John Edwards 2008: What’s not to like

WASHINGTON — There’s losing. There’s losing honorably. And then there’s John Edwards.

-snip

Then there is John Edwards. He’s not going to be president either. He stays in the race because, with the Democrats’ proportional representation system, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton might end up in a very close delegate race — perhaps allowing an also-ran with, say, 10 percent of the delegates to act as kingmaker at the convention.

It’s a prize of sorts, it might even be tradeable for a Cabinet position. But at considerable cost. His campaign has been a spectacle.

Edwards has made much of his renunciation of his Iraq War vote. But he has not stopped there. His entire campaign has been an orgy of regret and renunciation.

– As senator, he voted in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that he now denounces.

– As senator, he voted for storing nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Twice. He is now fiercely opposed.

– As senator, he voted for the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind education reform. He now campaigns against it, promising to have it “radically overhauled.”

– As senator, he voted for the Patriot Act, calling it “a good bill … and I am pleased to support it.” He now attacks it.

– As senator, he voted to give China normalized trade relations. Need I say? He now campaigns against liberalized trade with China as a sellout of the middle class to the great multinational agents of greed, etc.

Breathtaking. People can change their minds about something. But everything? The man served one term in the Senate. He left not a single substantial piece of legislation to his name, only an astonishing string of votes on trade, education, civil liberties, energy, bankruptcy and, of course, war that now he not only renounces but inveighs against.

Today he plays the avenging angel, engaged in an “epic struggle” against the great economic malefactors that “have literally,” he assures us, “taken over the government.” He is angry, embodying the familiar zeal of the convert, ready to immolate anyone who benightedly holds to any revelation other than the zealot’s very latest.

Nothing new about a convert. Nothing new about a zealous convert. What is different about Edwards is his endlessly repeated claim that the raging populist of today is what he has always been. That this has been the “cause of my life,” the very core of his being, ingrained in him on his father’s knee or at the mill or wherever, depending on the anecdote he’s telling. You must understand: This is not politics for him. “This fight is deeply personal to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole life.”

Except for his years as senator, the only public office he’s ever held. The audacity of the all-my-life trope is staggering. By his own endlessly self-confessed record, his current pose is a coat of paint newly acquired. His claim that it is an expression of his inner soul is a farce.

A cynical farce that is particularly galling to left-liberals of real authenticity. “The one (presidential candidate) that is the most problematic is Edwards,” Sen. Russ Feingold told The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wis., “who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq War. … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.”

It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the whole world. But for 4 percent of the Nevada caucuses?

Washington Post 1/25/08

MANCHESTER, NH — Revelations in today’s New York Times regarding John Edwards’ staunch pro-war stance as a Vice Presidential candidate in 2004 “raise serious questions about the credibility of his positions on every issue being debated in this Presidential campaign,” Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said today.“Voters have every right to ask, ‘Were you telling the truth then, John, or are you telling the truth now?’ And Senator Edwards has a responsibility to answer,” Kucinich said.

In a major story today about the relationship between Edwards and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 campaign, the Times reported, “Mr. Kerry had increasing doubts about the war. But Mr. Edwards argued that they should not renounce their votes — they had to show conviction and consistency.” Edwards was a co-sponsor of the 2002 war authorization resolution, along with Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

“Mr. Kerry yielded to his running mate,” according to the Times story, and told reporters early in the 2004 campaign that he would still have voted for the 2002 war authorization even knowing that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Six weeks later, in a speech at New York University, he reversed himself, over the objections of Edwards, the Times reported. A year later, in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Edwards reversed his own position, a move that some Kerry aides described as “politically expedient” in the planned run-up to the 2008 Presidential campaign.

“John Kerry was hammered by the Republicans and by many in the media for changing his positions on the war and other issues in the 2004 campaign,” Kucinich noted. “The fact of the matter is that he wanted to come out against the war in 2004, and John Edwards argued against it.”

