How Long Before David Vitter Is Hawking Pampers In TV Ads?

If you've been following the Louisiana gubernatorial election even superficially, tonight's results probably didn't come as a surprise. Conservative Democrat John Bel Edwards has been leading perverted Republican David Diapers Vitter all along. And once the jungle primary was over, it all started getting worse and worse for runner-up Vitter. Tonight, with all precincts counted, Edwards beat Vitter 56-44%. In Orleans Parish Edwards beat him 81,900 (87%) to 12,748 (13%) and in Vitter's own Jefferson Parish Edwards won 49,902 (51%) to 48,633 (49%). It was a bad night for David Vitter.

Louisiana is indeed one of the reddest states in the country at this point. In 2012 Romney beat Obama 1,152,460 (58%) to 808,496 (41%) and took a mere 10 parishes out of 64. In Livingston Parish just east of Baton Rouge Romney got 45,488 votes to Obama's 7,448-- that's an 84-14% landslide. Romney did even better in Cameron parish-- 87-11%. And last year Lousiana voted out long-time Senator Mary Landrieu for the relatively unknown Republican Bill Cassidy, 712,379 (56%) to 561,210 (44%), giving that seat to a Republican for the first time since 1883. Landrieu took only 15 of the state's parishes. Vitter did worse than any Republican since the GOP ran KKK Grand Dragon David Duke in 1991.

The last gubernatorial poll before the polls opened today, from Market Research Insight, showed what every other poll has show-- that Louisiana voters had had it with Vitter. The poll predicted Edwards would beat Vitter anywhere from 54-39% to 47-42%.

Early voting gave a good clue as to how today would go. Around 268,000 people voted before today and more than 140,000 of them were Democrats, a bad sign for Vitter. It got even worse today, worse (for Vitter) than even the polls were predicting.

Vitter has been telling the media that if he lost it would be primarily Bobby Jindal's fault, presumably because the Republican governor, disliked by 70% of the voters, had made the GOP toxic. That isn't totally fair since Edwards has made sure that this election would be all about Vitter's character. Nevertheless, this morning Dave Weigel, writing for the Washington Post pointed out that Jindal actually was working against Vitter, who he hates.

In Louisiana, it's an open secret that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) concluded a years-long blood feud with Vitter by ending his presidential campaign on Tuesday.

"You can't get anyone to admit it, but it's what everyone thinks," said Julia O'Donoghue, the state politics reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "We spent two days talking about refugees and then two days talking about Jindal. Those first two days were the only ones in the runoff when John Bel [Edwards, the Democratic nominee] was on defense."

The timeline is simple. On Sunday, news broke that a Syrian refugee's passport was found with one of the suspects in the Paris terrorist attacks. Within a day, Vitter was up with a TV ad accusing Edwards of wanting to work with President Obama-- whose toxicity Vitter had previously tried and failed to pour on the Democrat-- and let in refugees. At the final gubernatorial debate on Monday, Vitter pressed the issue. He intended to drive it home all week.

Then, on Tuesday, Jindal used a mid-day Fox News interview to end his presidential campaign. That had a direct effect on what Louisiana's press corps could cover. "There really aren't that many of us," noted O'Donoghue. Instead of spending Wednesday covering the gubernatorial race, the media covered Jindal and his failed presidential bid, and it kept covering him as he suddenly proposed a fix to the $500 million budget gap that had helped drive down his popularity in the state. The news of Vitter heading back to his day job and introducing a bill to staunch the refugee flow was buried.

Vitter's campaign, which did not respond to a question from The Post, had to scramble. Instead of following its plan for Thursday-- four press events, all on refugees-- he had to downsize. As Buzzfeed's John Stanton reported, one of the events was moved from outside of the Catholic Charities’ refugee assistance office to the steps of the capitol in Baton Rouge. Most of the questions were about the budget hole, a more immediate issue for the next governor than the settlement of refugees.

Asked if Vitter's campaign had been considered in the decision to quit the White House bid, Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin responded with a flat "no." But Jindal had refused to endorse Vitter, and even while he spoke about barring refugees from the state, he gave no cover whatsoever to Vitter's message-- which included a factually dodgy story of a refugee going "missing," even though he was quickly located and committed no crimes. "Republicans could lose the governor’s office because of Senator David Vitter’s badly damaged brand," Jindal strategist Curt Anderson told NBC News reporter Kasie Hunt.

Weigel missed one piece in his story, which seems to bolster his point. According to a Trump twitter attack on Jindal, the day before pulling out of the race, Jindal plopped down the required $1,000 to appear on the New Hampshire ballot.

Vitter, who isn't well-liked in the Senate (other than by Ted Cruz), was judged by the GOP establishment unable to win re-election to the Senate in 2016. Tonight he said he won't even try. So who will? Probably Congressmen Charles "Lord Boustany" Boustany and John Fleming and state Treasurer John Kennedy from the GOP and possibly New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a former state rep and then two-term Lt. Governor, Mary's brother, and therefor son of the legendary Moon Landrieu, from the other side of the aisle.

Ian Welsh recalls the way John Edwards's argument about the economy disappeared, or was disappeared, from the national discussion

Since John Edwards's 2008 campaign was disposed of, and then the candidate himself, his "Two Americas" campaign theme has disappeared with him.

"Edwards' trial was a politically motivated show trial. The goal was to make sure that everyone thinks that there was no left wing candidate in the election and that Obama is the best you could ever do."

-- Ian Welsh, in a May 2012 post he has just republished

by Ken

I'm going to guess it's not uncommon among people who might read DWT to have heard the opening of a discussion during the early stages of the 2012 Democratic presidential primary season which wasn't being proposed by any candidate except John Edwards, before the campaign and then the candidate himself seemingly self-destructed before our eyes. I'm not poor, but I'm not rich either, and what Edwards seemed to be saying about "The Two Americas" held the promise of describing the economy within which I was and still am living -- an economy that has more or less edited out an awfully large segment of the population, myself emphatically included.

And then Edwards was gone, leaving me still wanting to hear more, and instead hearing less. Yes, there's certainly a similar underlying message in most everything Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says, and certainly Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been asking some hard questions about how Americans are intended to be included or excluded from participation in the U.S. economy. But a national candidate who puts this at the center of his/her thinking about how the U.S. economy is meant to work? Not so much.

So I'm glad that Ian Welsh has dug into the archive to recirculate a post he originally published on May 31, 2012.

His trial has been declared a mistrial.

The personal is not the political. His wife seemed like a good person, but I could care less. FDR cheated on his wife. JFK screwed hookers in the White House pool while married.

The facts about John Edwards that I care about are these:

1) He was the only major politician who made a big issue of poverty.

2) He was the only major politician to say he didn’t believe in the war on terror.

3) The reason the affair came to light is because he stopped paying her off, which he did because he was no longer in the race.

The children who thought that having a black president, despite the fact that he was, on domestic policy, worse than EVERY other democratic nominee, are why the US is so fucked right now. (And yes, he was worse on domestic policy than even Hillary Clinton. Don’t believe me, believe Paul Krugman.)

Edwards' trial was a politically motivated show trial. The goal was to make sure that everyone thinks that there was no left wing candidate in the election and that Obama is the best you could ever do. Well, that and a personal hatred, as best I can tell. Obama refused to cut a deal with Edwards for support. What did Edwards ask for in exchange for support? Help for the poor.

Obama did cut a deal with Clinton, of course. He let her have State, so she could influence foreign policy, the ONE policy area where she was to his right.

Hmmm.

#

A VIEW FROM-- AND OF-- MICHIGAN

-by Mags

Hillary can claim to have won Michigan and her supporters can continue to parrot the excuse that Obama did not want to run here, but neither of them are true.

I asked Howie if I could wax poetic about the Edwards endorsement of Barak Obama in Grand Rapids Michigan the other day. I know, I know it is all over the blogosphere, but not so much from a uniquely Michigan perspective (Is there such a thing?).

