Where art thou, John Edwards. I wish you did not drop out. See

what we have now? Two squabbling people with so much going on in their campaigns to destroy one another that you could have stayed and risen above this fray.

Or---are you up to something we don't yet know about?(Please)

Yes he should have been first on the ticket and may be Obama or Clinton second even if I felt that Gore made a error with Joe. I am sorry but their are still a lot of people in this country that need any reason not to vote for any one but a white man and it best he is a WASP. It is not that the country is not changing, and thank you that it is, but people carry those old thinking parts with them.

Only in the last thirty years have women had powerful positions. A woman would be a step forward since the country has more than 50% of them. Woman aren't a minority but equal in number if not more.

Afro-Americans (Obama is black and white)are 13%. If in your world there are many blacks it may seem to appear that way. It is not a 50/50 rule of black and white population. Soon Hispanics will out number blacks in this country. In the future, they will be the majority the way things are going with uncontrolled immigration from the South.

The elite few rule today regardless of color, race, or religion.

I am just looking at the history of the thing and just to let you know that many people who think in that old way are still out here and voting. Thank God I have always been off the general track. I will vote for Obama and or a women but not this women. She is running on her husbands work. I would like to see one run who did not use their husband. Frankly I could care less what color Obama, is I like the way he thinks and not the old way McCain and Clinton thinks.

elected- something I vigorously dispute- since when is bowing down to bigots a progressive value?

Even if they are both better than the white man he as that 'white' man has the leg up, as we have done it before. You have to think about that I know, but people do sort of fall back on what was done before. Not that it is always right. I am not putting out what I think should be done but what I think may happen. I think the best thing for this country is to get rid of all those old hang ons we have had around for years and years and get some new thinkers in DC. I sure do not see this in McCain or another Clinton. IT is time to drag these old Bush/Clinton actors off the stage.

did as "well" as he did as the only white WASP male in the top 2 tiers? (The entire second tier were Catholic) This doesn't help his case as it shows that either that segment is very small in the Democratic party or that a significant part of Edwards' votes were because racism/sexism/anti-Catholic bias ruled everyone else out.

And as he couldn't get the votes, he wouldn't benefit from anything. He would have been creamed on Super Tuesday.

Edwards was my first choice. America drop kicked him. So did the Dem party leadership. I have been told the Dem's abandoned him because after 2004 he wouldn't play ball their way. Whatever it was, without the backing of the DNC hotshots the nominee isn't going to get much done once elected.

FDR era was about the only time America gave a flying snot about little people, but even as the laws were being enacted, the elite were figuring out ways to dismantle it all and get us back to serfdom. Clearly, Edwards scares the noodles out of um.

You've been told that? Oh, please. John Edwards was a thorough DLCer though out his entire Senate career. He didn't just vote for the IWR, he co-sponsored a version of it with Lieberman. He cheer led for the war, and he didn't abandon his support for it for 3 years. 3 years into that clusterfuck. Wow. Impressive. NOT. And the DNC doesn't back ANY candidate. Do you actually think that Howard Dean was backed by the DNC in 2004? Yeah, Dean eventually flamed out but he had real impact and real success for quite a while. And frankly, Dean has done far more for this country than Edwards, and as Governor of Vermont did way more for poor people and to advance health care than Edwards has done.

Yeah, Edwards scared the corporatists so much that Fortress (I mean really, how much more corporate elite can you get) hired him on for some very part time consulting for a few months for the hefty fee of half a million bucks. Edwards is so anti-corporate that he invested tens of millions of dollars in a Hedge Fund that invested in sleazy companies like the one that foreclosed on the mortgages of Katrina victims.

The myth of JE here is absurd. He may be a very good man. I certainly liked the rhetoric JE'08, but he hasn't achieved much and his Senate career beyond his IWR vote, was decidedly lackluster.

support their free trade agenda. The DLC has a semi-annual meeting. John Edwards was the only Democratic candidate who did not attend the two DLC events before the 2004 election. Even Gephardt attended both. Tom Frank, the author of What's the Matter With Kansas went on a book tour in (IIRC) 2005 and part of his talk at the Commonwealth Club (which should still be available at their website) included comments about how Edwards was such a threat to corporate power that the National Association of Manufacturers -- an organization that is one of the two or three most pro-corporate, neoliberal, pro-concentration of wealth organizations in the US went to the unprecedented step of telling John Kerry that if he picked Edwards as his running mate, they would actively campaign against him.

So what if Fortress is the one institution on Wall St that recognized that destroying the middle class really isn't good for America? Have you ever checked out who the finance industry supports with their political donations? It certainly has never been Edwards.

What amazes me is how many Kucinich supporters now are clamoring for Edwards. Edwards' career represents almost everything that Kucinich rails against. He was pro-war and pro-corporations during his Senate career, and his career after he left the Senate is full of questionable ties (the aforementioned Fortress). I've seen Obama criticized as just using empty rhetoric, but at least his rhetoric is consistent with his political career up to this point. I don't buy Edwards' populist turn one bit. I find him to be an even bigger panderer to the left than Kucinich.

which are not accepted by the elite. He was given limited fame to appear to be acceptable but he is not. The media and his own party refused support. The Democratic Party is now mostly ruled by an oligarchy (their goals not that of a Democrat).

