready to Fight for US.

(4) Here is an interesting Edwards Headline:

Des Moines Register

Surgery gives man a chance to speak his mind

Dec 22, 2007

If you've been to a recent Edwards event in Iowa or watched television, odds are good you already know Lowe's story. He was born dirt-poor in Kentucky with a cleft palate. He moved to a mill town in the Appalachian Mountains and worked in coal mines for decades before an injury broke his back and put him on disability.

Lowe never had surgery to fix that cleft palate because he could not afford health insurance.

And for the first 50 years of his life, Lowe could hardly speak. He was an incomprehensible mumbler until about a year ago when a doctor donated cleft-palate surgery and, literally, gave Lowe a voice.

Now, Lowe has become a metaphor for the stated goal of Edwards' campaign: to give a voice to the voiceless.

I had an emotional reaction listening to his story,” Edwards said Friday in an interview. “I had a sense of outrage that somebody had lived for 50 years in America not able to speak because they had no health care. How could my country let people like James down like that?”

And the WHY behind the Endorsement?

Edwards invited Lowe to the microphone, hugged him, and then Lowe spoke for about 45 seconds.

He cares about people like me and you all,” Lowe said in his Southern accent that's tinged with a speech impediment.

Then he pointed at Edwards and said, “This man is number one man for president.”

Best of all, Lowe said, he has the guts to stand up in front of hundreds of people – and he's got the voice so he can say something.

That is how the flame of Outrage is lit:  

[John Edwards meets James Lowe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7rcRA1YQZ0
—-

And well, for some people, that flame never does go out, until Justice has been done … and until, what was wrong, is set right again.

(5) Here is a heart-wrenching Edwards Headline:

TPM

Edwards Mailer In Iowa Touts His Trial Lawyer Representation Of Injured Girl

By Greg Sargent – Dec 21, 2007

“John Edwards gave our Family hope … And then he walked into that courtroom and gave that irresponsible company hell.”

And the WHY behind the Endorsement?

Sandy Lakey Introduces John Edwards, West Des Moines, Iowa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyrWX9g9-VQ
—-

Sandy Lakey:

“I know John because, he saved our daughters life

[the unthinkable happens to their family]

… so we began talking to attorneys, which was a new experience for us. I was in such a haze of grief, shock, and exhaustion, that little of what anyone said penetrated my fog. The only words I wanted to hear were: 'I can help Valerie'.

And then we met John Edwards. When he held my hands and looked in my eyes, I saw the compassion, honesty, and integrity that is John Edwards. When he said the magic words I wanted to hear, I knew in my heart, that THIS Man would Fight as hard for Valerie, as if she were his OWN Daughter.

Because of John, I began to feel Hope.

We quickly realized John Edwards wasn't just Valerie's attorney — He was her Champion.

John Edwards took on the irresponsible manufacturer of the defective product that had caused Valerie's injury. And we learned she wasn't the FIRST Child to be maimed, or even killed by this Companies absolute indifference!

Even worse the company knew their product was defective, but hid the truth. John exposed their negligence, and Won Justice for Valerie.

John Edwards gave us hope in our darkest hours. He ensured that Valerie's Medical Expenses would be taken care of for the rest of her life. And he helped change the ways companies do business, to make swimming pools safer for children.

Recently she told me, that she occasionally feels happy. That's not something I thought I'd ever hear her say because her life hasn't been easy. She's suffered through horrors, that NO ONE should have to deal with, especially a child. She lives with pain everyday, and probably will for the rest of her life. But she's strong, and with the help of people like John Edwards, she HAS survived.

She is here with me today to show her support, and love, for John Edwards. We believe that John has the intelligence, the determination, will power, integrity, and above all, the heart, to be a great leader to all of us in the United States.

We are honored to know him, and feel privileged to be here today. He talks about the heroes that he has met in his life, and during his campaign travels. But to us, He is the Hero!  Thank you John.”

{applause}

WOW! That's what it means, to fight for the “little guy”. That's the same way John Edwards will fight for US, if we have the “same determination”, to help send him to the White House. If we do, Edwards will give Voice again, to us — the forgotten American People!

(6) Here is an interesting Edwards Headline:

seacoastonline.com

Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne stump for Edwards

By Elizabeth Dinan

Dec 20, 2007

PORTSMOUTH — Wooing 700 voters at the Frank Jones Center on Wednesday, presidential candidate John Edwards pitched his plans for health care, warfare and education with a live rock 'n' roll sound track, a whiff of Hollywood and an endorsement from a local nuclear submarine welder.