Before the brouhaha about the Michigan primary, it is my guess that John Edwards would have carried Michigan. A lot of mud is slung at Obama from on high in the Clinton campaign which of course ends up being repeated, right or wrong, among her supporters. The song goes a little like this, Obama did not want Michigan’s support. Or another version, Obama thought pulling out of the primary would embarrass Mrs. Clinton. Still no one points to the fact that Biden, Edwards, and Richardson also pulled their names off the ballot. We can call that a primary, but it certainly does not look like a primary or smell like a primary, nor does it act like a primary.

With our delegates barred many of us did not get why we should vote at all. Our choices were Hillary, Kucinich, and uncommitted. Many of us were committed, just not to Hillary. And, if the delegates were not going to be seated, then why did it matter? From the get go the DNC disenfranchised voters in Michigan. The plan to hold another primary does not hold water. Michigan is broke. We can barely function as a state, where is the money going to come from? Hillary backers? And, why now change all the campaign schedules for a vote that will not yield an overall gain for Senator Clinton?

When I first heard Hillary claim she won Michigan, I could see right where she was planning to go with that and it raised my hackles.

I know you think this leads me far from the Obama Edwards appearance in Grand Rapids, but bear with me.

The big claim of Hillary is that Obama cannot win the white hard working American vote. I can tell you this, it doesn’t get any whiter than West Michigan. And, hard working? Even though this is not Detroit, it is still a hub (or was) of manufacturing. It is also farm country. The Calvinist Dutch who dominate here are from the stock that washed the streets of Holland. I know this because I am Dutch, but I am not Dutch like they are Dutch. These are the people who believe they are favored by God and that is why they have stuff (here you can imagine Bernadette Peters inflection when she says “stuff” in the movie The Jerk).

Not only are these folks here hard working white guys, but they are also hunters and fishermen. This is the hunting capital of the world. This is not the south, but let me just tell you this, if you are ever traveling northwards and are homesick for the south, then stop by rural West Michigan and you will feel right at home.

Obama announced his visit here two days before it was to occur. His rally was held in the Van Andel Arena named for Dutch Republican Amway Founder Jay Van Andel which seats about 10,000. Unlike George Bush and other GOP candidates they did not have to bus in Democrats for a crowd. The doors to the arena were locked by 6 PM. It was filled to capacity and some hundreds outside the arena stayed there to watch a broadcast from inside.

Imagine that, the arena was filled with a bunch of hard working white people, pasty white people. Remember this is western Michigan.

What a perfect venue for Barack to fill on the heels of Hillary’s claims about white America, her claims of winning Michigan, her claims now about it not being about the math, but the map. I am not sure what other signals she needs.

Now, add to Obama’s appearance the endorsement of John Edwards the favorite of Michiganders of all stripes. Even Republicans liked John Edwards. Michigan, a couple of years earlier, had rejected the leadership of Dick DeVos (the other Dutch Republican founder of Amway) when he ran against our current Governor, Jennifer Granholm (who I am sorry to say supports Clinton).

That is the story, straight from one Michigan resident. We had no primary that Hillary can claim to have won. On Wednesday after such a long election season some folks in Michigan finally got a chance to show their support for someone other than Hillary, and Barack Obama was their choice. John Edwards was right. Here in Michigan we would like to see John on that ticket with Obama, but I understand that that is not politically expedient in this election and by all means I say we win the election.

With so many young people inspired and older people inspired I say let’s start the race. Let’s declare Obama the candidate and move on.

Contrary to what Clinton and Ferraro think, I would vote for Obama even if he were white. It seems to me even more than fair that hard working black people have a choice besides some pasty white person whether it be Clinton or McCain. Besides, isn’t Barack half white? Why don’t we talk about that half for awhile?

JOHN EDWARDS FOR...

Ardy Kassakhian Is the City Clerk of Glendale, just down the road a piece from where I live (walking distance). Michael Fish doesn't live that much further away, although in the other direction (West Hollywood). Like Ardy, he's a progressive activist. He makes his living as a record producer and screenwriter. The two of them have been pondering John Edwards' next move and wrote up a report for DWT:

JOHN EDWARDS FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL?

by Michael Fish & Ardy Kassakhian

They stood there at the debates and it was down to three.

If Barak Obama was "Speak No Evil," and Hillary was "See No Evil," by subtraction, arguably, it could be said that Edwards was "Hear No Evil." John Edwards was not about to listen to any reason why, together, we couldn’t cure the disease of poverty in America. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be enough to get him into the general election, however heartfelt and cogent his message. It’s not that we didn’t believe him: we did. He spoke in that noble way that separates statesmen from politicians. But a presidential candidate needs to speak to a larger array of issues. Obama’s message of ‘change’-- however imprecise it may have sounded at times-- symbolized a larger canvas more suitable to a man with presidential ambition.

Still, John Edwards emerged as the custodian of democratic conscience. When conservatives scoffed and told the middle and lower classes that it took hard work to succeed, it was John Edwards who reminded them that working hard wasn’t the issue; it was the opportunity to do the work that evaded so many. For Edwards, the issue was always access, making sure the law served everyone equally, not just the privileged.

Yesterday Senator John Edwards gave Barack Obama his support and the pundits all went into overdrive. The cliche we heard most often was whether Edwards would agree to be the vice president. So let me say it now and get it off my chest

If John Edwards agrees to be the Vice President of the United States, we will have lost-- potentially-- one of the best and greatest attorney generals America never had.

Pundits are smart, but seem to lack imagination... so let’s review....

George Bush and Karl Rove attempted to turn ‘justice’ into an RNC annex, perverting and neutering the intent of that office while distorting the brilliant purpose underlying constitutional imperatives. John Edwards can fix that. He must. It’s the logical first step in his plan for social mobilization.

John Edwards should be the legal custodian of this nation: it is organic to who he is. If Sen. Edwards wants to make sure his "war on poverty" has the countenance of a legal system designed to retool archaic American institutions that allow poverty to thrive, ground zero is making sure a ravaged Justice Department is repaired. Equality in all aspects of education, employment, government and military service-- without regard to sexual orientation, race and religion, or political connection is the goal.

Of course, the V.P. office would be fine, but we need to turn Mr. Gonzalez’ former desk over to a man of character, an agent whose purpose is a principled Madisonian one. We need a person who defines the law in terms of fair play while propelled by the sheer political will to finish the job. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy once made sure a young African American girl could walk with dignity into a ‘white school.’ John Edwards has demonstrated he has instincts parallel to Kennedy’s. Forget poverty czars and commissions. If it’s "liberty and justice for all" your after, John Edwards - as our attorney general-- seems poised to deliver on that promise, the American promise.

Lets hope the pundits are listening. 


UPDATE: PROOF ARDY AND MICHAEL ARE ON THE CORRECT PATH

The lamest GOP shill anywhere: "...the suggestion that John Edwards would be even considered for Attorney General is horrifying. I really can't think of any mainstream political figure more inappropriate for that job than Edwards."

THIS POPULIST THING ONLY GOES SO FAR... WHEN YOU'RE AN AMBITIOUS MULTIMILLIONAIRE

John Edwards could have made a difference-- a really big one. Again, I'm not  talking about today's cockamamie North Carolina presidential primary, where no one really cares what he or Elizabeth Edwards say. No disrespect  for the Senator or his wife, but everyone has made up their minds about the presidential primary-- many several times in fact. But after Edwards left the Senate, where he racked up a fairly mediocre record as a careful, careerist-oriented moderate, he seemed to have undergone a genuine transformation into a real populist with a distinctly progressive bent that had been missing from his Senate record. He could have made a real difference today in the battle for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination to take on the execrable reactionary Elizabeth Dole.