Just all the crap regarding the primary shows they are trying to control us before the convention. We have to fight to get our ideas and mandate despite them.

in both 2004 and at the beginning of the 2008 race. In the 2004 race, the NYT even had an op-ed pushing him over Kerry in the last week of February 2004 - saying that the first name was known but not the last of teh Democratic nominee. This was at a point where he had won SC and Kerry had won 16 primaries and was ahead in polls by double digits in all the states for the next week, except VT, where Dean was ahead of Kerry and Edwards was essentially nowhere.

In the 2008 race, Edwards and Clinton were the two people in 2005 and early 2006 most pushed as possibilities. Kerry, who soundly beat Edwards and polled higher by far in 2005 was rarely included in the speculation. Both Edwards got good coverage on their books and in late 2006 when they started their campaign in 2006. He benefited from the fact the media defined the race as having tiers - and he was always counted in the top tier. You would have a stronger case saying the second tier candidates got far worse coverage.

There were many articles speculating that he could win Iowa. His entire strategy needed that. He spent a huge amount of time there and it was none he didn't have support in NH. He needed a blow out win in Iowa that even with a mediocre showing in NH would give him momentum into SC and NV, states that were thought to be good for him. (NV has big unions and SC was the only state he won - he got 17% and 4% respectively - both poor thirds.) The amount of media followed this - Obama was the big story out of Iowa and, with NH 5 days later and HRC leading there by 20 points - that fight was the big story and Edwards was not key to it. HRC winning was a big story, then Kerry endorsing Obama was. The corruption and ugliness and the virtual tie in NV was the next big story - and Edwards was lucky not to get more coverage on his getting 4%. Then with SC as the story, Edwards DID get press as the alternative to Bill Clinton's using race (or being accused to have done so). There were articles that his numbers were improving and speculation that he could do well in the state where he got 45% in 2004. When he came in third - and really didn't have either the organization or the money to really compete in SuperTuesday the writing was on the wall.

Now was the media always nice to him - absolutely not, but he did have many in the media who did back him and some of them - like Krugman - were influential in the Democratic primary.

not advising Edwards to stay in. He said that Edwards gave all of them a chance to make their case. He said if he had gone with his gut he would have encouraged Edwards to stay in. He said Edwards could have ended up with 300 delegates and forced a brokered convention. He said that would have forced the candidates to include issues important to Edwards and would have given him a slim shot of becoming the nominee.

right now.

running through a phenomenal amount of money in Iowa and NH and leading a terrible campaign in Iowa. Think of it Trippi had the national frontrunner with the most superdelegates. He did an awful job converting that to caucus goers. For all the people that question "why Shrum?", I don't get why more don't say "Why Trippi?"

I read that article and was mystified where he thought those 300 would come from. Edwards didn't have the money to really compete heavily in the 21 states on SuperTuesday and he was trending down after SC, not up. He was nearing 10% - in the rank where no delegates are rewarded. Even with 300 pledged Democrats and the other two in the 1700 range each - why would they ever go with the guy who had less than 1/5 of the others. On this scenario, like the current one, the superdelegates would likely go with the one with the most pledged delagates. The impact might have been that his presence would have made HRC higher in comparision to Obama or made Obama more ahead or there could have been no impact. But, Trippi is smoking something if he thinks the superdelegates would reject both and go with the guy with 300. (Also, it would be odd to argue that the anti-establishment candidate would have the establishment lift him over 2 "establishment - per JRE" candidates.)

This is Trippi avoiding the fact that he likely was as bad for JRE as for Dean.

Not to mention that he was never the frontrunner, thus never attacked as much as he would be. McCain was at his weakest point at that time.

attacking the others, especially Clinton, as corporate and corrupt. Edwards was by far the toughest, most negative person in the NH debate as well - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/politics/05text-ddebate.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin. HRC does get in a few sneaky attacks such as throwing in the Patriot act in a Rovian way, but it was Edwards attacks that led to the headlines that they ganged up on HRC - where Obama was really the least aggressive of the three. (What I mean on the Patriot Act: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4055743&mesg_id=4057479 )

In those last few debates, HRC and Obama were attacking each other - because they were each attacking the one most likely to prevent them from winning. Edwards obviously saw that as his best strategy and it did move him up slightly, but nowhere near enough to be a real contender.

As to the "are you up to something we don't yet know about?(Please)", there is no justification to have Edwards replace two people who have demonstrated they can both win primaries and both of whom have better resumes in terms of what they have done than Edwards. Just as the SD will not overturn a significant lead in pledged delegates, because it would be bad for the party and the country, they certainly won't eliminate both and then in a moment of insanity give it to a man who won only 1 state in 2 elections' worth of primaries - who likely had the weakest resume of the 6 candidates in the top two tiers.

Most here were calling him the only adult on the stage.