ID: 118926
Date Added: 2007-03-24
Date Modified: 2008-06-23
070319: John Edwards Presidential Campaign in Serious Trouble
document
Edward Pickersgill, Passing Times, 19 March 2007
|
|
|
document 1 of 8
Passing Times
the journey is always
more interesting to me
than the arrival
EDWARD PICKERSGILL
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
19 March 2007
John Edwards Presidential Campaign in Serious Trouble & He May Quit the Race
Rumours have been surfacing among Democrats in the John Edwards presidential campaign that he won't make it to the primaries in January and February 2008 never mind convention in August.... And, folks, with Florida moving its primaries to late January and California to February 5th the Edwards campaign is shaking big time.
It used to be that a wide range of candidates could stay the course to hit the first primaries in little states like New Hampshire. If they rang the right music notes they stood a chance of attracting the kind of bucks needed to run decent campaigns in the larger states and then take a serious run at the major sources of votes in monster primaries such as California. That strategy is now toasted.
The Edwards campaign is already coming up nerve wrenchingly close to empty accessing serious campaign donors. The Clinton campaign is literally sucking the big sponges dry. Rumour has it Edwards will step aside well before the end of 2007. He's young enough to take another run down the road, unless he gets completely devastated in the new configuration of primaries.
Parallel to the rumours that Edwards can't raise the bucks to make a good showing is a mounting indication that he will step aside in favour of Al Gore... and that party hard noses will convince Hillary Clinton to see the light and go for the VP position in a Gore campaign. She'll bring the money and he'll be the next President.
In the meantime Hillary will stay in the firing line, take the heat and prepare the campaign for a Gore coronation. (Barach Obama, incidentally, is irrelevant in the current Democrat process.)
Now for those of us outside America comes the FAQ: what difference will all this make to world peace and ending the occupation of Iraq. Answer: no difference at all. We've been inundated recently with mainstream Democrat power brokers trying to spin a progressive position based on staying in Iraq till late August 2008 (coincident with their Convention). Essentially the Democrats are positioning themselves as "kinder, gentler" darth invaders.
It is often said the world needs American activists to stand up and stay up in attempts to shut down the Bush regime. Electorally it could be said we need progressives and peaceniks inside the Democratic Party to do exactly the same thing. Unfortunately we know that without a sea change in the way the system and the two main parties themselves operate... money talks and cannot hear our screams. For "them" it is "our" ineffectiveness against their monied power that proves them right every time.
None of this makes me feel powerless nor mournful about the possibility of positive social change. What I see is more of the same for a while yet and some brief period where it all gets a lot worse. Soon enough America (and its electoral systems) will run out of money and either go completely insane (economically and socially) or will come to its senses and look to give birth again to the short-lived social revolution of 1776.
In the meanwhile, of course, we can work locally to the best of our ability to protect ourselves and our interests from the footprints of the rabid elephants and donkeys of American politics. John Edwards will be okay no matter what happens this year and next. The rest of us will just have to do our best for a while longer ... at least until America loses its status as the sole superpower on planet earth. By my calculations that reign of terror won't last too much longer.
No matter how many 100s of millions of dollars Democrats pour into choosing their next presidential candidate and then however many thousands of millions they and Republicans pour into the presidential campaign itself... the Chinese and the Russians and a variety of "Muslim countries" will have their say in ways the American dollar will be unable to counteract.
CORNET JOYCE comments:
The DLC (Democratic Losers' Council) is, of course, in full command of the "democratic party" as it has been for at least a decade and a half. Having attained this great prize but lost out to the GOP in the struggle for place and patronage, the DLC itself has now developed schisms. Clinton on the right embraces the original lines laid down by the DLC bosses Al Fromm and Will Marshall. Obama, having declared himself a disciple of Clinton, has now drifted centerward, while Gore and then Edwards moved rhetorically farther to establish a left wing of the DLC.
I've declined to vote for the DP nominee for the throne in 75% of elections in my lifetime. The only candidates I can think of who would draw my enthusiastic support would be Rocky Anderson and Michael Moore. But if Gore is indeed the nominee I'll vote for him on the basis of the excellent speech he delivered on the national security state and the occupation of Iraq. He sounded like the real Al Gore (his father). If the right wing of the DLC insists on Clinton I may well do something nobody in my family has done since 1864 - vote "republican."
"What I see is more of the same for a while yet and some brief period where it all gets a lot worse. Soon enough America (and its electoral systems) will run out of money and either go completely insane (economically and socially) or will come to its senses and look to give birth again to the short-lived social revolution of 1776." - Edward P., 2007
"I now know from the information I obtain upon the spot, that the impressions that then distressed me, for I was proud of America, were but too well founded. She was turning her back on her own glory, and making hasty strides in the retrograde path of oblivion. But a spark from the altar of Seventy-six, unextinguished and unextinguishable through the long night of error, is again lighting up, in every part of the Union, the genuine name of rational liberty." - Tom Paine, "To the Citizens of the United States and Particularly To the Leaders of the Federal Faction", c. 1802
Closed
Passing Times