“Now,” Kucinich continued, “we have a candidate who voted for the war and voted to fund the war, but says he against it. He voted for the Patriot Act, and now he complains about its abuses. He voted for China Trade in 2000 knowing that Americans would be hurt, and now he’s decrying the unsafe products pouring into this nation from China. He supported nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, now he’s against it.” “Will the real John Edwards please stand up?” Kucinich said.

Dennis 4 President 11/21/07
http://www.dennis4president.com/go/newsroom/edwards%92-pro%11war-posture-in-%9204-raises-serious-credibility-questions/

John Edwards, when he was a North Carolina senator, voted twice to open the dump and once against it.

snip

The former 2004 vice presidential nominee’s has a mixed record on the issue.

After he was selected as Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s running mate, Edwards announced he would defer to Kerry’s anti-Yucca position and promised Nevada Sen. Harry Reid he would fight the project.

The former North Carolina senator has said he was trying to protect his constituents by supporting the dump in Nevada.

“We had an issue in North Carolina where they were going to start storing nuclear waste in North Carolina unless we had some other place for the nuclear waste,” Edwards said on his first stop in Nevada as a presidential candidate. But looking at the project from a “national perspective” it doesn’t work, he added.

Edwards now says faulty science was used to support the Yucca Mountain project, and he doesn’t believe nuclear energy is a safe energy source.

Nevada Appeal 11/18/07
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20071118/ELECTIONS/111180127

(CNN) — “Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio took a direct shot at fellow White House hopeful former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina at Thursday’s CNN Democratic presidential debate.

“In the last debate, Hillary Clinton was criticized by John Edwards for some trade-related issue,” said Kucinich. “But the fact of the matter is, John, you voted for China trade understanding that workers were going to be hurt. Now, you’re a trial lawyer, you knew better.”

When given the chance to respond, Edwards said, “I’m not sure what being a trial lawyer has to do with it.”

Kucinich quickly shot back “product liability.”

CNN Political Ticker 11/15/07
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/11/15/kucinich-and-edwards-spar/

I increasingly worry about Sen. Edwards and sometimes wonder whether his passion and rhetoric is overwhelming his good judgement. I think he would certainly make a better President than any Republican running for President, but his initial position on the endorsement issue made me question whether I should decline to support him in any way during the primaries. However, given his subsequent, albeit weak, statement that he “expects” to endorse the eventual Democratic nominee, I will continue to support him as I would support any other nominee in the Democratic primary.I do have a question for him though. His original criticism of Senator Clinton was:

That’s what George does: George Bush goes to events that are staged where people are screened

This criticism was regrettably wrong at multiple levels. First of all, virtually every campaign event of every candidate is staged today. The staging may not involve “question planting”, but campaign events are staged by the campaign to present the candidate in favorable ways. This is not news. People were certainly not screened in the Clinton campaign events to prevent tough questions - and Sen. Clinton routinely gets and answers difficult questions from attendees - so comparing Sen. Clinton to George Bush on that front was of course a false comparison. More importantly, since the incident, Senator Clinton has admitted that the question-planting was a mistake and that she does not approve this practice.

So, what I’d like to know is this. Will Sen. Edwards retract his claim that Sen. Clinton is like George Bush?

If yes, well and good - I will forget this episode and then pose a similar question to the Clinton campaign, namely, will they then retract their criticism of Sen. Edwards being just like George Bush? (If it’s not coming through clearly, let me say that I am very uncomfortable with the Democratic contenders comparing each other to George Bush).

If no, then I have a simple follow-up question for Sen. Edwards. Should we assume, Sen. Edwards, that you are then no different than George Bush because you voted to support George Bush’s war in Iraq? After all, you did concede it was a mistake in 2005, years later, but if you don’t believe people should get credit for admitting mistakes, then I assume we should still consider you a supporter of George Bush and his policies.

