Waxing Politic

Here on the eve of the Iowa caucuses I figured it was time to wax a little politic. As I mentioned the day before yesterday, John Edwards increasingly looks like the only Democratic candidate I can wholeheartedly support. I believe he will do well in Iowa and New Hampshire and will carry forward with enough momentum so that the rest of the country has a chance to vote for him. Several people have said that he is just another rich white guy, but I trust him more to fight the good fight against the wealthy and powerful that are currently running this country into the ground than I do the other two leading candidates.

Edward's vision of "Two Americas" really resonates with me. I know that we have too many in this rich country who go to bed hungry, too many who can't afford health insurance, too many lacking the education and the opportunities to have a reasonable chance at the "American Dream" whatever it really is. I can see in my own life as a "middle-class" American that my purchasing power and the money I have put away for retirement is being leached away by the corporation driven economy. I see the longer lines at community food banks and talk almost daily with people who are falling further and further behind the "comfort" curve.

I trust Edwards to do what he says he will. His experience as a trial lawyer in confronting the powerful on behalf of the powerless, is an excellent qualification for the work that has to be done if we are going to rescue this country from the path it is following. As he has said, you don't solve some of these problems by making deals with those who stand to profit from the status quo.

I think he really means what he says when he says that he will work to dis-empower the lobbyists. He sees the poisonous effect they have on our lawmakers and he has demonstrated this commitment by not taking any of the big PAC money and is instead relying on public matching funds.

I think part of why I lean toward him is his background, his personal experience of poverty and lack of privilege. He, like me, spent a large part of his growing up in a Southern cotton town. He He, like me, watched the insidious effect of the cotton mills keeping the workers under their thumbs with low wages and making the workers rely on the mill for everything from housing to medical care. Before the unions ("Norma Rae") began to have an impact, working for a southern cotton mill was paramount to indentured slavery. My mother's family were coal miners in West Virginia and experienced the same kind of "slavery" before the unions arrived. Most of all he has demonstrated that he can speak truth to power and win against the corporations that are strangling this country. He has experienced the success of winning against them and knows in his heart the power that returns to the people in doing so.

There is some concern that with his wife's cancer hanging in the background that he will not be able to focus on the job but I think that underestimates him and his wife. Compared with what we have had in the White House for the last 7 years if someone like Edwards can spend two hours a day at the job we will be ahead of the game...seriously.

The media don't like him and we can be absolutely sure their corporate masters don't like him and we'll just have to see if he can overcome that huge handicap in our media obsessed political arena. We have demonstrated with the election of Shrub that we can let the media drive us into electing a complete idiot to the most powerful position in the world. I guess I can hope we have learned a lesson.

Finally, as for HRC and Obama. Hillary I would vote for if left no choice but I sincerely think she is too much in the current game and owes too much to the corporations to be the kind of change agent we need at this point in our country's woes. I think it would be more of the same bullshit politics and we need a revolution. Obama has two strikes against him in my book. He is too committed to reaching out to the GOP and finding a middle ground and I don't think there is a middle ground or in other words, he is naive. Secondly, and sadly there is still a lot of deeply embedded racism in this country and I don't think his "charisma" can overcome the fact that he is black. I don't think a lot of the people in this country will pull the lever for a black president.

As for the GOP side of the game...I don't really care but I think it would be a hoot if we saw Huckabee in the lead coming out of Iowa just so we could watch the rest of the GOP and the Washington elite shit themselves.