Edwards Speech

[JoeChalupa]

is kicking ass right now. The passion and strength of his message is undeniable. Changes are a coming.

[Extra Stout]

He did well enough to keep going for a while.

[01Snake]

Guys a tool.

[01Snake]

pot

kettle

You talking dip ?

[JoeChalupa]

He did a fantastic job.

[01Snake]

Did he break out the "help is on the way" shtick?

[SA210]

Congrats to John Edwards on winning 2nd.

John Edwards was the one who set the Democratic agenda in this race. He was also outspent 6 to 1 in advertisement in Iowa.
(Obama 9 million to John's 3 million.) Think about that.

He was left out of all the talk in the media all along and the race was always labeled a two person race between Hillary and Obama. He did great going against those odds.

Had he gotten the same attention in the media, he would have won 1st, no doubt in my mind. His speech was the best of the night, period. The fight continues.

[Bunz]

Edwards didn't even win the union or the poor vote. This guy is in trouble.

[Mr. Peabody]

Congrats to John Edwards on winning 2nd.

John Edwards was the one who set the Democratic agenda in this race. He was also outspent 6 to 1 in advertisement in Iowa.
(Obama 9 million to John's 3 million.) Think about that.

He was left out of all the talk in the media all along and the race was always labeled a two person race between Hillary and Obama. He did great going against those odds.

Had he gotten the same attention in the media, he would have won 1st, no doubt in my mind. His speech was the best of the night, period. The fight continues.

Edwards has been setting up a network in Iowa for the last two or three years. You make it sound as if he new to this process and did well just to make a good showing. He's been campaigning in Iowa for longer than Obama or HRC. He was a presidential candidate in '04 and finished second in Iowa. This should have been his state.

And yes, he was outspent by Obama. But remember, Obama raised more than $100 million from more than 500,000 individual donors. He has the money because record numbers of people have donated to his campaign.

As for the speeches, Edwards' speech was a good stump speech. Obama on the other hand, sounded like MLK, RFK, and JFK rolled into one. His speech was simply amazing.

[SA210]

Edwards has been setting up a network in Iowa for the last two or three years. You make it sound as if he new to this process and did well just to make a good showing. He's been campaigning in Iowa for longer than Obama or HRC. He was a presidential candidate in '04 and finished second in Iowa. This should have been his state.

And yes, he was outspent by Obama. But remember, Obama raised more than $100 million from more than 500,000 individual donors. He has the money because record numbers of people have donated to his campaign.

As for the speeches, Edwards' speech was a good stump speech. Obama on the other hand, sounded like MLK, RFK, and JFK rolled into one. His speech was simply amazing.

The plain and simple fact is that Obama has copied John Edwards campaign over and over again, and the media gave the credit to Obama. John promises to to fight the corporate people who own these news stations. It's not really in their interest to give John air-time.

Obama hasn't had an original idea. He should be paying Edwards for writing his speeches.

[lawstudent]

Edwards is my role model.

[Mr. Peabody]

The plain and simple fact is that Obama has copied John Edwards campaign over and over again, and the media gave the credit to Obama. John promises to to fight the corporate people who own these news stations. It's not really in their interest to give John air-time.

Obama hasn't had an original idea. He should be paying Edwards for writing his speeches.

So the media will not give Edwards air time because he promises to fight them, but they will give air time to Obama, who you allege is copying Edwards ideas? Wouldn't they also object to Obama spouting Edwards anti-media ideas and as such, black list Obama?

Also, the prevailing theme I have seen from the Obama campaign is unity and you can't say he got that from Edwards. Edwards is painting himself as the firebrand who won't compromise with the corporations. In fact, that's Edwards' biggest criticism of Obama - that his approach to politics won't work. Why would Edwards say that if it is essentially his message being repeated by Obama?

If you are alleging that Obama stole Edwards' ideas regarding health care, the war and the like, I would argue that those are typical progressive platforms and not unique to Edwards.

[BonnerDynasty]

Helping the middle class by carbon footprint taxing the out of them and "attacking" the "Wealthy" which will "help" the economy. LMAO.

The only thing that will help the middle class is for them to quit relying on frivolous credit and to educate themselves on how to invest. You know, the tools the wealthy use to become WEALTHY.

[Nbadan]

Sources within John Edwards's campaign tell me that if Edwards drops out (unlikely before New Hampshire), he will throw his support to Obama. Should the Illinois senator win New Hampshire and South Carolina, it will be next to impossible to prevent him from becoming the nominee on Feb. 5, Super Tuesday.