The Left Coaster 11/15/07
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/011349.php

In 1998, while running for the Senate, Edwards did not come out in favor of repealing right-to-work laws in North Carolina, and he has only opposed a national right-to-work law. While North Carolina is hardly considered to be a labor stronghold, the former senator’s record and his relationship with some unions in the state were used by some unions to judge him as unworthy of an endorsement.

The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), which endorsed Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), said Edwards’s unwillingness to advocate a repeal of the right-to-work measure was a sticking point for the membership when it was seriously considering supporting the former senator’s bid.

“How do you walk picket lines and be for right-to-work?” Jeffrey Zack, an IAFF official, said. “It’s surprising that it wasn’t disconcerting to more people.

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s results. It’s not what you say. It’s results.”

Edwards has also come under fire for his support for normalizing trade relations with China after he was elected to the Senate and for voting for fast-track authority for the president. Edwards has said since that he regrets both votes, and Wednesday he told the UAW in Iowa that he would reverse trade policies.

Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) were clearly impressed with Edwards when he addressed the group this summer, but members from North Carolina and his past positions on trade and right-to-work were ultimately what led them to endorse Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) instead, officials said.

“He walked out of there completely convinced he had our endorsement,” IAM official Rick Sloan said. “What he failed to realize was the jury was still out.

“I think he makes an exceptional closing argument. If that was all the jury ever heard, he’d win every time. But it’s not.”

Sloan said Edwards appeared to be “the natural for us,” but the former senator made some missteps with the North Carolina IAM members who worked to elect him, and his support for normalizing trade with China and right-to-work in his home state cost him.

“These days he’s sounding like Johnny Tremain helping a modern-day Paul Revere going around saying, ‘The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming,’ ” Sloan said. “Well, they are — by his gold-plated invitation.”

Sloan added that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, IAM members who worked for U.S. Air in Charlotte, N.C., were losing their jobs in the wake of lost revenues and corporate cutbacks.

“When our guys were getting laid off after 9/11, he came down and met with the company” instead of the workers, Sloan said.

“Our guys in North Carolina worked really hard to get him there and then didn’t see much of him,” Sloan said, adding that the right-to-work issue is “the highest priority for the labor movement.”

The Hill 11/15/07
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/unions-balk–at-edwards-track-record-2007-11-15.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Made in China” has become a health and safety warning label for American consumers following the recalls of tens of millions of Chinese-made toys, but the “real warning label should say ‘Made in Washington, D.C. by corporate lobbyists’ because the life-threatening hazards of these products were either ignored or brushed off by members of the Congress seven yeas ago,” Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said today.

And, at least one then-member of the Senate, John Edwards, who has been railing lately in favor of higher safety standards for Chinese-made products, defended his 2000 vote supporting expanded China trade with the famously reported comment, “it does us no good to pretend that these remedies are perfect and that people will not be hurt.”

“Senator Edwards knew seven years ago that people would be hurt, so why did he vote for China trade?” Kucinich asked. “How credible is his newfound consumer protectionism and his campaign advocacy for trade reform to save American jobs?”

Kucinich, D-OH, noted that Edwards, who became a millionaire as a trial lawyer with considerable expertise in product liability matters, “knew better than any other member of the Senate what the risks were in sending U.S. manufacturing jobs to a country with almost no labor standards, no health and safety standards, and no environmental standards.”Beyond that, Kucinich pointed out, Edwards’vote in favor of the 2000 China trade agreement has resulted in the loss of more than 973,00 manufacturing jobs and more than 1.2 million jobs total, according to studies released by the AFL-CIO.

“If he knew then that this trade agreement would hurt people and put Americans out of work, he had a moral responsibility to vote against it,” said Kucinich, who has a perfect record in his votes against unfair trade agreements. “Like his now-regretted vote in favor of the resolution that led to the Iraq war, his votes on trade issues raise questions of judgment.” “When candidates stand in front of a union audience or in front of the cameras, they bemoan the three millions jobs that have been lost because of ‘free trade’ agreements,” Kucinich noted. “When they had a chance to vote as a member of Congress, they strongly supported those agreements. That means they voted against American workers, and, as recent events have shown, against American consumers.”

http://www.dennis4president.com/go/newsroom/%91made-in-china%92-hazards-began-with-%91made-in-washington,-d.c.%92/

The former 2004 vice presidential nominee’s has a mixed record on the issue.

