Reply #68: I like John Edwards but....... [View All]

[allinktup]

The most daunting task has been figuring out which candidate will serve most of our purposes well. I've always liked Edwards. He's sincere and would make perhaps a fantastic president. He is my second choice for president after Obama (Hillary comes in third) and here's why. Edwards has used some of his past votes in the most politically calculated way. He voted for the dumb war. Kucinich was right in one of the earlier debates when he said he didn't vote for the war resolution because he actually read it. Everyone had their crack at it. Obama wasn't in the senate at the time but he still stood against this war. Authorization is giving your consent to go forward. Everyone is at fault when it comes to funding the war but that is a really complicated issue to deal with and though I don't like that any candidate has voted to fund it, in some measure people have their reasons. Authorization occurs when you have the choice to start something that will take funds. If you don't start one there won't be one. And this matters when you are voting on life and death issues. Edwards apologized. I accept it but it was a political calculation just like Clinton's war vote.

Second, if you are anti-poverty why would you vote for the bankruptcy bill that was pushed by bureaucratic thieves who want to undermine poor people? I wouldn't. Edwards DID. Why didn't he use his commonsense on this? It goes against his core beliefs and to me the only one on these issues that has shown the most good commonsense is Obama. I'm thinking about how Edwards and Clinton jumped on Obama for voting present on a pithy "4%" of his votes in Illinois but John was never taken to task for that yes vote on the bankruptcy bill. Why? Obama didn't go after him on it because he's trying not to be a politician like the ones in Washington. But he should have taken Edwards to task on it. This vote against the bankruptcy bill would have solidified his standing with people who believe he is passionate about helping the poor. This would have left no doubt in my mind. As it were he did not vote against it.

On things that really matter to me, poverty and wars that didn't have to be waged, Edwards failed because he was either listening to his handlers or he was playing politics. This is in part why Clinton or Edwards don't get my vote. They play politics on issues that Americans care about at crucial times and Obama has been mostly on the right side of the American people on these key issues. Edwards and Clinton are good people but they don't seem to have the degree of good commonsense to lead us to a place Americans say they want to go. If change is what people want then the only candidate that has the vision to do it is Obama. Clinton and Edwards have come to rely on politics at times when people don't want the politics of destruction. We had that under Bush. Why do we need to keep it going?