Well, OK then.
So much for voting for John Edwards in the California primary next week. I don’t hold it against him that he dropped out abruptly the other day. If it was depressing for me — and it was — it must have been heartbreaking for him, to work so hard for so long, to hang his passions out there in public, to accept money and support from those who believed in him and in his ideas, only to be relegated to oblivion by the teevee and steamrolled by the big corporate-sponsored campaigns and not even place in the state where he was born (South Carolina).
It was a campaign for president, after all, and he had to stay up, stay positive, not admit doubt, proclaim his determination to go on no matter what. But in terms of putting a Democrat in the White House, he did the right thing in pulling out before February 5. His chance of winning had been taken away. By staying in the race he would have divided the Party three ways at a time when unity should be a paramount consideration. I regret that I won’t be able to vote for him next Tuesday. Neither of the remaining candidates were my first choice, but both of them have rolled up a lot of Edwards’ ideas into their platforms (thanks, John!), and so I’ll be glad to make either of them President in November, and the sooner we choose one and get behind him/her, the more time we’ll have to work for victory in the general election.
I didn’t get to hear the two-person Democratic debate last night, because I was working. But on the drive home I heard a rerun on the radio of the Republican debate from the night before, and it was horrifyingly idiotic. McCain and Romney argued for at least twenty minutes about whether or not Romney had ever favored a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq. There was a specific interview that he (Romney) had done with ABC-TV last April, in which he apparently said that the governments of Iraq and the U.S. should get together in secret and set benchmarks and timetables to control policy over there. McCain argued that “timetables” was the buzzword of the day, and if you so much as spoke the word it meant you were trying to “set a surrender date.” Romney explained himself seven or eight times in a row in ever more vociferous tones, while McCain just kept implacably repeating his accusation. While they went on and on about this bit of semantics, two retarded Iraqi women had remote control bombs strapped to their bodies and were sent into two Baghdad markets, where they blew up, killing 73 people and wounding over 150.
And these guys want to be president? Are we really so stupid as a nation that we will even consider a couple of assholes who are arguing about who will be more pigheaded and violent in international affairs? I’ve been around a long time, and I know that just being a clueless dumbass doesn’t guarantee that you’ll lose an election. A look at the current occupant of the White House should be enough to verify that.
Pick somebody and go vote in the primary (whenever that is in your state). I no longer have a horse in that race. I’ll fall in line with the last Democrat standing and I’m still predicting that whichever Democrat is nominated will win the election in November. After listening to McCain and Romney bickering about nothing while human beings were being blasted to shreds in this stupid, useless, illegal “war,” I hope to God I’m right.
I hope you’re right, too. I also hoped to vote for Edwards — it seems to me that he was the only one focused on the source of our problems in America: the big national and global corporations who’ve bought the politicians and our government, and who effectively hold the power and use it for their own profit. These last seven years have turned me into a cynic. But at the same time, I’ve become that much more convinced that my little, single voice, and my vote, counts.
As a journalist, I’ve been deeply ashamed of my colleagues for their sloppiness and willingness to pander and take steno notes for publication. It disgusts me that while the nation fixates on poor Heath Ledger’s untimely death, we lost 28 more soldiers in Iraq in January. Each of them were volunteers, bravely fighting Bush’s (and McCain’s, it seems) Endless War. No one seems to notice those deaths, which were equally as devastating to their families and friends as Ledger’s was, and just as shocking and senseless. It’s as if America has its collective fingers in its ears and is yelling “La la la la I can’t HEAR you!” when it comes to Iraq. I think we’re in deep, deep, shamed denial.
OK, I’ll stop ranting now. Great series of posts, you’ve written here. I miss John Edwards, too, but I’ll support one or the other of the two still competing for the Democratic nomination. Haven’t quite decided yet. My fear: If the Dems don’t win this election somehow (and they’re such wimps it’s possible they COULD lose, in spite of everything), I think America truly is doomed. It doesn’t matter so much for me — I’m old. But for my daughter, and the generations coming up behind her, it’s tragic.
Oh, great, a real journalist has read my post. I’ve just reread it myself, looking for logical errors and unsupported claims. To me, it holds up pretty well, although I found at least one non sequitur. I guess I’ll stand by it, with the mental reservation that I don’t have an editor, a proofreader or a fact checker.
Wren – Don’t be ashamed. The big shot media types like Tim Russert and Wolf Blitzer and Bob Woodward aren’t really your colleagues. They are people who work for large corporations. The sole goal of corporations is to make more and more money, period. If the corporation happens to be a newspaper chain or a television or cable network, the name of the game is more viewers or more readers. They pay the “talent” huge amounts of money, to which the talent is thoroughly addicted. They will do nothing to jeopardize their salaries. Really. Nothing.
Your true colleagues work in relative obscurity, at weekly rags and muckraking web sites, for little or no money. They seek truth and justice, and they are outraged. Most have fewer than a hundred readers/viewers, compared to the tens of millions who tune in to the vacuous Katy Couric each evening. You have to look hard to find them, and when you do, everyone will laugh at you for reading, because they challenge the big accepted corporate world-view and so they must be, at best, deranged, if not outright treasonous. They write with moral certainty, but they have few resources — newswires, government insiders, police informants, etc. — and so it’s easy for them to make factual mistakes. But they are what’s left of the true journalists of the past, and I love them.
Despite the supposed momentum for Obama–for whom I will vote if ends up being the candidate–I’m voting for Hillary today in the primary. Krugman has been convincing (as if we regular Joes and Janes needed convincing) on the need for universal health care and on the superiority of Clinton’s plan (of the two; Edwards’ was even better) with its mandates. And you know what else? She’s been through this before and knows a few things. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote for Barack if it comes to that, being the good yellow-dog Democrat that I am, at least in this election.
And I’m also very pleased that Edwards has hung on to his delegates rather than supporting someone else at this stage. I hope he horse-trades them in a useful way.
Narya – I’ll support Clinton or Obama in November. Either of the healthcare plans will be better than what we have now. I just hope the Democratic nominee is able to get as many crossover Republican votes as McCain can get crossover Democratic votes. In other words, I am starting to get pragmatic about the election. As in all of the presidential elections in which I have been involved, the time for idealism is over.