Interesting how races develop. After a thousand rhetorical skirmishes, the defining battle concerns who and how to best effect change. It's actually a good, substantive debate. As summed up by Atrios:
Obama: The system sucks, but I'm so awesome that it'll melt away before me.Edwards: The system sucks, and we're gonna have to fight like hell to destroy it.
Clinton: The system sucks, and I know how to work within it more than anyone.
Atrios is probably too nasty to Obama--he's not quite that self-aggrandizing--and too kind to Clinton--she doesn't think the system sucks--but, in any case, it's a debate Edwards has to love. Who, in a democratic primary, wouldn't want to be the fighter, as opposed to the compromiser and the corporatist--uh, I mean, hard worker.
Well, everybody on this stage has an idea about how to get change. Some believe you get change by demanding it, some believe you get it by hoping for it. I believe you get it by working hard for change.
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 paid plans.
Many people within the Clinton and Obama campaigns never expected Edwards' support in Iowa to remain this strong. The fact that it has is a testament to the time he has spent in the state and the level of connection that many in the Hawkeye State feel toward him and his message of "the people versus the powerful."
But it's clear now that Edwards will be a serious threat to the end. So Clinton and Obama have to try to tap into his support, which, by most accounts, is increasing.
The Obama camp, for its part, is trying a two-pronged, self-contradicting line of attack. On the one hand, they say JRE's strategy--fighting corporate power--is misguided.
If you put forward a plan that that overlooks insurance companies, it's really hard to understand how you are going to execute it without talking to them. And that's really what Sen. Edwards is saying. We're going to have private insurance companies in my plan but we're not going to talk to them because they are evil and they're bad.
On the other hand, they say Edwards didn't always fight corporate power:
Sen. Edwards, who is a good guy -- he's been talking a lot about, 'I am going to fight the lobbyists and the special interests in Washington.' Well the question you have to ask is: Were you fighting for'em when you were in the Senate. What did you do?
This line of criticism on Edwards has a problem larger even than its inherent contradiction. Obama's chief advisor testified to JRE's toughness on corporate special interests in 2004.
Washington is run by the special interests today ... John Edwards ran headlong into it when he led the fight for the patients bill of rights against the insurance industry in the Senate. He has never taken a dime from lobbyists or PACs. He said, let's ban lobbyist money, so you can't give people a bill to pass in the day and a check at night. And that's how we're going to start changing the culture in Washington.
JRE's reputation for toughness on corporate power was well-established when Obama was still a state senator.
[...I]n the Senate, Edwards was willing to stand up on a number of anti-corporate issues more so than most Democrats. It's the reason that not just Ralph Nader has kind words for him but also people like Ted Kennedy and remember, internally within the Kerry campaign, Ted Kennedy was advocating for Edwards. Because he saw Edwards as a gutsy guy who is willing to take on some bigger issues and to do some rough stuff with it.
And it's worth pointing out, because Edwards himself wisely does, that the kind of politics he's preaching derives directly from his previous profession. This should be easy to understand.
It is a failure of political reporting that those legal cases are rarely evaluated as anything but potential attack ads. The stories, people, and corporations Edwards came into contact with amounted to a searing, visceral course in old-style populism..Think of it this way: Hillary Clinton's caution and political savvy are obvious products of an adult life spent entirely in politics, the last 15 years or so on the national stage. Barack Obama's broad appeal and talent for consensus building are not unexpected traits in a former community organizer. So what does spending decades confronting the grievous, heartbreaking damage done to individuals and families by powerful, profit-driven corporations do to a man?
"Every single day," says Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, "what he saw were good people, in great need, who were being mistreated by big corporations -- corporations that knew that they had done wrong, and often insurance companies that were taking a calculated risk going to trial. ... If you took that person, a person who chose that as his life, you would end up with the politics that he's talking about today.
So Edwards is, in short, mighty comfy in this debate, and it shows. In fact, this is the very debate he's long wanted, and it dates back to what I believe to be the turning point of his campaign--the moment he found the perfect way to articulate the fundamental difference between him and his rivals.
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