Wrapping their endorsements for Edwards around a four-song set, Grammy-winning musicians Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne were introduced by actor Peter Coyote.

And the WHY's behind the new ground swell of New Hampshire Excitement?

I Am A Patriot with backing by Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQCiTIevzdU
—-

Here is what a few of those New Hampshire citizens have to say about WHY they are NOW supporting John Edwards:

Citizen one:

“Seeing John Edwards speak tonite, and you know just listening to him answer the questions — and feeling the Energy in the Audience, in the crowd, he definitely has my Vote”

Citizen two:

I love how straightforward he is, but I think also, how brave he is.”

Citizen three:

“He's talking, he's talking … fighting … the big corporations — Nobody else is saying that.”

Citizen four:

“I do feel like there is a lot of momentum going on, and I think that, John is going to take it over the top. And I think that he's gonna win this Election.”

Hey, for you other New Hampshire citizens who have finally found your Candidate in Edwards, you too, can get involved to “help win this thing.” Here's how:

http://johnedwards.com/nh/volunteer/signup
—-

For more voices from New Hampshire, their stories start here:

http://johnedwards.com/nh/
—-

(7) Here is a different Edwards Headline (with the Media Reporting on the Blogs — now that's a switch):

startribune.com

Minneapolis, MN

Blog House: Edwards remains a wild card as caucuses near


The most surprising development is that Edwards, who's been consistently third in most Iowa polls, seems to have a little heat behind him.

And the WHY behind those blogs which are buzzing about Edwards?

Marc Ambinder:

“On Monday, the Edwards campaign recorded more e-mail sign-ups than almost any day in its history,” Marc Ambinder (1) reported. “Over the weekend, the campaign was forced to add four new servers to handle all the Web traffic. Contributions are up online: Thursday and Friday, the two days after the debate, made for one of the highest 2-day totals they've seen in months.”

David Mizner:

In this race, Edwards could prove to be the tortoise and Clinton and Obama a pair of hares, according to David Mizner at MyDD (2). “It wasn't supposed to be this way, with Edwards still in the thick of the race. Clinton and Obama had planned to out-spend and out-celebrity him into oblivion. The best-laid plans.”

So that's it for tonite's Roundup. Thanks for taking a few moments to reflect on the type of Leader, you would like to see running this country. I hope these “behind the news” snapshots, help give you some insight into the character, passion, and determination, that an Edwards Presidency would bring to Washington DC.

Most of these people Speaking out above, have given you a window into some of their reasons to “Why I'm with Edwards?”

SO, “WHY am I, with Edwards?”

Simply stated, out of all the Candidates running, John Edwards speaks out the most passionately, and clearly, and bravely, on nearly all of the Issues, that matter to me and my family!

And on top of that, in nearly every case, Edwards was the first one to take a bold stand, with thoughtful and detailed plans to the many problems this Country faces. “Fixing America” and “Restoring the American Dream”, for ordinary hard-working Americans, is more than just talk with John Edwardsit's the cause of his life!

Such a Fighter, for real Progressive Democratic Values, will get MY Vote, every time!

Please, Edwards supporters, take a few moments, to add a comment or two about, if you can, about “WHY you're with Edwards, too?”

(I'm sure there are still some undecideds out there, lurking, who would probably like to know.  Thanks.)

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Some story ideas for campaign correspondents

CBS reporter Chip Reid is “embedded” with John Edwards’ campaign and posted this on the CBS blog:

I’m a bit unhappy with John Edwards. I’ve been covering his campaign for 10 days and he hasn’t made a lot of news. Let’s face it – a lot of what political reporters report on is mistakes. The campaign trail is one long minefield, covered with Iowa cow pies, and when they step in one – we leap.

I’ve done very little leaping – and I blame Edwards. While other candidates misspeak, over-speak, and double-speak, Edwards (at least in these 10 days) has made so few mistakes that I end up being transported — newsless — from town to town like a sack of Iowa corn .

He has a remarkable ability to stay on message. Not just in “the speech,” but even in Q and A. Nothing throws him off. He turns nearly every question into another opportunity to repeat his central theme. Global warming? We need to fight big oil. Health care? Fight the big drug and insurance companies. Iowa farmers’ problems? Blame those monster farm conglomerates. And the Iowa populists eat it up. We’ll see how well it works in other states.

