If you want to know why I’m going to vote for John Edwards instead of choosing Tweedledee (Clinton) or Tweedledum (Obama), this is all you really need:
HENDERSON, NEV. — John Edwards ripped Barack Obama for praising the way Ronald Reagan brought about change when he was President of the United States.
“When you think about what Ronald Reagan did to the American people, to the middle class to the working people,†said Edwards.
“He was openly – openly – intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment.â€
“I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.â€
To put it even more bluntly: Ronald Reagan was an evil, senile little shit who regularly trampled on everything that had been accomplished over the fifty years preceding him to make this country a more humane, freer place to live. He very consciously used racism to organize his base. He stood by while thousands of gay men dropped like flies, not even daring to speak the name of the disease that killed them. He showed outright contempt for the Constitution, engaging in covert wars and smuggling drugs and guns across the globe. He favored the rights of corporations and the wealthy over those of citizens and the poor. We are poorer and less free because of his Presidency, and it is a sign of just how weak-willed, how utterly treasonous to the notion of progressive politics the establishment of the Democratic Party is that their two front-runners can compose odes to the memory of the Reagan Administration without anyone so much as turning a hair.
George W. Bush is Ronald Reagan without the charm or the charisma. For anyone who feels nostalgic about Reagan’s time in office, don’t; you already have him. You have the religious fundamentalism, the militarism, the contempt for the lives of working people, the utter disconnect with reality. That’s what Ronald Reagan was. We need something different. The candidates keep blathering on about some vaguely defined “change” that’s needed, but by bringing out the ghost of the man who is primarily responsible for the state of our modern political realities, they show their commitment to shoveling the same old shit on top of us. In many ways, Edwards isn’t an ideal candidate, but at least he knows where the problems began.
Yay Chris! Way to say it. I’m for Edwards too, I wish we could get out of the mindset of it having to be the first “something” president (meaning African American or women) and start realizing Edwards isn’t perfect, but he’s the right one this time around.
oh. thank. you. i’m so sick of the half-assed reasons for supporting obama. i have never understood anyone who supported clinton. i can understand obama. what i can’t understand is the refusal to look behind the surface and see clinton’s twin.
what is also slaying me is that one of them is going to take the pres candidate position, the other veep. all they’re doing right now is finding out who will be in which position. they need each other and everyone else is going to have to suck it up and deal with that.
I’m not so sure that one of them will be veep. It seems to me that when choosing their running mate, either one is going to want to play it safe and go with a white guy to counter-balance the alleged “questions” about race and gender in a presidential candidate. Also, they’re both from north of the Mason-Dixon line. Traditionally, parties try to balance a northern candidate with a southern running mate. And if Obama becomes the candidate, as I expect that he will, bad enough that he’s gonna have to try to tour the South as a black man without the added baggage of Hillary, who’s not only a woman, but the woman that right-wingers have worked themselves into a psychotic frenzy over for the last ten years. One of the advantages that Obama will have as a candidate is that the right seems to be kind of tepid about all of their choices, and it’s going to be hard to get them to rally behind either McCain or (giggle) Romney. It’ll be a lot easier to get them to rally behind an anti-Hillary platform, since they’ve obviously convinced themselves that she eats kittens with her vagina.
I’m probably going to vote for Obama tomorrow, since my man Edwards dropped out, but I’m doing it under protest. But if I’m not optimistic about Obama, I am starting to feel more optimistic about the left itself, which seems to be becoming stronger as a grassroots movement. It doesn’t matter who wins — even if Edwards was still in the race and won, we can’t afford the idea that we can get our guy/gal into the White House and let them go about their business. In the end, we have to save ourselves, and citizenship is all about speaking out constantly, not just every two to four years.