Nader is in

[Extra Stout]

He's the one that came up with Obamas and Hillary's campaign issues and speeches before they did.

So, they're carrying on his ideas... but you're not going to vote for them?

Not that I mind; the more people with your mentality there are, the better the chance McCain wins in November.

[AFBlue]

So, they're carrying on his ideas... but you're not going to vote for them?

Not that I mind; the more people with your mentality there are, the better the chance McCain wins in November.

+1

[smeagol]

SA210 makes little sense

[SA210]

SA210 makes little sense

To someone with a closed-mind.

[SA210]

So, they're carrying on his ideas... but you're not going to vote for them?

Not that I mind; the more people with your mentality there are, the better the chance McCain wins in November.

Just because they stole his speeches and issues and are running on them doesn't mean they will actually act on them.

[Mr. Peabody]

Just because they stole his speeches and issues and are running on them doesn't mean they will actually act on them.

Did you apply that same cynicism when considering Edwards' platform?

[AFBlue]

Just because they stole his speeches and issues and are running on them doesn't mean they will actually act on them.

What did Edwards offer that either of the two candidates won't bring?

All three of their policies were virtually identical, so why are you willing to essentially cast your vote anti-democrat if you believe in their ideals?

Like ExtraStout said, I could care less because you're helping McCain, but I'm just curious as to your logic.

[SA210]

Did you apply that same cynicism when considering Edwards' platform?

Obama's a fake. No way around it.

[Mr. Peabody]

Obama's a fake. No way around it.

Right, but you know for certain that Edwards was going to have a populist agenda after the election, fight the corporations, and alleviate poverty because.....? Let's face it, he hasn't always walked the walk (to put it nicely).

Edwards's populist message evolves
Fight for the poor not a hallmark of his Senate career

By Scott Helman and Matt Negrin, Globe Correspondent | January 7, 2008

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Buoyed by his second-place finish in Iowa, John Edwards has brought his populist, combative, and fiercely anticorporate message to New Hampshire, demanding sweeping changes in healthcare, trade, and income distribution.

"This fight is deeply personal to me," he said in Saturday night's Democratic debate at Saint Anselm College. "I've been engaged in it my whole life, to fight for the middle class, to fight against powerful special interests. And it is a fight I will wage on behalf of the American people as president of the United States and win, as I have for 54 years."

But an examination of Edwards's record shows that his positions on leading issues, his rhetoric on the campaign trail, and his approach to solving the country's problems have evolved in significant ways since his presidential bid in 2004 and his tenure as a North Carolina senator from 1998 to 2004.

Edwards has made fighting poverty a signature issue of his campaign, using even more urgent language than he did in 2004, when he famously talked about "two Americas" - one prospering, another falling behind.

Edwards, however, was not known as an outspoken champion for the poor during his six years as a senator, and his campaign could point to no major bills in that regard that he authored and got passed into law. He did help push a patients' bill of rights and he joined other Democrats in Congress in backing proposed increases in the minimum wage.

But his fierce condemnation of rapacious corporations today stands in contrast to the more moderate voice he has been in the past.

Speaking to chief executives at the Fortune Global Forum in November 2002, Edwards said, "Nothing is more important to our economy than the success of the people in this room - your success in leading companies, in building wealth for your shareholders, in creating jobs for millions of Americans."

Edwards said in the same speech that widening income disparities were "just plain wrong" and that corporate tax loopholes should be closed, but he also told executives that they could not be blamed for "taking aggressive advantage of legal holes in our tax law.

"Doing the most you can under the law to create profit for your shareholders is your job," he said.

Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz said in an e-mail that Edwards has never taken money from Washington lobbyists or political action committees, and that his fight against special interests "isn't an election-year conversion," and is something he mentioned in his 1998 Senate race.

"He has been fighting corporate greed all of his life and winning," Schultz said. "This fight is personal, from the gut, and will mean real change in Washington when he's in the White House."

On the campaign trail, Edwards has been highly critical of free trade policies, standing with many of his union backers in arguing that free trade has severely damaged American jobs and wages. But while in the Senate, Edwards voted for two such controversial measures that labor opposed on the very same grounds.

In 2000, he voted for permanent, normalized trade relations with China, which gave American businesses access to China's huge market, but which labor and other opponents said would hurt domestic manufacturing. Edwards has called the vote a blunder. He also voted, in 2002, for a bill giving President Bush broad authority to negotiate trade agreements. Edwards says he regrets that vote, too.