He’s even disciplined in his daily routine. While most reporters use the campaign trail as an excuse to over-eat and abandon their exercise routines, Edwards squeezes in a run EVERY DAY, rain, sleet, or shine.

Come on John – relax. Step in an Iowa cow pie and let me do my job.

Like my grandmother used to say, many a truth is told in a joke. Reid is half-joking, but the truth is that journalists would much prefer to cover a gaffe than report on a non-eventful day on the stump.

Here’s an idea: how about coming up with story ideas on your own, rather than waiting for the candidates to slip up?

Reid could tell us what the crowds are like at the Edwards events he covers. How many people are showing up? What’s the average age? More women or men? Are the people at these rallies mostly committed Edwards supporters, or are there significant numbers of undecided voters?

Alternatively, he could spend some time analyzing an issue Edwards brings up in his stump speech. How does that issue relate to the lives of Iowans in town X where Edwards is speaking? How does Edwards’ approach to that issue compare to what other candidates propose?

On any given day, Daily Kos users post numerous substantive diaries about the various presidential candidates. Some are about candidates’ stand on important issues, and some are about campaign strategy.

While Reid complains that Edwards isn’t giving him anything to write about, the Edwards Evening News Roundups are packed with information every day.

If these citizen journalists can come up with something interesting to write about, why is a CBS reporter sitting around waiting for a candidate to make a mistake?

“Gotcha” journalism does not serve voters well. Reporters following the campaigns need to figure out a better way to do their jobs.

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Bill Richardson: The Blank Check Congress on Iraq

We elected a Democratic Congress to stop the war, and it's not happening.  I regret very much that those senators running for president weren't even there to cast their vote, they were out campaigning.  We gave the president $70 billion more to continue this war without any restraint or timetable to reduce the troops – it's basically a blank check.

That's what Bill Richardson said yesterday in New Hampshire.

Will Clinton, Edwards or Obama promptly bring the U.S. occupation of Iraq to end?  None of them have made an iron clad promise to bring our troops home.  Instead, all want to keep their options open and refuse to pledge to bring home all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013. 

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Edwards Evening News RoundUp: Middle Class Rising

Edwards Evening News RoundUp: Middle Class Rising

The Edwards campaign is picking up steam, and a lot of people are noticing, even some of the Media.  That Poll yesterday showing Edwards in the Lead in Iowa at 30%, certainly helped to get people talking. The Chris Matthews Interview with Edwards in New Hampshire was certainly a breath of fresh air too.  

The race just got VERY interesting …

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Two diaries I recommend reading

If you visit Daily Kos, you know that it would practically be a full-time job to read all of the diaries and comments posted there.

As you can see from this post by “jotter,” who keeps track of the “high-impact” diaries at that community blog, there were 1,876 diaries posted on the site just during the week of December 8-14.

I can’t even keep up with all of the diaries about John Edwards at Daily Kos. Many days I rely on the “Edwards Evening News” crew, who summarize the stories of the day and link to many of the good diaries. (Here is a link to all the back issues of the Edwards Evening News Roundup.)

While it’s impossible for me to cite every diary worth reading, I want to call your attention to two from the past week that I found particularly moving. The year we stole a Christmas tree by “chuckles1” was the fourth most-recommended diary out of the 1,876 posted. It inspired “karateexplosions” to write The Timeline of My Decision, which became the highest-impact diary of the week, recommended by more than 750 Kossacks.

I encourage you to click the links and read those diaries. They are compelling first-person accounts of how quickly middle-class Americans can find themselves living in poverty.

Many of our presidential candidates talk about this fine line between a middle-class lifestyle and life below the poverty line. For instance, Hillary Clinton’s “trap door” ad deals with that kind of economic insecurity, and she used the trap door metaphor in the Des Moines Register-sponsored debate last week.

But ultimately, I feel John Edwards is the candidate best able to address the issues that contribute to this problem. Not only has he drafted a plan to end poverty within 30 years, a wide-ranging plan to address hunger and food insecurity and a Rural Recovery Act, his own parents occasionally had trouble making ends meet. Chuckles1 noted in a comment below his diary,

I’ve heard John Edwards talk about this before, that look on your fathers face when he realizes there isn’t enough money. The guilt, the pain.