Instead, the Edwards decided to do an election-eve interview in People and declare they wouldn't be endorsing in the presidential race. They recited their pros and cons about Hillary and Obama. "I like Hillary's health care plan," said Elizabeth, a devoted proponent of universal health care for the middle class. And what she doesn't like about the Hilldog: "The lobbyist money."  OK and in the Senate race one candidate, Jim Neal has an even better health care plan than Hillary's and is more devoted to election reform than Obama, while the other, ultimate Insider Kay Hagan, would be happy for Big Pharma and HMO  lobbyists continue writing the country's health care legislation-- as long as enough of their bribes contributions continue to flow her way.

John Edwards says what he doesn't like about Hillary is that she's a practitioner of "the old politics." That's a very polite way of saying what she and her backers are. He and Elizabeth could have made the difference in the Senate race. Instead they're standing by and allowing a pathetic Establishment hack get the Democratic nomination. That tells me an awful lot about John Edwards, gut level idea I've always had about him but that I mostly suspended when I wanted to believe in him. That won't happen again.

THE BIG PRIMARY NEXT WEEK: NORTH CAROLINA

Ex-Senator John Edwards could do the transformative agenda he has espoused a great deal of good by making an endorsement. One candidate is a committed, grassroots progressive and the other is a pitiful Big Money corporate shill, in some ways only marginally better than the Republican incumbent. No, no, I'm not talking about Hillary; she may be a corporate shill but she's certainly better than the Republican incumbent and she's also much better than his sadly transformed doppelgangerish would-be replacement. You see, while everyone else is urging the Edwardses to do what Governor Easley just did and endorse in the presidential race-- where I doubt he would have much impact-- I would like him to do the right thing in the race for the U.S. Senate seat, currently held by pathetic rubber stamp Republican Elizabeth Dole.

In a race like this, where not many people are aware of the giant chasm between the two candidates, Edwards really could make a difference. One candidate, Kay Hagan, stands for everything he claims to detest. She is owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the same pernicious Big Money interests that own Dole-- and whom Edwards just spent two years railing against. The other candidate-- the one endorsed by Blue America-- is Jim Neal and he has a long way to go in the next 7 days if he's going to be able to beat back the Establishment and give North Carolina voters a real choice-- other than a basically meaningless choice between generic party labels-- in November.

Hagan rarely goes on the record saying anything. Her victory plan is to just be the establishment Democrat against the outsider in the primary and the generic Democrat against the hated Republican in November. And when she does go on record about something, she comes out against the basic values and principles that differentiate between the party of FDR and the party of George Bush. A corporate tool like Chuck Schumer may love her but she can't be trusted on choice, is as clueless as Dole on Iraq, is basically a George Bush Republican when it comes to tax policy, weak on economic policy, weak on ethics, adamantly unwilling to be pinned down on Equal Rights, on the wrong side of the health care issue, untrustworthy and confused about torture, weak on privacy rights, absolutely plutocratic when it comes to campaign finance reform, etc. She sounds like one of them, not one of us-- and certainly not the kind of progressive Democrat that Edwards has evolved into. In fact, you have to ask yourself, is Kay Hagan really a Democrat in anything but name? Hers is the party of corporate campaign contributions that are exchanged for favors at the expense of regular folks. 

It isn't likely that a Republican-light version of Elizabeth Dole is going to beat Elizabeth Dole, regardless of what Chuck Schumer's lizard brain is telling him. A few days ago the weekly paper in North Carolina's most Democratic area made passionate endorsements of the two candidates for real change-- Barack Obama for president and Jim Neal for U.S. Senator. The ten cogent reason they list for endorsing Obama are all also applicable to Neal-- except for #9:

He has a better chance of beating John McCain than Hillary Clinton does.

Jim Neal has the only chance of beating Elizabeth Dole. But the editors don't need to give Jim Neal a me-too endorsement. They had a whole set of reasons why he is a far better candidates-- and would make a far better U.S. Senator-- than Kay Hagan.

On the issues, there's a clear progressive choice in the Democratic primary: Chapel Hill businessman Jim Neal is our pick to take on Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole come November. And let's put it right out there: Neal is openly gay, which should no more influence whether he gets your vote than the fact that he's also openly white. What should influence it is his platform: Neal opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and supports getting our troops out now; he supports universal health care; is against capital punishment; wants to scrap No Child Left Behind, Bush's counterproductive education program; proposes making the federal tax system more progressive; and advocates an Apollo-style program to wean the country from imported oil and develop alternative-energy sources, including conservation.

On gay rights, Neal supports full equality, including marriage, as a matter of law. But he also recognizes that the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom when it comes to whether same-sex unions should be sanctioned by various faiths.

Given his background as a Wall Street investment banker and venture capitalist, Neal is at his best when dissecting the causes of the nation's widening gap between rich and poor and the erosion of middle-class jobs. He calls it "unconscionable" that corporate CEOs make 400 times as much money as the average worker. His prescription for fixing what ails us includes sweeping investments in education and our economic infrastructure, not war, and for junking free-trade policies in favor of fair-trade ones. He thinks the federal government should prepare to buy mortgages and refinance them to prevent foreclosures.

Sure, I'll vote for the monster, almost surely, if she's the Dem nominee--even though I don't think she and Bill will support the nominee if she isn't

BFFs Hill 'n' McCranky--isn't it a shame that they
can't run together to serve as co-presidents?

I think we can all agree that this has been a strange presidential season.

On the GOP side, starting with a field that could only have been assembled to illustrate the many varieties of incompetence, ideological wackitude, moral turpitude, and big-lie dishonesty huddled under the Tattered Tent of Modern Republicanism, the nomination has gone by acclimation--as a result of the Minister Hucksterbee Mind Meld that neutralized Willard Romney--to a candidate so pathetic and inept (not to mention corrupt, since of course Republicans would never hold that against him) that he'd already been written off as roadkill. Astonishingly, Senator McCranky, the sleaziest and most unprincipled contender in a field that was unbridled Sleazomania, now appears to command a united party poised to make a serious bid for the White House.

On the Democratic side, while there is certainly an element of surprise in the young and relatively untested Barack Obama winding up as one of the Last Candidates Standing, it was less surprising that the officially designated "major" candidates included no one whose stands on the issues might have inspired progressive voters. When the field narrowed to three, there was clearly appeal in some of the things John Edwards said, but for at least some of us there was never the sense that he was really committed to what he was saying, and hardly any clue as to what he might have been willing to fight for in the White House. (I do love that Elizabeth Edwards, but she wasn't the candidate.) Oh sure, he got screwed in terms of media attention, no question. But I don't think that's the only reason, or necessarily the principal reason, why his campaign never took off.

And then there were two--and things got really strange.

For those of us who'd been mostly sitting on the sidelines--unable to muster much enthusiasm for the Final Two but fully expecting to support whichever came out of the process, on the ground that he or she would be orders of magnitude preferable to whatever life form emerged from the Republican miasma--it was positively weird to find that we "undecideds" were viewed as suspicious persons if not actual enemy combatants by zealous partisans of the Final Two. (Of course it was surprising to begin with that those candidates aroused such zealous partisanship, at least among people who didn't see their candidate as a potential meal ticket.)

Still, for a lot of us, there came a point at which the Final Two began to separate. Perhaps because the Clinton campaign had been so spectacularly mismanaged, its tone and tactics came increasingly to reflect the squalid character of its inner circle, the people to whom the candidate had entrusted her fate. And they are (hmm, is there a delicate way to put this?) not just stunningly incompetent but some of the vilest people on the planet. True, reports now circulated that those people all hate one another, but then, who could help but hate them?

As the fog cleared, the Clinton campaign came to look eerily like any right-wing hate-and-smear job under the tutelage of Karl Rove. In the official campaign narrative, their candidate was always the saintly victim of unceasing vicious assaults from all sides. But on the ground what was visible was a barrage of innuendo, distortions, and outright lies orchestrated by the Clinton low command.