Edwards has disavowed other major votes as well. In 2001, he joined 81 other senators in voting for bankruptcy legislation making it more difficult for consumers to clear debt. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, who dropped out of the presidential race last week after a poor showing in Iowa, has attacked Edwards for his vote, saying it belied his stated commitment to fighting for the middle class.
....

Edwards's approach to policy-making has evolved as well, as he has grown far more confrontational than the candidate whose sunny disposition, both as a presidential contender and eventual running mate, was a hallmark of the 2004 race.

He often, for example, casts rival Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, as hopelessly naive for being willing to let drug companies and insurance companies participate in negotiations over healthcare. "That is a complete fantasy," Edwards said last week in Iowa. "The only way we're going to get their power away is we're going to have to take their power away."

In February of last year, however, when Edwards was asked by a writer on the liberal blog MyDD.com about the role of business, labor, healthcare groups, and doctors in the healthcare debate, he said, "I think you try to bring everybody to the table. You want their participation. You want to make the system work for everybody."

Edwards's campaign insists that a focus on inconsistencies in his record misses the larger arc of a career spent representing plaintiffs in lawsuits against corporations, winning accolades from major labor groups even though he came from a right-to-work state, and, in the years between his presidential campaigns, creating an academic center to study ways to reverse poverty.

But compared with 2004, when he was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, his rhetoric has escalated considerably.

His shift in tone may have helped him win over some Democrats this cycle. Indeed, his second-place finish in Iowa over Senator Hillary Clinton and his continued viability as a candidate bear that out.

But the more confrontational tone has also turned off some voters who preferred the John Edwards they knew in 2004.

Denise Hawks, a 49-year-old donor relations specialist from Des Moines, said she was with Edwards four years ago, but went with Obama this year, in part because of Edwards's transformation into an angrier, more strident candidate. If he was such a fighter, she asked, where was he when Republican operatives helped sink the Democrats' 2004 presidential hopes with their attack ads?

"Four years too late," Hawks said. "They were asleep at the wheel."

[SA210]

Monday, February 25, 2008; Page A04

Top Obama Flip-Flops


1. Special interests - In January, the Obama campaign described union contributions to the campaigns of Clinton and John Edwards as "special interest" money. Obama changed his tune as he began gathering his own union endorsements. He now refers respectfully to unions as the representatives of "working people" and says he is "thrilled" by their support

2. Public financing -Obama replied "yes" in September 2007 when asked if he would agree to public financing of the presidential election if his GOP opponent did the same. Obama has now attached several conditions to such an agreement, including regulating spending by outside groups. His spokesman says the candidate never committed himself on the matter.

3. The Cuba embargo In January 2004, Obama said it was time "to end the embargo with Cuba" because it had "utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro." Speaking to a Cuban American audience in Miami in August 2007, he said he would not "take off the embargo" as president because it is "an important inducement for change."

4. Illegal immigration In a March 2004 questionnaire, Obama was asked if the government should "crack down on businesses that hire illegal immigrants." He replied "Oppose." In a Jan. 31, 2008, televised debate, he said that "we do have to crack down on those employers that are taking advantage of the situation."

5. Decriminalization of marijuana While running for the U.S. Senate in January 2004, Obama told Illinois college students that he supported eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana use. In the Oct. 30, 2007, presidential debate, he joined other Democratic candidates in opposing the decriminalization of marijuana.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022402094.html

[SA210]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/0...n_n_59312.html

Senator Barack Obama appears to be taking his lines from rival Democratic candidate Senator John Edwards. On Saturday during a debate over whether candidates would take lobbyists' money, Senator Edwards asked an audience of 1,000 plus bloggers and netroots activists at the YearlyKos Presidential Forum: "How many people in this audience have a Washington lobbyist working for you?"
See Edwards ask the question at the end of this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isi6c2s353c

Then on Sunday, Obama appeared to have a little 'amnesia' and used Edwards' line in Nevada.
"I don't mind lobbyists having a seat at the table, I just don't want them to buy all the chairs. I want them to be part of the discussion where citizens also are part of the process. . . How many people here have a federal lobbyist?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/...borrows_f.html

Obama borrows from Edwards

By Sasha Issenberg, Globe Staff
NASHUA, N.H. -- After beating John Edwards in Iowa on Thursday, Barack Obama has decided to join him -- repeatedly poaching his opponent's themes, language, and even jokes.

