It seems that in a few hours John Edwards will drop out of the Democratic primary. He’ll make the announcement right here in New Orleans, which is also where he started his campaign.
I’ve tried to remain neutral with regard to the primaries. After all, I can’t vote in our state primary (because I’m registered Green) so why bother to make up my mind? But I’m sorry to see Edwards go. More than any other candidate he focused on the problem of poverty, and he brought a some attention to the ongoing crisis in New Orleans — and those two issues are very much related, by the way.
Frankly, though, I always thought he was a little too good-looking to be president.
I suppose this means that our next president will be either Clinton, McCain, Obama or Romney. Despite what I said above about trying to remain neutral, I’d have to confess that of these four I’d most like to see Obama win it. A few days ago I predicted McCain would be our next president. I don’t like it, but I’m gonna stand by that prediction.
That doesn’t mean I’ll vote for any of them, of course. I’m kind of leaning toward Kent Mesplay.
Postscript: If you’re a diehard Democrat, don’t weep at the prospect of President McCain. Whoever comes in after Bush will have a hell of a mess to clean up. A Democrat friend of mine predicts that if we elect a Democrat this time, that person will be the last Democrat elected for the next twenty years.
I’m tired of New Orleans being the poster child for poverty. We have a lot of assets but our persistent underclass is front and center. I want a candidate that is going to come in and talk about keeping our college graduates here with good jobs to increase our overall prosperity. There are plenty poor people out in the country, it’s not helping us any to have New Orleans continuously linked to this issue. I’d rather stories about how people were poor but now have great jobs and are doing good.
Bart,
As to your PS, I must wholeheartedly disagree. I have become a rather pragmatic voter in the the General Elections since 2000, and my singular issue, above all others, is on Supreme Court nominations. A Republican President, no matter what color or flavor of Republican, will nominate “conservative” justices to the Supreme Court. As most observers note, the next President will have the chance to nominate at least one and as many as three new justices in their first term in office. One conservative justice swings the court in another direction. Three “young” conservative justices swing the court in a conservative direction for a very long time.
I would never vote for a Republican for President for this one reason. I would further caution those liberals who choose to vote “on principle” for someone other than the Democratic nominee this year (whoever that person may eventually be) that they are significantly putting some of their principles in danger should it influence the election to the Republican.
Once we have a court that is “safely” in the hands of justices who share at least a semblence of our own interpretation of constitutional rights, we can again vote for the Presidential candidates of our choice.
For me, that makes this Election, and the election of a Democrat specifically, significanlty important.
Banzai
. anything other than Democrat (
That last sentence is a typo by the way 🙂
Frankly, though, I always thought he was a little too good-looking to be president.
Yes that affliction has hamstrung my political career for some time now.
Also… if forced to choose from among that final four, I’d probably have to take Obama as well. But please don’t tell the cultists I said that. They are an excitable bunch.
A Democrat friend of mine predicts that if we elect a Democrat this time, that person will be the last Democrat elected for the next twenty years.
Could apply to either party. But I am tired of hearing about “strategically” losing elections.
Now who said anything about strategic defeat? I’m merely trying to provide some balm to those who will invariably start talking about expatriation when McCain wins.
Ah, the quitters.
Just imagine if the Democratic president could clean up all of bush’s mess in 4 years.
A couple of points.
First, I don’t see how McCain can win a general election after he’s been so stridently pro-war, and the public is overwhelmingly sick of war. Also, to win the GOP nomination, he’ll have to pander to its conservative base in ways that will further alienate him from the electorate.
Second, Bill Clinton inherited a big mess from the Reagan-Bush years and managed to make improvements the public appreciated. Granted, he didn’t fix everything, and this Bush administration is leaving a bigger mess. But I don’t understand your friend’s 20-year analysis.
Demographically over the next 20 years, the GOP is screwed, and they know they are. That’s why they stoop to their reprehensible tactics, invoking religion, homophobia, veiled racism, and war.
David, I hope you’re right. I hope I’m wrong. But McCain is a white man. Will that be enough to win him the election? I think it may, I think it might. We shall see.
Well, I think the people that think in those terms wouldn’t vote for a Democrat anyway.
Bush lurched us to the left in so many ways that I never understood the hostility towards him…from the left!
Proposals such as No Child Left Behind, the AIDS and malaria initiatives, and the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare…these are not “conservative.” Bush multiplied spending horribly, not even including the war.
And David: veiled racism? Are you talking about the Clintons? I hope so. What they have done to Obama is despicable.
Garvey, I agree with you that the Clintons engaged in race bating, and it disgusts the hell out of me.
It doesn’t matter what you call Bush’s policies, conservative or otherwise. The drug benefit benefitted only the drug companies. No Child Left Behind accomplished nothing. And the AIDS and malaria initiatives were underfunded. Of course, compared to rendering the constitution meaningless and killing hundreds of thousands, those matters seem like small potatoes.