Most shockingly, Hill 'n' Bill have taken to all but endorsing their dear friend John McCranky in the event that she doesn't win the nomination.

The whole "3am phone call" garbage was always just that. In the one significant foreign-policy test she has faced, the vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, she could not possibly have failed more miserably. If she lacked information, it was her own fault--there was plenty of information to be had, and we know now that Sen. Bob Graham, who as ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee had seen the classified stuff, was begging his fellow Democrats to exercise their right to read it too.

True, Clinton had a lot of company among Senate Democrats who chose to take what they thought was the politically easy way out--to go along quietly, assuming that the political risk lay in sticking out their necks to resist the orgy of xenophobia being orchestrated by the White House. For once, though, it has turned out that just maybe there is a price to be paid for indulging in the gutlessness of expediency. Ain't that a kick in the head?

Senator Clinton of course has refused to back down or apologize for anything. Yet she expects us to believe that we should allow her to handle future national-security emergencies. In fact, she and Bill tell us that sooner than Senator Obama we should trust their pal McCranky, whose primitive and disaster-causing views on national security should automatically disqualify him from any public office.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Senator Obama was not only holding his ground but showing signs of emerging as a political figure of stature. As the attacks turned racial, he had one of his finest moments with his speech on race.

Yes, the speech was politically necessary, but he rose above necessity to address the subject frontally, in what could be the opening of the long-needed, long-postponed national conversation on race and racism. Note, by contrast, how Senator Clinton never faces challenges directly; she always sidles around them, tossing out carefully scripted invective and acting out her martyrdom--all so calculated in the delivery that one doesn't know what to believe about what she believes.

In more recent speeches Obama has undertaken some long-overdue rhetorical dismantling of the Bush regime. These are issues on which he might actually be able to bring together politically divided people in ways that might lead to positive action. I'm not getting all misty with optimism, but at least he is giving us something to hope for, while his opponent gives us only reasons for dread.

The real answer to the "3am phone call" nonsense, beyond the character of the candidates, is what kind of administration we could expect them to put together. Looking at the people Senator Clinton has put in charge of her campaign, is it possible to feel anything but horror at the thought of who would have her ear in the White House?

I had a frosty online exchange recently with someone whose sincerity as well as political experience and idealism I genuinely respect. He has, however, drunk the Clinton Kool-Aid, and has cast himself in the role of "honest broker" between factions he chooses to regard as equally responsible for the polarization. He had voiced concern on a political list that irreparable damage to Democratic hopes might be done by refusing to give the Clintonites their way on the Michigan and Florida delegate conundrum, especially as he had "heard say that Obama supporters were directly involved in preventing revotes in FL and MI."

Of course what he'd heard said was Clintonite bullshit propaganda. A more rational list member dismantled the case with regard to Michigan by simply running through the actual situation and sequence of possibilities there. But how do you talk to someone who thinks he's being "even-handed" when in fact he's being played for a sucker?

Here is an only slightly edited version of what I wrote him off-list:

Two thoughts, ---------:

(1) I'm pretty sure that your "I have heard say that" is concealing Clinton supporters. There's no way I can persuade you that I am NOT an "Obama supporter," that I was truly undecided until Clinton began turning herself into as vile and dishonest a candidate as, say, George W. Bush or John McCain. But the fact is that there is a radical difference between Clinton and Obama supporters, and the Clinton people have severed the link with truth and reality. I'm sure that there are many Clinton supporters who are genuinely deluded about reality, but they serve as tools of the flesh-crawlingly monstrous people who run the Clinton campaign, who truly don't give a damn about truth, only about winning. You can be sure that when they talk about Obama people trying to influence the outcome, it's because THEY have been trying thousands of times harder--albeit unsuccessfully--to CONTROL the outcome.

I see that ------- made a much more reasoned response with regard to the MI situation, and that's why she's so valuable to us all. I'll stick with my emotional response. Once we pretend that the Obama and Clinton supporters are comparable, we're trapped in the right-wing "fair and balanced" funhouse mirror.

(2) Someone will have to show me that the FL-and-MI argument isn't 100-percent bullshit. How many months did it take supposedly state-of-the-art "insider" types to grasp the pathetically simple reality that Democrats no longer have winner-take-all primaries, and THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING. By what margins would Clinton have to win in those states to significantly alter the delegate situation?

The only real advantage to Clinton of revotes in FL and MI would be a chance to ratchet up the scorched-earth tactics by which she and Bill clearly plan to put McCain in the White House if she doesn't get the nomination. I wish they gave us any reason to think that they share your wish to keep the party from breaking apart. I'm sort of coming to think that well-meaning initiatives like yours are hopeless precisely because the Clintons and their people have already determined the outcome. If they don't get what they want, they will prove that they SHOULD have.

Best,
Ken

I got a predictably frosty response, indicating that no conversation is possible between us here. But then, I didn't expect any, any more than I thought it was possible to have any sort of conversation with the respectable types of Democrats who adopted the right's meme of "Bush-bashing" as a weapon against those of us who insisted on branding the politics of Bushism as the catastrophe it has been.

My friend Peter makes what I think is a brilliant observation about our Hillary. She has, he suggests, turned into what her enemies always accused her of being. Of course they also accused her of being an ultra-liberal, when she really isn't even any kind of liberal, but Peter suggests thinking of that as just an epithet the Far Right hurls, more or less as a synonym for "evil." I think he's nailed this: She really has turned into the monster the loonies portrayed her as.

At the same time, my friend Leo, who is European, has taken to suggesting that, after all the years in which he's listened to me talk about the mystery of rabid Clinton-hating, it turns out to be surprisingly easy to hate the Clintons. Again, I would like to think that this is a recent development, that what the original Clinton-haters were hating was really something in themselves. But again, I can't disagree. On the basis of their performance in this campaign, I find myself now feeling terrible things about both Hill and Bill.

Nevertheless, I don't see any alternative to voting for Senator Clinton in the event that she wins the nomination. I wish I weren't so persuaded that the feeling isn't reciprocal. But I have hardly any doubt that in the event that she loses the nomination, she intends to prove that she was more "electable" by doing whatever it takes to make sure that her rival doesn't win. After all, all she has to do is directly or indirectly encourage her supporters to sit on their hands in November.


CASE IN POINT: ICKIEST HAROLD'S EXCELLENT
ADVENTURE FOMENTING RACE PANIC

After I wrote the above piece yesterday, Howie called my attention to news of super-slimy Clinton super-stooge Ickiest Harold's happy times trolling for superdelegates by working them into a panic over the Obama guy's race (which became a featured story on last night's Countdown). Class, pure class. Well, they do say the Clintons will do anything to win. These really are easy people to hate.

One thing I thought Obama's race speech accomplished--by couching his appeal in the form of an optimistic, inspirational exhortation that we Americans are better than that and can rise above these meaningless distinctions--was to begin to force irredeemable bigots out into the open, effectively declaring their irredeemability. You know, people like Rupert Murdoch (who thoughtfully pointed out that African-Americans haven't accomplished a darned thing) and Pat Buchanan (who's demanding to know why African-Americans haven't yet had the grace to thank white Americans for enslaving them).

Among others.

#

GIULIANI DID THE COUNTRY A SERVICE BY GOING AWAY. EDWARDS' DEPARTURE IS A TERRIBLE BLOW-- BUT I'LL PROBABLY VOTE FOR HIM ANYWAY

Around this time in the election cycle in 2004, the grassroot's first choice for president, Howard Dean, was driven from the race by a vast MSM conspiracy led by Bush allies Clear Channel and Fox. Dean was still on the California ballot when we had our primary but I decided to vote for John Edwards and not send some kind of amorphous "message" by voting for Dean. Right now I'm actually leaning towards sending a very clear message to Obama, Hillary and other Insider Democrats that I expect candidates of our party to stand up for progressive values.