AND, not having done anything wrong, having worked hard, tried to get ahead, just to be left behind.

I don’t mean to suggest that other candidates in our field feel less compassion for struggling families. But I think Edwards would invest more of the president’s political capital into dealing with poverty. Karateexplosions likes all of our candidates,

But my primary vote goes to Edwards and his message of hope.  I never wanted my children to have to see That Look.  But now that they have, I want to work for an American future that means my children’s children will never have to see That Look.

 

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Candidates split late endorsements in presidential race

As we’ve noted, Hillary Clinton received the endorsement of the Des Moines Register over the weekend, and Congressman Leonard Boswell backed her last week.

The Des Moines Register reported on Monday that Congressman Dave Loebsack will endorse Barack Obama:

http://www.desmoinesregister.c…


“We’re incredibly fortunate this year to have this field of candidates,” Loebsack said in a telephone interview. “There is one candidate who stands out and that’s why I’m backing Obama.

[…]

“I think we’ve got to have a leader who can bring all Americans together for a single purpose,” said Loebsack.

Congressman Bruce Braley recently endorsed John Edwards, and now he has been joined by Iowa’s first lady, Mari Culver:

http://www.desmoinesregister.c…

“I think John is a winner. He’s electable,” she said. “He’s been tested. He’s been on the national ticket before. The national polls show him beating all Republicans in the general elections. He inspires me. I think he inspires other Iowans, and I think he can really rally Americans in the fall.”

In that article, Mari Culver confirms that Governor Culver does not plan to endorse a candidate. Senator Tom Harkin has also said he doesn’t plan to endorse this time (his wife, Ruth Harkin, has campaigned for Hillary).

Anyone else know of any possible endorsements coming down the pike? How about the other major newspapers in Iowa?

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John Edwards: They aren't going to just give their power away

John Edwards:

This isn't about petty politics or good intentions.

Corporate greed and influence in Washington are stealing our children's future.

The moral test of our generation is whether we're going to allow this broken system to go on without a fight or take on corporate greed and stand up for the middle class and American jobs before it's too late.

They aren't going to just give their power away.

Saving the middle class is going to be an epic battle, and that's a fight I was born for.

http://johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20071215-fight-ad/
—-

John Edwards: the Fight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90kiOdnkw3Y
—-

So Who's Fighting who, and for What?

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Read the companion pieces to the Register endorsements

They are revealing.

Looking at this piece by the editorial page editor, Carol Hunter, you can see that even they feel a little guilty that they didn’t endorse Biden:

http://www.desmoinesregister.c…

Also, this piece on “rating the other candidates” has some fascinating passages:

http://www.desmoinesregister.c…

It’s clear that they almost went with Biden:

Even in our last major round of deliberations, we kept coming back to the question, “Why not Joe Biden?”

Many of the arguments we have made on behalf of the tested leadership of Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain apply to Biden as well. He knows how to get legislation passed. He, too, has deep foreign-policy expertise. We’re inspired by his fierce defense of civil liberties. His work on legislation to combat domestic violence has no doubt prevented injuries and saved lives. He might, indeed, make a good president.

But spending virtually his entire adult life in the Senate also makes his experience somewhat narrower than that of some other candidates. And in making sometimes slim distinctions in this talented bunch, we see his well-known loquaciousness as a weakness. It reflects a certain lack of discipline, and it’s gotten him into trouble on occasion with ill-considered remarks related to race. (We do, however, wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment expressed uniformly by his campaign rivals that his heart is in the right place.)

It’s also clear that they don’t disagree with Edwards on anything of substance:

We still believe he’s right about two Americas, the one for people who have everything they need and the one for people who struggle to get by. He’s right about the stagnation of middle-class wages. He’s right that the tax system and overall economic policy have become too tilted toward the affluent, making it virtually impossible for poor and middle-class families to get ahead.

He’s right that the baby-boomer generation risks breaking the “one moral commandment” of Americans: “To give our children a better future than we received.”

Edwards is most persuasive when he appeals to America’s goodness to do better by the vulnerable among us, as he did in last week’s Register Democratic debate:

“…Somewhere in America tonight, a child will go to bed hungry. Somewhere in America tonight, a family will have to go to the emergency room and beg for health care for a sick child. …Somewhere in America today, a father who’s worked for 30 or 40 years to support his family will lose his job. That’s what’s at stake in this election. What’s not at stake are any of us. All of us are going to be just fine, no matter what happens in this election. What’s at stake is whether America is going to be fine.”

