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for the Vietnam War, and his early, strident "anti-communism." (He was even a cohort of Joe McCarthy's.)
They sense a genuine change of heart, and BELIEVE that people can change, and think that people changing, in response to new information or new perceptions, is a good thing.
It's a hard call. Is a politician just "blowing with the wind"? Or has he really changed his mind about a policy, or gone through a deep change on one or many issues?
One reason that it is a hard call is that, given the size of this country, and the ungodly power of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, especially in the current era, it is difficult to get a good "read" on national candidates--to understand what their policies really are, and who they really are. And it is harder today--much, much harder--than it was in the 1960s. One plus of the increase in corporate news monopoly power, however, is that you can be pretty sure that whomever they favor is bad for the American people, and whomever they dislike would probably be good. It's a good rule of thumb on progressive issues and the goodness or badness of candidates to adhere to the opposite of what the corporate monopolies are trying to assert. You can't go far wrong.
I remember that CA Democratic primary in 1968 very well. I voted for Eugene McCarthy** (against Bobby), although I knew that Eugene McCarthy wouldn't win, and maybe didn't even want to. He had challenged LBJ in New Hampshire, on the Vietnam War, and had driven LBJ out of the race. McCarthy didn't even win the New Hampshire primary. He just did well against LBJ, who then decided not to run for a second term. Enter Bobby Kennedy. The question for the Left was: Was Bobby sincere? He had taken up the cause of the young against the Vietnam War, and was running a very charismatic campaign, drawing support from many progressive communities--on civil rights, on U.S. policy in Latin America, on the aspirations of the poor at home and abroad. As a Eugene McCarthy skeptic, I took a hard look at Bobby. And I have to say I was impressed. I think the man had a genuine change of heart, possibly inspired by great leftist leaders like Martin Luther King (who had come out publicly against the Vietnam War a year before, and had been assassinated three months before the CA Democratic primary.) I voted for McCarthy on the basis of, oh, say 10% skepticism. I was 90% for Bobby. But I wanted to "send him a message," as they say. "Be true to your supporters, Bobby. End the war!" He won the CA primary in a landslide.
Bang, bang. Shoot, shoot.
I guess he was genuine, eh? Why would the Dark Lords have bothered otherwise?
Edwards reminds me a lot of Bobby. Bobby voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution (escalation of the Vietnam War) in 1964, probably for the same reason that I believe Edwards voted for the IWR in 2002: ambition for power. But both politicians had intentions of USING power differently than the warmongers. They both judged that they could not buck the war profiteers directly, as Senators, and survive a "no" vote with any viability left to run for higher office. They would be stopped before they started. That's my opinion. But both had/have strong progressive views, that were causing them a lot of internal struggle--and their progressive views were unleashed with great energy, in starting campaigns for president on a progressive tide. In other words, they became RESPONSIVE to the people, and more true to what they really believed.
Also, both voted for these wars during very dark, scary periods. Bobby, a year after his brother was assassinated. And Edwards, in the blackest, scariest atmosphere our nation has ever seen in Washington DC--replete with pervasive Bushite spying (and no doubt blackmail), rampant crime (torture, etc.) and massive thievery, with the Anthrax letters and Paul Wellstone's mysterious plane crash hovering over all. We may feel contempt for ambitious men in that situation, who don't vote their conscience, but we aren't THEM--we didn't have targets on our backs--and, in both cases, the war votes were inevitable ("Gulf of Tonkin"--only two votes against; the IWR, only 25% votes against--certainly a big improvement, but still the tide in Congress was overwhelmingly pro-war). They went with the majority--amidst pervasive disinformation being used on the public, and on Congress members--and bided their time. Was this spinelessness, or wisdom? --or just smart political calculation, in difficult circumstances?
ALL politicians are calculating. You can't blame them for being political animals. It's a very hard call. And, really, it comes down to a gut call. Was Bobby--and is Edwards--a total cynic and Machiavellian? I'm at the 90% point on Edwards, in favor of genuineness. I may vote for Kucinich in the CA primary, for the same reason I voted for McCarthy in 1968: to keep a potentially great president true to his commitment to the voters, and true to his own progressive change.
A big difference between now and then is that, now, the fascists don't have to eliminate progressive candidates with bullets or plane crashes. They have Diebold and ES&S (--'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, in all the voting machines, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations). And of course they have total control of the news media (except for the internet). So, who knows what will happen? The stakes are very, very high, as they were in 1968, when the post-WW II military budget and its profiteers gained a stranglehold on our country, with the Vietnam War. Will we never have a peace economy? Not if they can help it.
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**(Sen. Eugene McCarthy. No relation to the earlier Sen. Joe McCarthy--infamous for his anti-communist crusade against leftists, progressives and union leaders. Robert Kennedy was Joe McCarthy's legal counsel--circa 1950s. Both JFK and RFK were "Cold Warriors." However, they both changed considerably after JFK became president--and opposed the CIA in the "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Cuba, prevented nuclear war with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and grew steadily in understanding of many issues, including civil rights, nuclear disarmament, labor issues, U.S. Latin American policy (Bobby, later), the dangers of CIA and FBI secrecy and the "secret government," and the games the CIA was playing in Southeast Asia. JFK signed executive orders withdrawing U.S. military "advisers" from Vietnam just before he was assassinated.)
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