Ironically there was no lack of vast MSM conspiracy over Edwards' candidacy either, although one based on ignoring him and what he stood for. Most Democrats are clueless about what John Edwards has been saying for the last year. They just know about The Haircut. A populist leader scares the hell out of corporate interests. Neither Hillary nor Obama is offering anything any corporate powers need to fear. They're both infinitely better than any of the pygmies but both are basically Insider candidates and neither ever held a candle to Edwards. My gut tells me the Clinton Machine is the worst eventuality the Democrats could offer but I don't feel that Obama, on balance, is so much better than Hillary for me to bother voting for him. We'll see.

I just got a phone call from one of Ken's and my oldest high school friend's, Stephan. He's a retired public school administrator in New York City who's going back and forth between Obama and Hillary. He likes them both and his main concern is electability. He didn't seem all that aware of what Edwards was all about except that he "seemed gay." I wonder how many Democrats are aware-- even vaguely-- that Edwards beat Hillary in Iowa and that focus groups showed him winning almost every single televised debate. Whatever modicum of coverage he was getting before Iowa, completely disappeared after the caucuses.

Edwards' biggest problem may have been that he was too compelling-- so compelling that his rivals effectively adopted his agenda. From the beginning, Edwards was positioning himself as the champion of Americans struggling to get ahead financially. And rather than simply offer populist rhetoric, he backed it with a serious, comprehensive set of policies.

By the time Clinton and Obama had fleshed out their respective agendas, however, there simply wasn't that much difference among them. Pundits frequently criticized Edwards for his unabashed populism and, it's true, his rhetoric was the most openly confrontational of the three leading Democrats.But in terms of what the three were actually proposing to do, the agendas were virtually identical-- not to mention widely popular, if the polls are to be believed. We're all populists now.

...Critics frequently accuse Edwards of being a phony and I claim no special insights into whether that's true. Maybe all of the talk about fighting for struggling Americans is heartfelt. Or maybe it's all just an act, the kind a good trial lawyer like Edwards could surely pull off. But whether genuine, artificial, or (as is usually the case with politicians) some combination thereof, Edwards' advocacy has served his party-- and his country-- well.

One of my friends working for Obama's campaign just sent me a statement from his candidate about Edwards. "John Edwards has spent a lifetime fighting to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the struggling, even when it wasn’t popular to do or covered in the news. At a time when our politics is too focused on who’s up and who’s down, he made a nation focus again on who matters-- the New Orleans child without a home, the West Virginia miner without a job, the families who live in that other America that is not seen or heard or talked about by our leaders in Washington. John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply that we can change this-- that two Americans can become one, and that our country can rally around this common purpose. So while his campaign may end today, the cause of their lives endures for all of us who still believe that we can achieve that dream of one America."

I recall Hillary said something equally touching, if slightly less eloquent. It would be great if whichever of them become president incorporates Edwards' perspective into the system of running the country. I can't imagine Hillary ever would, although she may actually believe she will. Obama? Probably not... but at least a chance, I guess.

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT JOHN EDWARDS REALLY IS A FIGHTER? LET HIM PROVE IT-- NOW, BEFORE WE HAVE TO VOTE

John Edwards has a chance to show he's for real and not just another Clinton or Obama

Why do Senate Democrats keep electing fatally conflicted colleagues as their leaders? They didn't learn their lesson from red state compromiser Tom Daschle, who the Republicans could twist into a babbling pretzel anytime they wanted to by pitting the progressive national party against his... more conservative South Dakota constituents. So when the Republicans humiliated them by defeating their leader with a third rate hack, they promptly selected another vulnerable centrist would could be easily pulled in a dozen different directions by a dozen conflicting needs. To most Democrats-- the real ones in America, not the compromised careerists and bribe-besotted swine Inside the Beltway-- granting law breaking corporate executives (who helped Bush and Cheney shred the Constitution by spying on Americans) retroactive immunity is just plain wrong. (You can see how we got here here and here.) I think there are even a considerable number of Republican voters who would agree. I mean this crap is just plain unpatriotic and criminal-coddling.

This afternoon Jane put up a plea at FDL to the more progressive of the Democrats seeking the presidential nomination, John Edwards, to do what the compromised Insiders, Hillary and Obama, have refused to do: LEAD.

John Edwards should challenge his rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to go back to Washington, DC and fight against retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

The Republicans are not going to let Reid punt and extend the Protect America Act for another 18 months so it looks like the FISA bill is going to come back up again on Monday. Chris Dodd's objection to Unanimous Consent still stands, so they will pick up in the middle of the Motion to Proceed debate.

Glenn Greenwald is also on the case. Corporate Media, of course, is demanding the Democrats-- who are always prone to do so without much pushing anyway-- to capitulate to Bush and the Far Right.

As always, conventional media wisdom is that Democrats will be harmed politically if they don't capitulate to the Big, Strong, Tough Republicans on all matters relating to national security (even though the efficacy of that fear-mongering tactic was empirically disproved in 2006). But isn't it painfully evident that a far greater liability for Democrats at this point than being "soft on terrorism" is their refusal and failure to demonstrate that they will take a stand -- any stand -- against this extremely weakened President and his discredited political party, and therefore prove they stand for something?
The only way for there to be any prospect of impeding Bush's most extreme demands for vast warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunity for lawbreaking telecoms is for the presidential candidates -- Obama, Edwards and Clinton -- to demonstrate (rather than speak about) real "leadership" and take a stand in support of Chris Dodd and his imminent filibuster. There will be campaigns beginning this week to persuade and pressure them to do so -- I will be posting extensively about them here. Any efforts to stop warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity is almost certain to fail without the active support of the presidential candidates, who these days have a virtual monopoly on the ability to set agendas and shape media attention.
The three leading recipients of telecom money for this election cycle are, unsurprisingly, [starting with "Mr. Clean Filthy"] the three sitting Senators running for President (with two Democratic members who are key to amnesty -- Jay Rockefeller and [surprise, surprise] Rahm Emanuel -- close behind). That's how "Washington works" -- the process they are all pledging to battle and change. Needless to say, all of the viable GOP presidential candidates will be blindly supportive of whatever surveillance powers and lawbreaking immunity the President demands, but thus far, Obama and (less emphatically) Clinton have both claimed that they oppose such measures and thus pledged to support a Dodd-led filibuster.

But that will have meaning only if there is an active effort on their part. It will be increasingly difficult to listen to Edwards, Obama and Clinton tout their supreme leadership attributes and their commitment to "changing the way Washington works" if they choose to sit by, more or less mute, and allow such a blatant and corrupt evisceration of the rule of law -- and such a vast and permanent expansion of the limitless surveillance state -- to occur without a fight. Any one of them, or all three, has a unique opportunity to actually demonstrate with actions, rather than pretty speeches, their commitment to the principles they claim to espouse.

Is Edwards just another Insider faker or will he stop talking about being a leader and BE a leader? We already know that neither Clinton nor Obama is even capable of such a thing, not in any real sense.


UPDATE: BUSH DEMANDS RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY BY FEBRUARY 1-- OR ELSE

"Putting off the vote for a second time riled White House officials and Republicans on Tuesday, because they insist that national security will be put at risk if Congress does not meet a Feb. 1 deadline to amend the eavesdropping law." So? Who gives a damn if these clowns are riled. The most hated man to ever occupy the White House is going to call Democrats names? Who cares what George Bush or his despised surrogates say about anything? If he doesn't get retroactive immunity for his cronies and campaign contributors does that mean he won't be able to find Osama bin-Laden? Does it mean Rudy Giuliani will put on an evening gown and go on all the late night shows and talk about how he save America after 9/11? Or does it mean Jay Rockefeller will switch parties so he can feel good about all the bribes he takes from the telecom companies he's supposed to be watching?