Newsweek

[SA210]

So the media will not give Edwards air time because he promises to fight them, but they will give air time to Obama, who you allege is copying Edwards ideas? Wouldn't they also object to Obama spouting Edwards anti-media ideas and as such, black list Obama?

Also, the prevailing theme I have seen from the Obama campaign is unity and you can't say he got that from Edwards. Edwards is painting himself as the firebrand who won't compromise with the corporations. In fact, that's Edwards' biggest criticism of Obama - that his approach to politics won't work. Why would Edwards say that if it is essentially his message being repeated by Obama?

If you are alleging that Obama stole Edwards' ideas regarding health care, the war and the like, I would argue that those are typical progressive platforms and not unique to Edwards.

John has been campaigning on hope and change all along. John's plans came out 1st on universal health care, etc, then Obama follows...John started slamming corporate greed and vowed not to take money from them, and he asked Obama if he would join him. Obama refused to. Then suddenly he changes his tune. John and Kerry's theme in 04 was 'Hope is on the way' then Obama suddenly has a book out last year 'the audacity of hope'.

When John started getting people to listen on poverty, Obama would then mention poverty. John was the first to criticize Hillary's double talk, then Obama saw it was ok to. The whole downward spiral of Hillary in this race started on the double talk on licenses for illegal immigrants. Who brought that arguement strongly to the attention of everyone during the debate? It was John Edwards.

And John doesn't need to read a speech either, he speaks honestly from his soul. Obama says fighting will get nowhere but mentions fighting in his speech. He has copied John again and again and again. This isn't even all of it, but I gotta get to bed for tomorrow.

[Mr. Peabody]

John has been campaigning on hope and change all along. John's plans came out 1st on universal health care, etc, then Obama follows...John started slamming corporate greed and vowed not to take money from them, and he asked Obama if he would join him. Obama refused to. Then suddenly he changes his tune. John and Kerry's theme in 04 was 'Hope is on the way' then Obama suddenly has a book out last year 'the audacity of hope'.

When John started getting people to listen on poverty, Obama would then mention poverty. John was the first to criticize Hillary's double talk, then Obama saw it was ok to. The whole downward spiral of Hillary in this race started on the double talk on licenses for illegal immigrants. Who brought that arguement strongly to the attention of everyone during the debate? It was John Edwards.

And John doesn't need to read a speech either, he speaks honestly from his soul. Obama says fighting will get nowhere but mentions fighting in his speech. He has copied John again and again and again. This isn't even all of it, but I gotta get to bed for tomorrow.

It's as if since you don't know as much about Obama as you do Edwards, you assume that if they have similar messages Obama must have stolen them from Edwards.

Obama's book "Audacity of Hope" has nothing to do with the Kerry/Edwards campaign. The book's le is based on a sermon Obama heard at his church. If you go back and listen to Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, you will notice that his entire speech is about hope and unity. This was four years ago. Was he stealing from John Edwards then as well?

As far as not taking money from lobbyists, Obama passed a bill prohibiting lobbyists from giving gifts or buying lunch for senators shortly after entering the Senate, before this election. What did Edwards do on this issue during his one term in the Senate?

On the issue of poverty, Obama worked as a community organizer after getting his degree at Columbia. He worked to find jobs and housing for the unemployed. I think this gives him as much, if not more credibility on this issue than Edwards. Obama has actually walked the walk when it wasn't politically expedient.

Universal health care is a progressive issue and has been for decades. , if anyone in this election should lay claim to precedence on this issue it would be HRC. So is Edwards copying HRC and in turn, being copied by Obama?

Edwards is running on a typical progressive populist platform, so it's hard to see how you can make the case that anyone is stealing his ideas. Heck, if anything, Edwards is stealing Howard Dean's campaign from four years ago and we know how that turned out....

[SouthernFried]

Nobody's talking about the real important issue for EDWARDS in this campaign tho....How'd his hair look?

[MannyIsGod]

Paul - Edwards - Obama is how my voting order is as of now.

I really hope Edwards can pull out a miracle in NH.

[Extra Stout]

Congrats to John Edwards on winning 2nd.

John Edwards was the one who set the Democratic agenda in this race. He was also outspent 6 to 1 in advertisement in Iowa.
(Obama 9 million to John's 3 million.) Think about that.

He was left out of all the talk in the media all along and the race was always labeled a two person race between Hillary and Obama. He did great going against those odds.

Had he gotten the same attention in the media, he would have won 1st, no doubt in my mind. His speech was the best of the night, period. The fight continues.