Edwards has set the ambitious goal of eliminating poverty in a generation. He’s developed creative proposals to help families save and make college more affordable. (Other Democrats have outlined similar plans.) Edwards or whoever is the party’s standard-bearer should work to take those plans to the White House.

The question on Edwards is whether a self-described fighter for change, who wants to “cast aside the bankrupt ways of Washington,” can get results in Washington. For someone trying to reunite the two Americas, would he be too divisive a figure?

This part of their analysis on Barack Obama also tells you a lot about the people on the Register editorial board:

One board member described the case for Obama in the Clinton vs. Obama discussion as a bank shot versus a straight shot in pool. Success is less certain with a bank shot, but the gamble (in this case for a more cohesive, hopeful country) might be worth it.

Another veteran editorial writer described the choice as similar to picking Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a calculating but masterful politician at maneuvering needed legislation through Congress, versus John F. Kennedy, whose youthful vigor inspired the nation to take on new challenges. That’s not a bad choice.

This endorsement shows how risk-averse the Register editors are. They were worried about a few gaffes Biden has made (as if Clinton doesn’t have 10 times as much baggage). They didn’t want someone who would antagonize corporate interests like Edwards, even though they can’t point to anything he’s wrong about. And they think Obama would be too big of a gamble.

They also fondly remember FDR for his “calculating” skills at maneuvering legislation through Congress.

Although I don’t doubt FDR’s talents in this area, I think of him first and foremost as someone who had tremendous vision. He didn’t shy away from proposing huge changes to deal with the crises of the day, even if they were a gamble, and even if they risked upsetting the powerful corporate interests of his day.

Also, FDR was a very combative and partisan president. He did his best to pin every economic failure onto the Republican Party, and his presidency succeeded in realigning American voters for a generation.

That’s very different from the Register’s praise of Hillary’s legislative skills in reaching across the aisle.

Just wanted to bring this piece to your attention.

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I'm Caucusing for John Edwards

Cross-posted at Political Forecast.

Well, now that we’re less than three weeks out from the Iowa Precinct Caucuses, it is time for me to make a tough decision: Who am I going to caucus for?

After watching the debates, attending events, reading the profiles, and listening to my friends I decided that it was time to face the tough decision.  Our field of Democratic candidates is an amazing spectrum of leadership, experience, and real desire for change.  I would be proud to call any of these candidates our nominee.

Why did I hold off so long in making my decision?  There were numerous reasons, but the primary one was that I wanted to make sure I was going to remain unbiased for as long as possible in my coverage of the candidates and to maintain a level of openness on both Political Forecast and Bleeding Heartland.  But the time has truly come to pick a candidate.  And for me, the candidate of choice is John Edwards.

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QC Times: Obama leads, Clinton & Edwards tied for second

A new Research 2000 poll for the Quad-City Times shows Barack Obama with a 9-point lead over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.  Here are the overall results (500 likely caucus-goers with a margin of error of +/- 4.5%):

Barack Obama 33%

Hillary Clinton 24%

John Edwards 24%

Bill Richardson 9%

Joe Biden 3%

Chris Dodd 1%

Dennis Kucinich 1%

It is still clearly a three-person race, with the slight advantage to Obama.  To me, this is the key result from the poll:

“The poll also indicated an unsettled electorate, with 23 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans saying they were likely or very likely to change their minds before the caucuses. Only a third of Democrats, 33 percent, and just more than a quarter of Republicans, 27 percent, said they were not at all likely to change their minds. The rest, 44 percent on the Democratic side and 39 percent on the Republican side, said they are not very likely to change.”

The race is still quite fluid and second choices are definitely going to matter come caucus night when some candidate preference groups won’t be able to get viability.

You can get the full PDF of the results from Research 2000 here.  They’re usually a pretty reliable polling firm when it comes to general election or primary polling, but I don’t know where they’re at in terms of accuracy for polling the caucuses.

Does this mean Edwards can still win the Iowa caucuses?  I think so.  And Mike Lux at Open Left says we should keep our eyes on him.

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Who won the DMR Democratic debate?