Advocates for civil liberties fault the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, for what they see as a weak effort to block the White House immunity plan. Mr. Reid opposes immunity, but his decision to allow an initial vote on the Intelligence Committee plan, with immunity, has angered opponents.

“If Senator Reid wanted to win, he would have put the judiciary vote on the floor first,” Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “It seems as if he wants to lose.”

...Even if the Senate does approve a bill that includes immunity, it seems unlikely that such a plan could be signed into law before the Feb. 1 deadline, Congressional officials said.

Because the House has passed a measure that did not include immunity, the issue would first have to go before a conference committee to work out an agreement between the two versions. That could take weeks.

And who in the House has taken the most bribes from the telecoms? Not an actual Republican, but Rahm Emanuel. You want to count on him to defend our civil liberties?


UPDATE: THE PUBLIC DOES NOT WANT RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY FOR THESE CROOKED BUSH CRONIES

I don't understand why Democrat senators-- other than the ones like Jay Rockefeller who are being massively bribed-- would support Bush on this travesty of Justice. Usually when the spineless wonders on Capitol Hill buckle under this way, it's because they fear The People will back the Republican Insiders. Well, every poll shows that the American people do not want retroactive immunity granted. No senator who votes for it, is fit to call himself a Democrat. Needless to say, Bush shill and fake moderate Susan Collins came out in favor of retroactive immunity today (the Lieberman position that she always buys into); Tom Allen, the progressive congressman opposing her re-election effort is strongly opposed to retroactive immunity for all criminals, not matter who they tried to bribe. A statement from Congressman Allen's office:

“Congressman Allen opposes providing retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies for their involvement in warrantless domestic surveillance. Immunity would effectively end the case the Maine PUC filed on behalf of Maine consumers. The pending cases can be resolved in a way that protects national security. The Administration’s attempts to derail litigation with the claim of ‘state secrets’ is merely an attempt to avoid giving substantive answers about their possible violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Neither the government nor large telecommunications corporations are above the law; everyone must be held accountable.”

May I suggest that any DWT readers who care about the Constitution, consider making a donation to Tom Allen's campaign today.

Which candidate said, "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy?"

IOWA BULLETIN [updated 12:11am ET]:

I still can't get terribly excited about this whole Iowa business, especially since almost everything about the caucus results is apt to be grotesquely misinterpreted and/or stretched wildly out of proportion, but for the record, the Washington Post website is showing:

DEMOCRATS (100 percent of precincts reporting)
Obama, 38 percent
Edwards, 30 percent
Clinton, 29 percent
other, 3 percent

REPUBLICANS (87 percent of precincts reporting)
Huckabee, 34 percent
Romney, 26 percent
Thompson, 13 percent
other, 27 percent

Already on washingtonpost.com we hear about how Senator Clinton has suffered a "stinging setback" (Chris Cillizza, who else?), and how Huckaroo "[rode] a wave of evangelical fervor to victory" (with, oh so predictably, no mention of his populist rhetoric).

Maybe. (I guess if enough people say Senator Clinton was stingingly set back, she was.) Still, I think David Sirota came a lot closer to the mark earlier today:

"[N]o matter who wins, it is absolutely great that economic populism has taken center stage so far in the presidential contest. Thanks to candidates like John Edwards and Mike Huckabee ignoring the Punditburo's attacks and trumpeting the populist line, Wall Street-backed candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had to resort to posing as populists as well - and that's a good thing. The more candidates channeling the public's righteous anger at corporate greed and economic inequality, the better."

--Ken

"Would you even be willing to utter the words, 'I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy?' 'Cause the candidate who understands that, and who sees it as the root of all evil -- including the root of global warming -- is the President who may lead us to a place of sanity, justice and peace."
--Michael Moore, speaking rhetorically to Al Gore, in his current open letter, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around?," assessing the three leading Democratic presidential candidates

"Do you feel the same as me?" says Mike. "That the Democratic front-runners are a less-than-stellar group of candidates, and that none of them are the 'slam dunk' we wish they were? Of course, there are wonderful things about each of them. Any one of them would be infinitely better than what we have now."

That's what has him reaching out to Al Gore. But this ringing declaration has clearly gotten his attention. I'm sure everyone knows which of the Big Three candidates said, "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." It couldn't have come from Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. It has to be John Edwards.

Mike makes clear that he's not endorsing anyone at this point. "This is simply how I feel in the first week of the process to replace George W. Bush," he says. But he's clearly thinking along the same lines that Howie was the other day:

Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls. I suspect this is why Edwards is doing so well in Iowa, even though he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. He won't take the big checks from the corporate PACs, and he is alone among the top three candidates in agreeing to limit his spending and be publicly funded. He has said, point-blank, that he's going after the drug companies and the oil companies and anyone else who is messing with the American worker. The media clearly find him to be a threat, probably because he will go after their monopolistic power, too. This
is Roosevelt/Truman kind of talk. That's why it's resonating with people in Iowa, even though he doesn't get the attention Obama and Hillary get -- and that lack of coverage may cost him the first place spot tomorrow night. After all, he is one of those white guys who's been running things for far too long.

And he voted for the war. But unlike Senator Clinton, he has stated quite forcefully that he was wrong. And he has remorse. Should he be forgiven? Did he learn his lesson? Like Hillary and Obama, he refused to promise in a September debate that there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of his first term in 2013. But this week in Iowa, he changed his mind. He went further than Clinton and Obama and said he'd have all the troops home in less than a year.

Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the single-payer kind all other civilized countries have. His plan doesn't go as fast as I would like, but he is the only one who has correctly pointed out that the health insurance companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the table.

#

WHAT KIND OF A PRESIDENT DO WE WANT-- AN INSIDER AND CORPORATE SHILL OR AN INDEPENDENT OUTSIDER READY TO KICK SOME SERIOUS BUTT?

This morning I was watching a talk show on the BBC and the moderator asked for predictions about the biggest story of 2008-- the U.S. elections. Two of the talking heads thought McCain would win, one Clinton and one Obama. When talking about the Democratic nomination, no one mentioned Edwards; it was all Clinton the Insider who would provide a smooth transition from the Bush years and wouldn't change much and the quasi-"revolutionary" Obama. Do they ever have that wrong-- at least the part about Obama. Democrats in Iowa and Democrats starting to pay attention around the country are noticing that there is only one agent of change running this year: John Edwards. You want more of the same? Vote for Clinton, Obama or any of the pathetic pygmies seeking to personify a third George Bush term. You wanna shake things up a little? Edwards is the one. Insiders are scared shitless of him; his game plan will win in Iowa. Meanwhile an Insider hack like Stuart Rothenberg is already running around like a chicken without a head as Edwards surges and looks more and more like the victor in the first contest-- great news for anyone who actually knows the U.S. must end the war in Iraq.

Democrats must decide whether they want a candidate who is angry and confrontational, and who sees those favoring compromise as traitors (Edwards), or a candidate who presents himself as a uniter (Obama), or a candidate who presents herself as someone who understands the ways of Washington and can get things done (Clinton).

While Clinton and Obama both acknowledge the importance of working with various interests, including Capitol Hill Republicans and the business community, to come up with solutions to key problems, Edwards sounds more and more like the neighborhood bully who plans to dictate what is to be done.

The former North Carolina senator is running a classic populist campaign that would have made William Jennings Bryan (or Ralph Nader) proud. Everything is Corporate America’s fault. But he’s also portraying himself as fighting for the middle class and able to appeal to swing voters and even Republicans in a general election.

...But let’s be very clear: Given the North Carolina Democrat’s rhetoric and agenda, an Edwards Presidency would likely rip the nation apart – even further apart than Bush has torn it.