While Edwards did well enough to keep going, if he were going to be the Dem nominee, he probably needed to win Iowa. His populist message works in the Midwest and South, but will fall flat in New Hampshire. South Carolina will be tough, too, because that is the first state where the black vote comes into play.

Also, Edwards finished second in Iowa in 2004, too, with a larger percentage of the vote. He hasn't gained any ground in four years.

I will be curious to see how much money Obama raises over the weekend. It could be mind-boggling.

[xrayzebra]

Edwards speech remind me of rabble rousers. Divide and conquer.

Big business is bad, government is good. Yeah, right!

[Mr. Peabody]

One of Edwards' main criticisms of Obama is that he is "too nice" to get things done in Washington. I think this article shows that Edwards' argument is not based in reality...

Judge Him by His Laws
By Charles Peters
Friday, January 4, 2008; Page A21

People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements. One reason these accomplishments are unfamiliar is that the media have not devoted enough attention to Obama's bills and the effort required to pass them, ignoring impressive, hard evidence of his character and ability.

Since most of Obama's legislation was enacted in Illinois, most of the evidence is found there -- and it has been largely ignored by the media in a kind of Washington snobbery that assumes state legislatures are not to be taken seriously. (Another factor is reporters' fascination with the horse race at the expense of substance that they assume is boring, a fascination that despite being ridiculed for years continues to dominate political journalism.)

I am a rarity among Washington journalists in that I have served in a state legislature. I know from my time in the West Virginia legislature that the challenges faced by reform-minded state representatives are no less, if indeed not more, formidable than those encountered in Congress. For me, at least, trying to deal with those challenges involved as much drama as any election. And the "heart and soul" bill, the one for which a legislator gives everything he or she has to get passed, has long told me more than anything else about a person's character and ability.

Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to "solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.

Obama had his work cut out for him.

He responded with an all-out campaign of cajolery. It had not been easy for a Harvard man to become a regular guy to his colleagues. Obama had managed to do so by playing basketball and poker with them and, most of all, by listening to their concerns. Even Republicans came to respect him. One Republican state senator, Kirk Dillard, has said that "Barack had a way both intellectually and in demeanor that defused skeptics."

The police proved to be Obama's toughest opponent. Legislators tend to quail when cops say things like, "This means we won't be able to protect your children." The police tried to limit the videotaping to confessions, but Obama, knowing that the beatings were most likely to occur during questioning, fought -- successfully -- to keep interrogations included in the required videotaping.

By showing officers that he shared many of their concerns, even going so far as to help pass other legislation they wanted, he was able to quiet the fears of many.

Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.

Obama didn't stop there. He played a major role in passing many other bills, including the state's first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois "one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure"). Obama's commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who "bundle" contributions for them.

Taken together, these accomplishments demonstrate that Obama has what Dillard, the Republican state senator, calls a "unique" ability "to deal with extremely complex issues, to reach across the aisle and to deal with diverse people." In other words, Obama's campaign claim that he can persuade us to rise above what divides us is not just rhetoric.

I do not think that a candidate's legislative record is the only measure of presidential potential, simply that Obama's is revealing enough to merit far more attention than it has received. Indeed, the media have been equally delinquent in reporting the legislative achievements of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, both of whom spent years in the U.S. Senate. The media should compare their legislative records to Obama's, devoting special attention to their heart-and-soul bills and how effective each was in actually making law.

Charles Peters, the founding editor of the Washington Monthly, is president of Understanding Government, a foundation devoted to better government through better reporting.

[xrayzebra]

One of Edwards' main criticisms of Obama is that he is "too nice" to get things done in Washington. I think this article shows that Edwards' argument is not based in reality...

Not much of what Edwards says is based on reality.
But he is a lawyer as others have pointed out. And you
can always tell when a lawyer is lying. His lips are
moving.

[T Park]

Helping the middle class by carbon footprint taxing the out of them and "attacking" the "Wealthy" which will "help" the economy. LMAO.

The only thing that will help the middle class is for them to quit relying on frivolous credit and to educate themselves on how to invest. You know, the tools the wealthy use to become WEALTHY.

Bravo.



Edwards is a goddamn tort lawyer.

that . having slimeballs like him in office.

I'd vote for Barack Obama a million times over instead of a slimeball greasebag business hating piece of crap like Edwards.

[mrsmaalox]

Great speech I thought. Hilary bit it big time, and whoever that was who said Obama sounded like MLK,RFK, and JFK rolled into one needs to leave the past behind and join this millenium!