"We shouldn't just be respecting wealth in this country -- we should be respecting work," Obama told an overflow crowd in a high-school gym today.

Edwards's 2004 presidential campaign was centered around the idea that the Bush administration had launched a "war on work" through tax cuts that offer incentives for investment over labor. "Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth," Edwards said in accepting his party’s vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic’ convention in Boston. In this campaign, he has sharpened his populist rhetoric, railing against greedy corporate CEOs who are waging war on working people and the middle class.

Since arriving in New Hampshire Friday, Obama has borrowed Edwards's favorite verb by bragging that he had "fought" as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer, and conceding that "insurance companies and drug companies will not give up their profits" -- which Edwards asserts repeatedly to ridicule Obama's talk of conciliation. Obama repeatedly invoked those interests, as well as "big oil and big insurance," common villains in Edwards speeches.

For months, Obama has been telling crowds, "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

Edwards gave a similar spin to his short political resume when he announced his candidacy in September 2003, declaring, "I haven't spent most of my life in politics, but I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change it."

The two candidates share a common strategist -- David Axelrod, the mastermind of Obama '08, helped launch Edwards '04 –- and now a common goal of standing as the reformist outsider against Hillary Clinton.

Even a new Obama laugh line -- joking about pharmaceutical ads that "have all these people running around in the fields and stuff" -- evokes an anecdotal staple of Edwards's 2004 "Two Americas" stump speech used to ridicule the marketing budgets of pharmaceutical companies.

"I love the ads," Edwards said then. "Buy their medicine, take it and the next day you and your spouse will be skipping through the fields."

Obama wins the biggest response when he punches up the Edwards observation with a slyly racy kicker. After observing that the ads are so vague they do not identify the drugs' function, Obama jokes, "Actually, I know what one of them does."

[Mr. Peabody]

Monday, February 25, 2008; Page A04

Top Obama Flip-Flops

Ok . . . so you've yet to answer my question about how Edwards is the more authentic of the two? I think you established the "but he did it too" defense. However, for someone who keeps saying everyone but John Edwards is fake, you haven't shown anything to support such an assertion.

[whottt]

Personally I agree that Obama is a fake...he's just a typical politician. He's not really a typical African American either...but a politican to the core.


That's not that big of a deal...it can be a lot worse.



But of the ones that are the dyed in the wool politcians, the ones that always tell the poor they won't be poor if they elect them, are the worst ones to me...absolute worst. In any country...

That's the big lie. The unconcionable lie...

[SA210]

Edwards says Obama using stolen ideas

By Sam Youngman Posted: 10/03/07 07:41 PM [ET]

Former Sen. John Edwards’s (D-N.C.) campaign widened its sights Tuesday to include Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and his foreign policy speech commemorating the five-year anniversary of his first speech against the Iraq war.

Echoing criticisms lodged by surrogates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) earlier in the year, Edwards’s campaign charged that Obama was complicit in prolonging the war by voting in favor of several war funding bills since coming to the Senate.

“Sen. Obama likes to talk about his speech on Iraq years ago, but the truth is he did support past funding requests that only helped prolong this war,” an Edwards spokeswoman, Colleen Murray, said in an e-mail. “The time has come for Sen. Obama to lead and use every tool available to him as a senator and help ensure that this war is not funded again without a firm deadline. For John Edwards, the choice is very simple. It’s time for Congress to stand up to President Bush and make the message very clear — ‘No timeline, no funding. No excuses.’ ”

The criticisms represent an apparent change in strategy for the Edwards campaign. Thus far this year it has directed most of its fire at Clinton’s campaign.

Edwards’s campaign also blasted Obama for parroting the former senator in a foreign policy speech he gave Tuesday in which he said he wanted to work towards ending nuclear proliferation. They said the senator has followed Edwards on a number of issues this campaign year, including healthcare, poverty and now nuclear proliferation.

“If you need any more proof that John Edwards is shaping the race for the Democratic nomination, you don’t need to look any further than Senator Obama, who has followed Edwards’s lead on healthcare, poverty and, today, eliminating nuclear weapons,” Murray said in an e-mail to The Hill. “Next thing you know, he’ll be rooting for the Tar Heels.”