On Capitol Hill, Edwards’s “us versus them” rhetoric and legislative agenda would almost certainly make an already bitter mood even worse. He would in the blink of an eye unify the GOP and open up divisions in his own party’s ranks. Congressional Republicans would circle the wagons in an effort to stop Edwards’s agenda.

Non-insiders, on the other hand, are starting to see Edwards as the one man who can help America break free of it's shameful Bush past, someone who really will right the wrongs of the past 8 (if not 28 years). Without Ralph Nader 2000 run, George Bush, if remembered at all, would be known as a hapless, sub-mediocre former Texas governor. Today Nader let loose on Clinton for the Bush-lite Insider and representative of a hopelessly corrupt system that she is. He acknowledged that Edwards is the only one fit for the job.

"The issue is corporate power and who controls our political system and it's not who has experience for six years or two years," he said, alluding to an ongoing debate over experience between Clinton and freshman Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"She has experience in the Senate, and what that experience has meant is going soft on cracking down on corporate crime, fraud, and abuse, soft on cutting tens of millions in corporate subsidies," he continued.

...Nader, a four-time presidential candidate, called Edwards a Democratic "glimmer of hope." He has long criticized Democrats as indistinguishable from Republicans, chiding both parties as slaves to corporate financing and interests.

And Nader isn't the only non-hack to slam back at the Rothenbergs, Clintons, Bushes, Romneys and Obamas. While fake populist Mike Hucksterbee wows credulous Republican rubes with his "Look at this negative ad about that horrible pro-abortion Mormon cultist and lying flip flopper I decided not to air," a real populist who speaks a language millions of ordinary Americans understand has endorsed Edwards. Yesterday John Nichols reported in The Nation why John Mellencamp is in Iowa supporting Edwards-- and why that's more important than the bevy of airheads who back Clinton, Obama, Giuliani and Huckabee.

Edwards "has waged a dramatically different campaign than Obama's feel-good effort. Where Obama has run the softest sort of campaign, Edwards is mounting a edgy, muscular effort that owes more to the memory of Paul Wellstone or the sensibilities of Ralph Nader than to the smooth triangulations of Bill Clinton or the not-so-smooth compromises of John Kerry. Edwards has fought his way back into contention with aggressively populist positions, anti-corporate rhetoric and a campaign that eschews glitz for grit. Necessarily, the former senator from North Carolina opts for a different sort of celebrity than the other contenders."

So it is that Mellencamp will come to Iowa Wednesday to close the Edwards campaign off with a "This Is Our Country" rally at the not-exactly-Hollywood Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines. (In case anyone is missing the point here, they will be distributing the tickets from the United Steelworkers Local 310 hall.)

Where Winfrey brought a big name but little in the way of a track record on the issues that are fundamental to the rural and small-town Iowans who will play a disproportional role in Thursday's caucuses, Mellencamp is more than just another celebrity taking a lap around the policy arena.

For a quarter century, the singer has been in the thick of the fight on behalf of the rural families he immortalized in the video for "Rain on the Scarecrow," his epic song about the farm crisis that buffeted Iowa and neighboring states in the 1980s and never really ended.

Mellencamp has not merely sung about withering small towns and farm foreclosures. As a organizer of Farm Aid, he has brought some of the biggest stars in the world to benefit concerts in Iowa and surrounding states, and he has helped to distribute the money raised at those events to organizations across Iowa.

Farm Aid is nonpartisan. It's not endorsing in this race. But Mellencamp is. The singer, who this year will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but whose music remains vital enough to have earned a 2008 Grammy nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, was lobbied for support by other campaigns, especially Clinton's. But he has a long relationship with Edwards. He has an even longer relationship with the issues that Edwards is talking about. Indeed, his credibility is grounded in the recognition that Mellencamp has repeatedly taken career-risking anti-war, anti-racist and anti-poverty stances that other celebrities of his stature tend to avoid.

What matters, of course, is the fact of that credibility -- and the fact that it is so closely tied to the farm and rural issues that have meaning even in the more urbanized regions of Iowa. That is why, if there is an endorsement that is going to have meaning with the people who drive down country roads to attend caucuses on what looks to be a very cold and unforgiving Thursday night, it is likely to be that of the guy who proudly sings that, "I was born in a small town..."

If you check our Blue America site here at DWT you'll see that we're concentrating our efforts on House and Senate seats again this year. To me the most important races looming, the ones I plan to concentrate on for the next couple of months are Democratic primaries that pit agents of change against insider hacks-- like agent of change Donna Edwards vs hack Al Wynn in Maryland, agent of change John Laesch vs a Blue Dog hack named Foster in Illinois, and agent of change Mark Pera vs hack Dan Lipinski. Those are the races we urge our readers to contribute to this month. But... if any of our readers happen to live in Iowa or New Hampshire, please think carefully about doing the right thing and voting for John Edwards.


UPDATE: THE AGONIST ENDORSEMENT

Very much worth careful consideration for everyone in Iowa tomorrow. Also very worth paying attention to is Jane's on the scene coverage at FDL for the next few days. That's where I'm turning to for the straight story, not to the shallow hacks at CNN or the Washington Post.

IF JOHN EDWARDS IS THE BEST, WHO IS THE WORST CANDIDATE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT?

The first time I met Howard Dean I didn't know much about him. Because a trade organization I was part of had once donated a great sum of money to some Democratic Party committee Clinton was hawking money for, most of the Democratic presidential candidates had been calling and asking for a meeting with me. Dick Gephart I asked to leave me the hell alone and stop bothering me. Dean I invited over for breakfast. But all I knew about him was that he opposed Bush's Iraq war. I was still leaning towards Edwards when Dean came over. When he left I was a 100% Howard Dean partisan. And it was his strong stance on health care and against the insurance companies that won me over.

The latest polling from Iowa shows that John Edwards could be on the verge of pulling off a stupendous upset, sending Lieberman's protege from Illinois back to learn how to be a halfway decent senator and pitting the ultimate insider, Clinton, against someone who has learned to embrace the aspirations of real Americans, Edwards.

And according to Aaron Lewis of CBS News, Edwards has promised to take on a far worse enemy of ordinary Americans than Osama bin-Laden-- Big Insurance. After telling a story about how an insurance company tried denying a claim-- causing the death of a young woman who was entitled to coverage-- he came right out and said something that-- if you believe him-- makes him the only candidate qualified to be the peoples' president:

Edwards also told the audience of about a hundred people at the Score Pavillion in Nevada, Iowa, that it will take a fighter (i.e. him)-- and not a negotiator (i.e. Obama)-- to take on large insurance companies like CIGNA.

"Anybody who thinks that we don't have a fight in front of us is living in Never-Never Land," he said.

And if Edwards is the best, as hard as it is to pick the absolute worst, today's Concord Monitor took a good shot and came up with... Willard.

In the 2008 campaign for president, there are numerous issues on which Romney has no record, and so voters must take him at his word. On these issues, those words are often chilling. While other candidates of both parties speak of restoring America's moral leadership in the world, Romney has said he'd like to "double" the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where inmates have been held for years without formal charge or access to the courts. He dodges the issue of torture- unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won't do it.

When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it.

Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.

DO WE EVEN DESERVE TO HAVE GOD ON OUR SIDE?

If "God" existed, the answer to that question would be, a priori, unknowable-- so let's not dwell on it. Instead let's dwell on two other things. First, the best of the three top-tier Democrats, John Edwards, just pulled ahead in Iowa polling-- and pulled ahead very strongly. At this point you would have to say he is the favorite to win the caucuses.

And second, at the same time that Edwards is surging, the pathetic pygmies, as Gingrich termed the GOP candidates for president, have been cannibalizing each other on their arcane religionist doctrines, turning off normal Americans who are aghast that the Republican battle for the right to personify a third George Bush term has degenerated into some kind of a battle defining who is more of a religionist nutcase.