I’m sitting in front of my TV trying to examine what the cable networks are saying about the debate.  The first network showing coverage was Fox News and their pundits were generally annoying and conservative; essentially, they weren’t worth their time.  But when they got to their focus group/panel of undecided caucus-goers done by Frank Luntz, they said that John Edwards won the debate.

I’m going to argue that John Edwards did indeed win the debate.  He articulated a coherent message that blamed corruption, greed, and entrenched interests for the problems America faces.  He also clearly told viewers that the only way to enact the policies and proposals that the candidates have promised is to elect a president that will unite America to stand up and fight back against these people.  His criticisms were constant, his answers honest, and his leadership potential was clear.  He told us how he is fighting for the middle class, and how he’s the candidate to truly enact change.

I’m always impressed with Obama’s rhetoric on the stump and during rallies, but I can’t seem to be impressed with his debating skills.  Maybe I’m just missing something.  And Hillary Clinton seemed like she was just there to give canned responses.  But I do have to admit they were honest and presidential sounding.  Joe Biden came to the debate with heart and passion, and even managed to keep his answers succinct.  Chris Dodd was presidential and brought the experience necessary to lead.  I was surprised how the speaking time was pretty equally divided, but amazed that Bill Richardson got the most time.  His answers and policies were good, but he seemed like he just had a list of issues and was rattling them off.

All in all, however, I’d be proud to have any of these candidates to be my presidential nominee.

In my mind, the debate was timid enough to declare any candidate a winner for the right reasons.  We want you to tell us who your winner was and why.

ActBlue/FEC Deadline is 11 AM (CST) Today

Today at 11 AM Central Time, any and all comments to the Federal Election Commission on their pending decision regarding presidential primary matching funds on contributions received through ActBlue are due.

Multiple organizations are vocally opposing this ban, as it effectively disregards ActBlue’s nature as a grassroots fundraising system and largely violates the meaning of matching funds through public funding.  As the netroots’ own Adam Bonin wrote in his letter to the FEC on behalf of DailyKos and BlogPAC:

Obviously, while ActBlue is a “political committee” in the strictest sense of the term, in reality it does not act as such.  ActBlue is a conduit for individual contributor preferences, to track and aggregate small-dollar contributors.  It asserts no control over the recipients of its funds; the site’s only criteria is that the recipient be a Democrat. It fulfills FECA’s anticorruption goals by reporting contributors’ names, addresses, employers, and occupations to campaign, which in turn provide that information to the Commission as is legally required.

This is a clear a case as any of reformers accomplishing via technology what law alone cannot do: leveling the playing field between moneyed interests and small-dollar contributors by allowing anyone to become a “bundler”, and to allow such contributors to have visual, real-time confirmation of their impact upon the process.  In the same way that the public financing system itself is designed to encourage and magnify the impact of small-dollar contributions, ActBlue facilitates those contributions occurring in the first place.

If you’re at all interested in supporting the Edwards campaign’s position–which isn’t a tacit endorsement, but an affirmation of your belief in grassroots fundraising–please make sure to submit your comments.  You can see more by reading desmoinesdem’s earlier post here.

You can do that in a variety of ways:

– Visit JohnEdwards.com and send a comment through our simple form.

– Write an E-mail to Mary Dove, the FEC Commission Secretary at mdove@fec.gov

– Fax your comments to the Secretary at (202) 208-3333 and to FEC’s Office of General Counsel at (202) 219-3923

Sign the letter from Public Campaign

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How John Edwards would help the middle class (part 2)

cross-posted at MyDD and Daily Kos

A while back I wrote a diary on how tax reforms proposed by John Edwards would help the middle class. I am returning to the topic of Edwards and the middle class because I still occasionally see bloggers claim that his campaign is mainly focused on issues affecting poor people.

As it happens, a direct-mail piece that arrived in Iowa Democrats’ mailboxes late last week focuses on “The Edwards Economic Plan to Strengthen the Middle-Class.” I’ve reproduced the text of this mailer after the jump and added some thoughts.

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Edwards campaign announces 10 new Iowa offices

The Edwards campaign announced today that they have opened 10 new field offices in Iowa in recent weeks. I have updated my diary on Where the Iowa field offices are accordingly.

As of today, 42 Iowa counties have at least one field office for a Democratic presidential candidate. The current tally of Iowa field offices is:

Barack Obama 37 (includes two in Des Moines)

Hillary Clinton 34 (includes two in Dubuque and two in Cedar Rapids)

John Edwards 25

Bill Richardson 16

Chris Dodd 13

Joe Biden 9 (with possibly two more to be added)

Click the link if you want more detailed information.

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Google Trends: Democratic Candidates

( - promoted by noneed4thneed)

Google Trends is a neat little tool created by Google to chart how popular a search term has been over a given length of time–in the standard search, it's a few years' time. The tool then links spikes in search volume to news stories that came out about the time of the spike in public interest in the term. It also tells the top three cities where people are looking for this term. I ran the full names of the top democratic candidates through this tool and I'll share the results with you in no particular order.

Check it out for yourself:  http://www.google.com/trends

“Hillary Clinton”:
Peaked: Jan 21, 2007
Story: Entered 2008 race
Trending: flat for most of 2007, up since August
Top Three Cities: Washington DC; New York, NY; Boston, MA

“Barack Obama”:
Peaked: July 27, 2004
Story: 2004 Convention Speech
Trending: flat for most of 2007, up sharply this last week
Top Three Cities: Chicago, IL; Washington DC; Austin, TX 

“John Edwards”: 
Peaked:  July 6,2004
Story: Picked as Kerry's running mate
Trending:  Flat
Top Three Cities: Raleigh, NC; Washington DC; Boston, MA

“Bill Richardson”: 
Peaked: Jan 21, 2007
Story: Entered 2008 race
Trending: Flat
Top Three Cities: Santa Fe, NM; Albuquerque, NM; Washington DC

“Joe Biden”:
Peaked: Jan 31, 2007
Story: Entered Race/made controversial comments
Trending: up sharply since August
Top Three Cities: Washington DC; Reston, VA; Philadelphia, PA

“Chris Dodd”:
Peaked: sometime in October 2007
Story: Unknown
Trending: up for the year, down since October's inexplicable peak
Top Three Cities: Meriden, CT; Hartford, CT; Des Moines, IA

For the record, can anyone explain why Dodd would have seen a spike in searches for his name around late October? 

Edwards Evening News RoundUp: Real Leaders take Stands

Our Country needs, Hope … yes very much so.

Our Country also needs Competence in SO many Government Positions of power … NO more 'Heck of Job — Brownies' PLEASE!

But the one thing America needs even more than Hope and Competence — it's Real Leadership!

What is Real Leadership made up of?

More Compromise and Committee meetings?  (I hope not)

Media Fanfare and soaring rhetoric?  (nice, but …)

How about Honesty, How about taking a real Stand?

How about talking straight with the American People, and detailing all the 'Hard Work' and 'Sacrifice' that Real Change will ultimately require?

That's what Real Leaders do.

They tell you the Truth, and speaking the Truth eventually leads to widespread Action, and the Changes we need.

Once again John Edwards, has NOT failed to Lead on the Issues, so important to everyday Americans …

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Edwards: the Lesson of Iraq and a New Strategy for Iran

Long before it was “popular”, John Edwards was calling for a New Strategy for Iran (and the War on Terror in general)

Long before the NIE Report, threw water on the GOP's fiery rhetoric about the looming dangers of Iran, Edwards was saying we must learn the lessons of the Iraq War — NOT Repeat them in Iran!

Long before the cynical Rumsfeld Memos were leaked (proving Edwards right), John Edwards was busy “reframing” the Global War on Terror, calling it “a 'bumper sticker' slogan Bush had used to justify everything …”

Did Edwards get Media Attention and fanfare for his insightful and stateman-like leadership — NO, but he DID help to change the national conversation!

So Much so, that insiders in NIE (National Intelligence Estimate), seem to have taken his advice that: “We've got to stand up to Bush and Cheney and the Neocons …”

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Where the Iowa field offices are

cross-posted at MyDD and Daily Kos

I decided to write this diary when I learned that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each have more than 30 field offices in Iowa.

After January 3, we will see whether campaigns with the most field offices did better in the counties where rivals had field organizers and volunteers working without the visibility of an office.

More information than you probably wanted to know is after the jump.

I have listed the counties in descending order, based on the number of state delegates they will assign on the Democratic side. I took the numbers from this post by Drew Miller, who calculated how many state delegates each Iowa county would contribute to the 2,500 total. [UPDATE: I corrected the delegate totals for a few counties after hearing from Drew Miller.]

