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Edited on Sat Jan-05-08 12:49 AM by Leopolds Ghost
Top McCain advisor: "McCain would not have gotten us into Iraq... is McCain much smarter than Bush on foreign policy? Yes."
Obama has inherited the Shrum wing of the party just as Edwards, however sincerely, is motivated by the Trippi.
You will not once during the upcoming campaign hear him call Bush flat-out dumb. Too divisive.
You will not hear him come out against corporate greed and you will not hear him oppose free trade. Too anti-business.
He is a pro-business Harvard liberal like the mayor of my (very liberal) town. A big-city Blue Dog like Mayor Daley of Chicago. Does Obama support public housing? Does he support welfare or universal health care? The answer in all doubt is "we don't want him to look like too much of a civil rights fire brand, the fact that he's black is enough of a breakthrough in itself" and besides which his whole message is we DON'T want Dems to be known for siding with controversial, divisive (i.e. anti corporate media sanctioned) solutions to issues.
I was a big fan of Obama until I realized that there is no chance of Edwards being his Veep or of the Trippi wing playing any part whatsoever in an Obama presidency, which relies on the same donors Clinton did in 1992 (unfortunately.) They see him as an electable version Vernon Jordan.
The DNC will NOT allow him to pick Edwards as veep nor will he want to, and I suspect many of Obama's supporters don't support Edwards populism and aren't opposed to free trade imperialism that relies on global US corporate control of trade routes and commodities, of the sort that the leading candidates support.
Is Edwards any better? I don't know. He's certainly pounding Trippi's hand-written anti-corporate spiel as if he believes it -- but there's no details, just "corporate greed" over and over as if it was a new concept voters are unfamiliar with. It's like electing someone because he keeps saying "terrible traffic" or "urban blight" or "struggling family farms" over and over to remind voters that he is actually against those things. he's a good defense attorney and Trippi, and all the idealistic Edwards populists, DUers and folks like that, might be the real people who got Edwards to "see the light" because "that is his niche" and what his supporters believed -- like the people who pushed McCain to the left in 2000. Peer pressure by supporters. Pragmatic conversion is as good as any reason to see the light. And I'm sure Elizabeth Edwards is his progressive conscience, just like Eleanor Roosevelt. But he has a method for so-called universal healthcare that is cruder than anything Huey Long thought up -- yeah, let's force Americans to buy private health insurance just like Hillary Clinton wants!
I will be pleasantly surprised if Obama ends up brokering a deal with Edwards like Kerry did (to disappointing effect in the general, since Edwards never went into attack mode like he is doing now -- maybe the DNC-experienced Obama consultants would muzzle him, same advisers that muzzled Kerry/Edwards).
Obama without Edwards will be to the right of Kerry and the message in the history books will be the end of the Civil Rights era and the triumph of the Harvard liberal, business class, urban center-right (by historical standards) Rockefeller Democrats.
Obama with Edwards would be a formidable force, enough so that they would both need a double security detail if you ask me.
Economically conservative yuppies and business class Republicans don't really fear Obama precisely because they don't view him as a liberal like Kerry. They explicitly distinguish him from Kerry, citing how Kerry was a died in the wool northeastern liberal (for which he is routinely trashed on DU) while Obama is reassuringly vague and nonspecific, having never once gone to the mat like Edwards is doing now (even if he wasn't doing before.) A rejection of Edwards for, say, Veep (in favor of Richardson or someone like that) will be a permanent rejection of the New Deal left by the current icon of the secular post-liberal, post-civil rights, professional class Democrats, i.e. Obama.
Like I said, Obama's charisma plus Edwards' message would make a powerful force. The more I learn about the outcome of Iowa and what the pundits and campaign aides themselves are saying the more I'm beginning to suspect that Obama may end up cutting a deal with Hillary's folks to shut out Edwards (by promising to give the Clintonite Wing of the Permanent Government access to he highest levels, including the Veep spot).
I hope I am wrong and Obama is negotiating with Edwards to shut out Hillary and the Permanent Gov't as we speak. What will happen to Obama's donors and the bloviating talking heads in the media who until now supported him if he becomes a class traitor and a traitor to includsive, David Broder politics by siding with Edwards? Up till now Obama has been careful to distinquish himself from Edwards' populism, as in the quote above on Hardball.
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