Few Democrats are attacking Mike Huckabee, silently praying that the GOP nominates him, since he is clearly the least fit among the breathtakingly unfit for the presidency. And their prayers seem to be working. After questioning the appropriateness of nominating a cult member (Mormon Mitt)-- and then apologizing after the damage was done-- Huckabee has taken to sending not-so-subliminal messages to the bizarre and backward religionist fanatics in Iowa who support him.

The worthless Republican nomination is a complete and utter mess, and even far-right partisans and extremists are finally admitting that there is a good reason why "None of the Above" wins every single preference poll among registered Republicans. "None of the Above" wins because none of the GOP's potential nominees is fit to get anywhere near the White House-- and even the deranged 25% of Americans who still think Bush is doing a good job have come to realize that. The campaign has brought that into clearer and clearer focus, and as each presidential wannabe gets better-known to the public, he is rejected. Huckabee is just the latest to make Republicans want to puke. In the end they may well just shrug their shoulders, hold their noses, convince themselves that the one who disagrees with the GOP on almost everything may be electable-- he isn't-- and just allow Giuliani to ooze into the nomination.


UPDATE: THE NONE OF THE ABOVE MEME HAS TAKEN HOLD in GOPLAND

Longtime Republican Party propagandist Tony Blankley agrees that Republican voters won't be able to settle on which pygmy to make the sacrificial lamb.

JOHN EDWARDS WOULD PROBABLY MAKE THE BEST PRESIDENT. DOES HE HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN THE NOMINATION?

In the 2004 California primary I voted for John Edwards. I had met him almost a year before that day-- my friend Casey worked for his campaign and he introduced us and I had been very impressed-- but I voted for him because the corporately-controlled mass media had already destroyed the only Democrat they truly feared, the only Democrat preaching earth-shattering change, my candidate, Howard Dean. This year, it is Edwards who is the candidate of real change. Everyone I know seems to think he'd make the best president but they all feel his quest for the White House is hopeless and that it is either the hideously flawed Hillary Clinton or the slightly less flawed Barack Obama who is destined to do battle with whichever one of the evil and pathetic pygmies Republican extremists who participate in their party's primaries decide is more tolerable than None of the Above.

The perspective I've gained from my trip through south Asia and my ability to spend hours that are normally spent at the keyboard just meditating, has made it clearer and clearer to me that John Edwards is the only person remotely able to win the nomination who would be the best and most courageous and unbought president. I've disagreed with him on plenty but he's grown tremendously since I me him in person 4 years ago. He's a long shot but if I were a Democrat in Iowa or New Hampshire, I'd be doing all I could to help create the momentum that will save our country from more years of, at best, compromised mediocrity of leadership.

This week's Newsweek features Edwards on the cover, like a beacon of hope. But Newsweek isn't sugar-coating anything. Things look bleak for Edwards right now and it will take a great deal to turn things around at this point, things his campaign have been working on very diligently for a long time.

Things haven't worked out quite the way he planned. He'd envisioned the campaign coming down to a two-person race between him and Hillary Clinton—- a match-up he thought he could win by exploiting her divisiveness and high negatives. Barack Obama spoiled that by rivaling Edwards in charisma and optimism, siphoning away money and attention. And early missteps—the $400 haircut, the 25,000-square-foot mansion, the job at a hedge fund—raised questions about his authenticity and fed an impression among some voters that his common-man populism was more conceit than conviction. Now, with the Iowa caucuses just a few weeks away, he finds himself trying to talk his way up from third place.

...On the stump, Edwards campaigns with the urgency of a man who is running out of time. He might be. A third-place showing in Iowa would likely spell the end of his campaign, and his presidential ambitions, for good. Yet Edwards believes he can still come from behind for an upset win. Political reporters may like the story line (and simplicity) of depicting Iowa as a Clinton-Obama smackdown, but Edwards's strategists say that the media and pollsters are overlooking a more important, if less glamorous, story.

For months, Edwards has been rounding up support in the state's rural precincts where the front runners have paid less attention. While Obama and Clinton have drawn crowds in the thousands in places like Des Moines and Ames, Edwards has been winning over people in tiny towns like Sac City (population: 2,189). That's important, the strategists say, because under Iowa's arcane caucus rules, a precinct where 25 people show up to vote gets the same number of delegates as a place that packs in 2,500. In other words, even if he loses to Obama and Clinton in the state's bigger cities, he can still win by wrapping up smaller, far-flung precincts that other candidates have ignored. "The bulk of our support is in small and medium counties," says Jennifer O'Malley, Edwards's Iowa state director. O'Malley says Edwards has visited all 99 counties in the state; the campaign has so far trained captains covering 90 percent of all 1,781 precincts. Rural voters are sometimes reluctant to caucus, so the campaign has been enlisting respected community leaders to encourage first-timers to get past their apathy or fear.

The rest of the Newsweek story is a shallow, second-rate bio but worth reading through for a feel for what makes Edwards tick-- and why a leader like him would be preferable to any of the Establishment shills more likely to wind up with the nomination. He's also got a wife I'd love to see as first lady. And wouldn't it be completely sickening if the Democrats offer some corporate-friendly, cautious Insider hack, like Clinton or Obama, and the Republicans end up with a pseudo-populist?

TOM SELLECK, HILLARY CLINTON AND THE LITTLE INVISIBLE PEOPLE

I guess they're so small because they don't eat any protein-- or much of anything-- and neither did their parents, grandparents or ancestors. I'm not in India anymore; I'm in Thailand. You don't see much of that kind of grinding, horrific poverty in Bangkok. Nor do you see the levels of garish displays of conspicuous consumption like you see in Delhi. You see some and you do see some people in appalling poverty. But it isn't anything like the extremes you see in India. In Delhi wherever I went on the streets there were always clusters of small, very dark, very skinny people. They're everywhere, but no one seems to notice. There are hundreds of millions of them-- more of them in India than the entire population of the United States! And no one seems to notice them. They don't own anything but the rags on their backs and I've never been able to figure out how they exist. The begging can't possibly support them, even if every tourist and every trendy call center-walla gives (far from the case; no one notices them).

I didn't cry the whole time I was in India. It was simply too horrible to fathom. Families laying in the filth and dust with stray dogs night after night, wrapped in their rags, bundled around a little fire burning garbage. Delhi's cold. I've being seeing it since I started coming to India in 1969. It's just unfathomable. Has anyone cared about these millions and millions of people since a right-wing religious fanatic assassinated their champion, Mahatma Gandhi 60 years ago?

I cried tonight though, here in happy, happy Bangkok. In retrospect I think the reality of India caught up with me. But what set me off was a speech on TV, a speech by Tom Selleck, playing fictional Michigan Governor Jim Pryce who had just won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidency in a 2000 film I had never heard of, Running Mates. What set me off was the juxtaposition of "Pryce's" spontaneous, inspiring, courageous acceptance speech at the end of the film with my own musings about the unlikelihood that Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama) could ever be moved to give such a heartfelt and edgy, populist speech.

The movie paints a realistically tawdry picture of U.S. politics. The big money interests, it is asserted, control it all. Pryce, acting out of his basest instincts-- like too many Insider Democrats do, substituting fear and ambition for courage and the public interest-- decides to throw his lot in with the Establishment Insiders who haven't been able to prevent his nomination but are willing to donate $100,000,000 towards his campaign for a piece of the action. At the last minute-- on the podium of the Convention-- he tosses away the second half of his prepared speech and reneges, reverting to form as a populist and reformer, denouncing the plutocrats and their stranglehold on the American political system. He tells the whole nation that "The government of the United States is not on the auction block and America is not for sale."

It was thrilling and depressing at the same time-- inspiring in terms of what could be, disheartening in what really is. I have a stronger and stronger feeling that I will kick myself for not having jumped in and gotten behind John Edwards' campaign months ago.

Not Tom Selleck: