Edwards on Hardball
I'm not backing a horse in the 2008 race yet, mostly because we don't yet know who all the candidates are. That being said, John Edwards is already running an aggressive campaign and engaging voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and across the country. ConnecticutBLOG captured a recent appearance on Hardball.
Edwards has also cleverly coined the phrase "McCain Doctrine" to describe the push to substantially increase US forces in Iraq.
posted by Scott @ 2:44 PM
3 Comments:
I think Edwards is great but I just don't know what has changed since 2004 except that he is two years older. The more I think about the Dems in 2008, the more I think the nomination is Al Gore's to lose: he was robbed in 2000, has been consistently right on Iraq (unlike Hillary), and will not have a problem with either cash or name recognition... I wrote a story on this at www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com
I would agree on that scenario. If Gore jumps in, he likely becomes the "anti-Hillary" candidate. When you consider that almost everyone who voted for Gore in 2000 would vote for him again, that a certain percentage of Bush voters that year wish now they had voted for him, and that he's captured more support among young voters, I think he's the favorite to win the nomination.
And he, Gore, has honed his public speaking, shooting now with the care-free from-the-hip-style he has lacked.
But given his global warming stance, I can see him being painted as a one-issue candidate, notwithstanding his position on Iraq. Plus he's going to draw a lot of ire from very large business determined to keep a pro-Kyoto candidate out of office.
But that leads to the last point. Coming into office with a failed war (kinda like Carter), his global warming platform will get lost. Can't he do more towards his life's work on the outside?
If the Dems don't give the neo-cons their troop increase to prove the ill-conception of this war from the beginning, whomever the dem is in office in '08, should it be a dem, will be seen as the ringleader of an obstructionist movement that cost us a victory.
That's how it'll be painted and you know people will be looking for pro-American perspective if we have to withdraw.
Plus, I just don't see how you can argue that Rummy screwed things up by under-deploying the conflict in the beginning and then argue against troop increases now. I don't like it either but, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, we started this thing. How can we screw the Iraqi people now?
Give them their troop increases and let the world see American Jingoism is always a failure; from the Aguinaldo Revolution the Philippines, to our still-standing war with North Korea, to the Vietnamization of the war in SE Asia, to today.
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