I also give the 2004 caucus results for each county. Those numbers come from this table on the Des Moines Register’s website. The results reflect the percentage of county delegates assigned to the various presidential candidates (not the percentage of raw votes each one received in the county).  

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NPR debate open thread

I listened to most of the NPR debate this afternoon. Although I am usually more interested in hearing the candidates debate domestic policy, I thought it was good for NPR to go in depth on a few foreign-policy issues. The questions were solid and substantive, and the candidates had to go beyond their usual sound-bite answers on Iran, China and immigration policy.

It’s too bad Richardson couldn’t make it because of a funeral he was attending, because the format probably would have suited him. I have heard him answer questions on immigration, and he makes a strong case on that issue.

I thought Edwards, Obama, Clinton, Biden and Dodd all did pretty well.

If you listened to the debate, what did you think?

Mark Halperin’s post-debate scorecard is here:

http://thepage.time.com/excerp…

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The Edwards Tax Plan: Reward Work -- Not Wealth

The old saying goes:

“The only things Inevitable in Life, are Death and Taxes!”

These are both unpleasant subjects, and since political candidates can’t really do a lot about one, this diary will be exploring the other — Taxes.

John Edwards has based his campaign on hard hitting messages about the need for “Economic Parity” in our Country — this Diary will be taking a serious look at what Edwards will do about Taxes.

The Senator often says “I do not wanting to live in a Country made up of the Super-Rich and Everybody Else!”  

That’s not the America we all grew up in. Each year achieving the American Dream becomes more and more difficult. What are working people to do, in this society of Haves and Have-Nots?

Is John’s tough Campaign Rhetoric just Talk, or does he actually have the Plans to Back it up?

Turn the page, to see where the “Rhetoric meet Reality” when it comes to that annual April Ritual, most hard-working American love to hate — spelled I.R.S.

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Congressman Bruce Braley Endorses John Edwards

Today in Waterloo, Congressman Bruce Braley is to endorse John Edwards for President.

“Today, I’m proud to endorse John Edwards for president,” said Braley.

“Throughout this campaign, on issue after issue, John has proposed bold ideas to end the power of special interests in Washington and restore our government to the American people.  John is the only Democratic candidate who grew up in rural America, and he has most specific, most progressive and most far-reaching ideas.  I truly believe he is the best Democratic candidate to lead us to victory in 2008. With his leadership, I believe we can make his vision of One America a reality.”

Congressman Braley is the first of three Democratic Iowa Congressman to announce an endorsement for President. This key endorsement builds on the support Edwards continues to gain in the state. As href=”http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/12/2/221148/539″>Jonathan Singer suggests:


First off, this could be the big piece of news in the statewide media Tuesday, and perhaps more importantly it could prompt the national media to remember Edwards, who they have been perhaps too quick to forget given their focus on the scuffles between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. What’s more, a Braley endorsement could bring some of the organizational support and expertise that helped put Braley in Congress last fall. All in all, tomorrow should be a good day for the Edwards campaign.

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Edwards to the DNC: "There's a Wall around Washington"

John Edwards frames a powerful new argument to the describe our Broken System of Government, which we put up with in Washington DC.

If you haven’t seen it yet, it well worth a listen:

Part 1:



http://youtube.com/watch?v=B6_…

Part 2:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vB4…

Part 3:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Npx…

Great Imaginary, fiery rhetoric!

But what exactly is “this Wall around Washington” that Edwards says we must tear down?

Explore with me, a few ways in which the “Rhetoric Meets Reality”, after the fold, in a simple photo-essay:

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Edwards Evening News RoundUp: the Restoring America Edition

John Edwards is a busy person lately. Speeches, Interviews, Endorsements, Policy Statements, Presidential Forums — where does he find the energy!

Could it be he is driven to win? Could it be he knows America needs a Fighter in Washington who will speak for us the American People?

It is a Fight he’s been waging all his life, in court rooms, against Corporate interests, and Winning for average folks like us. Now John Edwards is primed and ready to take on those same Corporate Interests in Washington DC, and Fight for OUR Interests again — because “America Belongs to Us” the American People!

“America needs a president who will fight for the American people every day, not defend a broken system. America does not belong to corrupt Washington lobbyists or corporations – it belongs to us.

It’s time we took our Country back! It’s time to support John Edwards.

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