I still think McCain vs. Bradley would have been the better set of choices in 2000…
McCain belongs to himself, more so than anyone in the field. I believe he will soften his war stance once nominated, an even more if elected. He has said a lot of things since 2004 through gritted teeth (what politician still standing hasn’t?), so I’m counting on the pre-2004 man to re-emerge if he wins.
McCain was for an invasion of Iraq in 2000. Now he’s joking about bombing Iran – but it’s not a joke. He’s got the same foreign policy view as the Neo-cons and his presidency is guaranteed war.
Having views at odds with the majority of Americans on the war is not necessarily going to lead to his defeat – so much of the electorate votes based on ‘character’ and other such intangibles. Heck, I do to (Go Obama!), to an extent. And whatever the polls may say about opinion on the war, keep in mind how easily a big chunk of our populace is swayed. 70% believed Saddam was involved in 9/11 – and likely still do. McCain is treated with deep respect by the press and that will have tremendous impact, esp. against Clinton. I think Obama’s got a much better chance of winning, since they’ll both be competing for the independent and crossover vote – where Clinton will pull just from the Dem base.
David’s right about Bill Clinton inheriting a big mess, I even remember a lot of people making a similar argument to the 20 year one back in 1992. But i don’t know if the next president can count on a tech boom to make things easy and i do know that he’ll an Iraq mess to make things even more difficult.
I’d like some specific example of the race baiting by the Clintons that some people are talking about, because most strike me as absurd. Drug use? Get real, if Edwards were the main contender and he had written about cocaine use… Fairy tale? WTF? The only one that seems hard to defend is “Jesse Jackson won S.C. twice” I cringed when I heard it and thought it was incredibly stupid, but it could have been calculated. However, when I heard pundits say that if he was looking for an example of somebody who won S.C. and lost the nomination he could have said Edwards. I wanted to slap them and ask, “are you really stupid, are just playing stupid? The nomination will come down to who gets Edwards voters, and you’re asking why he didn’t piss off Edwards when he was trying to diminish Obama’s victory. Are you kidding me?”
I’ve said it elsewhere, but I’ll say it again here. If Obama gets the nomination, please be prepared to back it up every time you say racism. In my experience, people who admit to a certain level of prejudice and try to correct for it will stop trying when they hear what they consider overdone or unfair charges of racism. I’m not saying subtle or hidden racism should be ignored, but you can view an election as important struggle to win or as an opportunity to educate people. If you try to do the latter, you might sabotage the former.
“Jesse Jackson won SC twice” was CLEARLY an attempt to marginalize Obama as “the black candidate.” You are pretty much the only one I’ve heard that doesn’t believe it. No one in the MSM fell for it.
as to the bit about mccain talking through gritted teeth….
thats just his teeth! they’re always like that. give him a ciggie, and he’s the rod serling of politicians.
what really sears my steak is the fact that its another republicrat/demican runoff. in this time where the country is begging for change, we’re stuck with imperialists no matter which candidate from which side of the aisle. i’m hoping barak’s perceived imperialism is merely a symptom of his inexperience on the national stage…but i also hoped that my bloody valentine would follow up the “loveless” album.
i think i’m going to pass out clothespins with little felt “feeties” on them this election day, telling voters that “it’ll help to put this on your nose”…
“No one in the MSM fell for it.”
Well, whoopdedooo! The MSM loves Obama and hates Clinton — unfortunately, I’m afraid that the MSM doesn’t love Obama as much as McCain. The MSM tried to tell us that “fairy tale” and the drug use that Obama mentioned in his own book were somehow racist. The Jesse Jackson line could be interpreted one or both of two ways — an attempt to downplay the loss (do the new rules now make it racist for losing primary candidates to try to try to minimize primary losses?) or a racial ploy. With Edwards out, I’m still voting for Obama, but I do understand the backlash against media manipulation that led a lot of N.H. voters to for Clinton.
What media manipulation? Keith Olbermann and Eugene Robinson asking why Clinton didn’t say Edwards won S.C. and didn’t get the nomination, instead of Jesse Jackson. First off, since the implementation of the primary system, the S.C. winner has only failed to win the nomination three times — Jackson in 1984 & 1988 and Edwards in 2004. So Clinton didn’t have a lot to choose from in his effort to downplay the importance of S.C. So Olbermann and Robinson ask why he didn’t name Edwards. Why didn’t Clinton take a swipe at somebody whose supporters his wife needs to win over? Do you really think Olbermann and Robinson are that stupid? I don’t, and I don’t appreciate it when intelligent people play stupid to sway viewers.
One other thing, there’s a subtext to the charges about the Clintons that I find dubious at best. On the one hand, we hear about the disciplined Clinton machine that calculates everything it says and does. But we also hear about Bill Clinton the walking id who can’t keep his pants zipped. Two different heads, I know, but there’s usually some correlation. Anyway, we also hear that every statement is calculated when it serves one line of attack, but we hear that Bill Clinton will be a loose cannon who will say all sorts of thing as first husband when it suits another line of attack.