After he was selected as Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s running mate, Edwards announced he would defer to Kerry’s anti-Yucca position and promised Nevada Sen. Harry Reid he would fight the project.

The former North Carolina senator has said he was trying to protect his constituents, who didn’t want to store nuclear waste in their state, when he voted in favor of the project.

Edwards now says faulty science was used to support the Yucca Mountain project, and he doesn’t believe nuclear energy is a safe energy source.

Associated Press 11/13/07
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkRv5G9MNDoPpuqffLVp83tZmvMAD8SSLP480

Edwards threw the first leather at Obama, suggesting to The New York Times in Iowa that the Illinois senator was too soft to win the presidency.All this unifying talk wasn’t going to achieve real change going up against the lobbyists and power brokers who run Capitol Hill, Edwards continued.

Campaign manager David Bonior and media consultant Joe Trippi had already piled on Obama, saying he had 10 months to try to take out Clinton and had come up short.

But when asked by New Hampshire reporters during a conference call Tuesday, Trippi nearly went mute when asked what was wrong with the Obama campaign.

“There’s nothing wrong with the Obama campaign,” the usually talkative Trippi said. “We see the choice is clear between Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.”

Cat got your tongue, Joe?

But within 36 hours, Trippi was back wielding the anti-Obama ax.

Obama fired back that for all of Edwards’ tough talk about taking on the powerful, he was hardly a leader when it came to meaningful campaign or ethics reform while he was in the Senate.

Then the Clinton campaign unloaded with its own dossier of Edwards’s votes in support of big agribusiness while in the Senate despite his crusade in Iowa for the family farmer.

It also said Edwards has given conflicting statements about the future of combat troops in Iraq and the proper policy in dealing with Iran.

Nashua Telegraph 11/11/07
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071111/COLUMNISTS12/311110107/-1/columnists

Imports from Peru last year amounted to $5 billion, only 0.03 percent of all U.S. imports. In comparison, China accounts for 16 percent of U.S. imports — nearly $288 billion worth of goods last year. China is running neck and neck with Canada as the top source of U.S. imports.While Edwards talked about what he sees as excessive CEO pay in his Des Moines speech, he did not mention China at all, alluding only to “ensuing the safety of imported food and drugs” without mentioning any specific country.

Later Thursday, in a meeting with 200 voters in Boone, Iowa, he said, “We’ve got these trade deals that cost Americans millions of jobs, and what do we get in return? Millions of dangerous Chinese toys.”

That line got a good reaction from the crowd.

Edwards didn’t tell them what he himself had said seven years ago when he voted for the China trade deal.

snip

While the China trade legislation included an “anti-surge” proviso designed to stem a flood of imports, Edwards was quite candid in 2000 in acknowledging that “it does us no good to pretend that these remedies are perfect and that people will not be hurt.”

He touched on a classic problem of international trade policy: the hurt is highly concentrated among some workers in higher-wage countries — while the benefits of trade (lower prices, greater variety of goods) are broadly diffused over many millions of consumers.

snip

As he explained his vote on Sept. 19, 2000, Edwards, then a senator from North Carolina, told the Senate, “Trade between U.S. companies and the Chinese will likely explode in the coming years, generating jobs and revenues in this country. It could easily be the keystone in the continuing prosperity of this nation.”

snip

The 2002 vote to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq has become a mea culpa moment for Democratic presidential contenders. Edwards has ostentatiously confessed what he now sees as his error in that vote.

But the 2000 China vote hasn’t become a cause for repentance and confession.

MSNBC 10/30/07
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21536832/