Edwards first addressed the issue of nuclear proliferation in speeches to the Council on Foreign Relations in May, then again during a speech on counterterrorism in September.

Obama noted Edwards’s dismay with the timing and language of the healthcare plans during last month’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire.

“I think John deserves credit for his proposal,” Obama said. “I know that he feels that he put out his plan first. You know, Harry Truman put something out 60 years ago for universal healthcare. I wrote about it in a book that I wrote last year, a plan very similar to John’s. The issue is not going to be who has these particular plans. It has to do with who can inspire and mobilize the American people to get it done and open up the process.”

In his speech Tuesday, Obama’s primary target likely was Clinton, but Edwards also voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution, a vote for which he has since apologized.

“Some seek to rewrite history,” Obama said Tuesday, according to a transcript provided by the campaign. “They argue that they weren’t really voting for war, they were voting for inspectors, or for diplomacy.

“But the Congress, the administration, the media and the American people all understood what we were debating in the fall of 2002. This was a vote about whether or not to go to war. That’s the truth as we all understood it then, and as we need to understand it now. And we need to ask those who voted for the war: How can you give the president a blank check and then act surprised when he cashes it?”

The Obama campaign took issue with both criticisms Edwards’s campaign lobbed Tuesday.

“Edwards joined many, including Ronald Reagan, who have said that we should seek a world with no nuclear weapons, but he did not lay out any policy for how he would get there,” Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. “Obama has specific policies to move in the direction of the goal. That includes securing all loose nuclear materials around the world in his first term in office, seeking dramatic reductions in U.S.-Russian stockpiles, the goal of a global ban on fissile-material protection, and the goal of a global ban on intermediate range missiles.”

And Psaki was equally adamant in recalling the distinction between the two candidates’ positions on the war when the votes were being cast.

“While it may be politically expedient for some candidates to attempt to blur the lines, the American people should ask themselves — who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right and who got it wrong,” Psaki said. “If others want to defend their choice in 2002, they should do so. Sen. Obama opposed this war in Iraq when Washington’s conventional thinking supported it, and he is the only candidate with the right judgment and experience to lead this country.”

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/...007-10-03.html

[Mr. Peabody]

I think there is a key passage that you didn't highlight.....

]

The two candidates share a common strategist -- David Axelrod, the mastermind of Obama '08, helped launch Edwards '04 –- and now a common goal of standing as the reformist outsider against Hillary Clinton.

You think this has something to do with the similarity of messages....? No, it can't possibly be that seemingly simple explanation.

[ChumpDumper]

Who would you vote for if Edwards endorsed Obama?

[whottt]

pimpo...I didn't hit the Ron Paul rally. I probably would have gone as it's interesting to go to those...but honestly, it's going to be a big anti-war crowd and I've heard everything they have to say and know where all those conversations will lead...it's a book I've read before many times.


Believe it or not I actually worked a fund raiser for the Green Party back in 98(I was mainly trying to get in this girl's pants)....I actually liked the movement then...in the pre 9/11 world...interesting people showed up for that...including Lance Armstrong, right after his combeback from cancer and right before he started on his run of 7 consecutive TDF's.

Yeap...ole Lance is a Green, or he was at one point...

I've also worked for both the Democratic and Republican parties of Texas back in the late 80's(did polls mainly)...

I usually will give any of them a try...but I'm not into the anti-war rallys right now(and that's basically what most of them are)....I got enough of that when I was working as a bondrunner for a politically minded attorney here in Austin.

[Holt's Cat]

Obama's a fake. No way around it.

And Edwards is the genuine article?

The one that is the most problematic is [John] Edwards, 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.

link

[Mr. Peabody]

Edwards says Obama using stolen ideas

By Sam Youngman Posted: 10/03/07 07:41 PM [ET]


Edwards’s campaign also blasted Obama for parroting the former senator in a foreign policy speech he gave Tuesday in which he said he wanted to work towards ending nuclear proliferation. They said the senator has followed Edwards on a number of issues this campaign year, including healthcare, poverty and now nuclear proliferation.

So Obama was copying Edwards when he co-sponsored the Lugar-Obama Non-Proliferation Initiative and got it through the Senate in 2006?

[Holt's Cat]

Monday, February 25, 2008; Page A04

Top Obama Flip-Flops


1. Special interests - In January, the Obama campaign described union contributions to the campaigns of Clinton and John Edwards as "special interest" money. Obama changed his tune as he began gathering his own union endorsements. He now refers respectfully to unions as the representatives of "working people" and says he is "thrilled" by their support

2. Public financing -Obama replied "yes" in September 2007 when asked if he would agree to public financing of the presidential election if his GOP opponent did the same. Obama has now attached several conditions to such an agreement, including regulating spending by outside groups. His spokesman says the candidate never committed himself on the matter.

3. The Cuba embargo In January 2004, Obama said it was time "to end the embargo with Cuba" because it had "utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro." Speaking to a Cuban American audience in Miami in August 2007, he said he would not "take off the embargo" as president because it is "an important inducement for change."

4. Illegal immigration In a March 2004 questionnaire, Obama was asked if the government should "crack down on businesses that hire illegal immigrants." He replied "Oppose." In a Jan. 31, 2008, televised debate, he said that "we do have to crack down on those employers that are taking advantage of the situation."

5. Decriminalization of marijuana While running for the U.S. Senate in January 2004, Obama told Illinois college students that he supported eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana use. In the Oct. 30, 2007, presidential debate, he joined other Democratic candidates in opposing the decriminalization of marijuana.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022402094.html

Don't worry. Edwards has him beat in spades.

[SA210]

Ok . . . so you've yet to answer my question about how Edwards is the more authentic of the two? I think you established the "but he did it too" defense. However, for someone who keeps saying everyone but John Edwards is fake, you haven't shown anything to support such an assertion.

You have admitted to liking John Edwards and I believe insinuated that you might've voted for him had Obama not been running if I'm not mistaken. So I guess you're flip flopping on your beliefs of the good man you believed Edwards to be...????

I've been answering your question. It's not even debatable, the fact, that Obama has stolen from Edwards from the start. Obama has followed John's lead and takes the credit for it. That tells me who is more authentic. And obviously the unions also believed John to be more authentic before he dropped out of the race.

Bill was right, his whole campaign is nothing but a fairytale, I would add, a fairytale sold to the American public by the corporate media, to the stupidity and gullability of many Americans who simply want to vote for someone cause it's the cool thing to do. The media told us that he gave great speeches enough times so people bought it.

This guy is no RFK, MLK, or JFK and not even close. He's boring, does nothing but studder because he's trying so hard to remember how to best deliver someone elses lines. He hasn't been tested and has been given a free ride by the media, because it gives them ratings. There is something seriously wrong with this picture. He criticised John for union ads backing him but doesn't mind having their backing for himself?

The guy is a complete phony and the only "hope' that I would vote for him would be if John were his running mate. That is the only way. And again, that vote would be for John Edwards.

[whottt]

I don't get the appeal of Edwards...but he evidentally impresses some people...including Gregg Popovich.


To me he's a typical attorney.


Feh...all these candidates are lackluster. Who am I kidding...


There's not even one I really feel passionately enough about to hate.

[Mr. Peabody]

pimpo...I didn't hit the Ron Paul rally. I probably would have gone as it's interesting to go to those...but honestly, it's going to be a big anti-war crowd and I've heard everything they have to say and know where all those conversations will lead...it's a book I've read before many times.


Believe it or not I actually worked a fund raiser for the Green Party back in 98(I was mainly trying to get in this girl's pants)....I actually liked the movement then...in the pre 9/11 world...interesting people showed up for that...including Lance Armstrong, right after his combeback from cancer and right before he started on his run of 7 consecutive TDF's.

Yeap...ole Lance is a Green, or he was at one point...

I went to a Green Party event in 1999, mostly to see Ralph Nader speak. At the event, there were these little preppy guys among the horde of Naderites and at one point they held up a sign saying "Nader is an Enviro-Nazi." They looked like they were getting a kick out of their little prank until they almost got their ass kicked by some rather large goateed hemp wearing guys who no doubt reeked of pachouli.

[Holt's Cat]

As for Nader running, so what? Since when did it become a bad thing for there to be more choices for voters?

[SA210]

I think there is a key passage that you didn't highlight.....



You think this has something to do with the similarity of messages....? No, it can't possibly be that seemingly simple explanation.

So you admit that Obama is not using his own lines. I see. And it's also funny how John was talking about "change" in this election before Obama, but yet Obama got credit for using the word.