| Becoming A Supporter
The 2004 presidential election was the first one I was heavily invested in (I was barely eligible to vote in 2000). After President Bush was re - elected, I paid close attention to the discussion that was taking place between grassroots Democrats, and in compilations like What We Do Now, Get This Party Started, and Start Making Sense. In late 2005, after thinking a lot about the future of the Democratic Party, I wrote down a phrase that summed up what I saw as the way forward: progressive populism.
Shortly after this, John Edwards wrote in an op - ed that he was wrong to have voted to authorize the war in Iraq. This put the former North Carolina Senator, who I was much more familiar with as the party's most recent vice presidential nominee, near the top of my "potential candidates to watch" list.
As the 2006 mid - terms approached, I saw the 2008 nomination contest as increasingly pivotal for the direction of the party. The Democratic candidate had a very good chance of winning, and potentially influencing the party's identity even more than President Clinton did in the 90's. Besides Edwards, there were three other candidates who appealed to me -- Illinois Senator Barack Obama, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. Indiana Senator Evan Bayh and former Virginia Governor (now Senator) Mark Warner joined frontrunner Hillary Clinton on top of the list of candidates I didn't want to see get the nomination, primarily because I wanted more than a restoration of the 1990's.
Only Edwards, Obama, and Clinton ended up making the race. By the end of 2006, I was backing Edwards. After the 2007 DNC Winter Meeting, I considered myself a committed supporter.
Why Edwards?
Here's the outline of what I wrote in the comment section of the "Why I'm With Edwards" edition of the EENR series in mid 2007.
He's the progressive populist in the race.
He's the most committed to fighting for the major change that is needed.
He understands that trying to play nice with entrenched special interests has never worked, and won't work now.
He can help restore the Democratic Party's identity as the party of the working / middle class. He communicates to blue collar workers in an effective and compelling way.
He has ran the most substantive campaign.
He gets that this is not about him.
Almost all of the general election polling shows that he is by far the most electable Democrat / he can help down - ticket.
The right - wing fears him / he has the right enemies.
His campaign is about reclaiming the Democratic party and our country, not how cool he is as a person.
An Edwards presidency will help more Democrats realize that we can win big and stand up for what we believe in. In fact, the best way to win big is to stand up for what we believe in.
Some of those reasons were a little redundant, but I think you get the point. Right before the results of the Iowa Caucus started to come in, I wrote that "a win for John Edwards is a win for progressive populism."
Obama was my second choice, and I reluctantly moved into the support column when Edwards dropped out. Why Edwards instead of Obama? I agreed with Edwards on issues like trade and education, thought it was crucial that he approached K street from a position of strength, and appreciated seemingly small things like the way he talked about guns. I also Obama's post - partisanship as "a misdirection to fantasy land."
I was well aware that some Dems questioned Edwards' shift from 04' to 08', and at times so did I. But I thought he had pretty much "locked himself in" to being a bolder brand of Democrat, and I know for a fact that I wasn't the only enthusiastic supporter who went through the same thought process. At the end of the day, I was convinced nominating him was the right thing to do policy wise, and the smart thing to do politically.
Most of the general election polling at the time showed Edwards would be the best general candidate candidate, especially in the Midwest, the "Rust Belt", and parts of the South. If he had won IA, SC, and the nomination, the message he was already using would have worked very well as a response to the economic crisis. He would have been in position to break 400 electoral votes, and bring a number of down - ticket Dems to Washington with him. The general election polling, of course, had a huge margin of error of an affair that is absolutely toxic politically.
Charges, Denials, And Admissions
When the allegations surfaced in November of 2007, I thought they were laughable except for the damage they might do to his campaign. They came from the National Enquirer, an outlet I neither cared about or respected. In my mind, they were one step removed from "Bat Boy Caught Hanging Out With Elvis And Tupac... Who Are Both Alive, Of Course!"
I also didn't think a major presidential candidate could get away with something like this because of press coverage, opposition research, and being generally surrounded by staffers and supporters. I thought that if Edwards was really having an affair, someone who was more committed to Democratic values than a candidate would have almost certainly found out and leaked the information to a credible news outlet. These weren't just any allegations that could turn into a battle of who is more trustworthy, Edwards or a tabloid. A baby was going to be born, and if John Edwards was the father, it was only a matter of time before someone would prove it, or force Edwards to.
There have been recent reports that people inside the campaign were going to go to either the New York Times of the Washington Post in the event that Edwards won Iowa. So maybe my thinking wasn't that far off, I was just naive about what it would take to trigger intervention.
When the charges resurfaced months after Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, the story still seemed odd to me. I read that The Enquirer claimed it had pictures, but I also read that there was some kind of media gathering at the hotel on the same night. That struck me as unbelievable.
"If he was doing this, would he really be that stupid? And if this is his baby, how in the world would Andrew Young have gotten his wife to go along with a cover story that Young cheated on her?"
A couple of days before the announcement of the affair, I got this nagging feeling that there was some "there" there, and I probably wasn't alone among Edwards backers.
Then I saw the ABC story that announced Edwards was admitting to the affair. Since then, it's gotten worse and worse. The subsequent revelations haven't surprised me as much as they've shown just how wrong my "this would have gotten out" theory was.
The shock that the National Enquirer had been vindicated eventually mixed with anger. Like others, I was fine with the fact that Edwards didn't have the best chance of winning the nomination. His campaign was also about the future of the Democratic Party, and the big change our country needed. But by running while engaging in this behavior, John Edwards risked doing tremendous damage to the very things that rallied people to his campaign.
Substantively, I don't care about the private lives of elected officials and candidates. Very few of us have personal lives that are free of things we're not proud of. As long as actions don't get in the way of someone's job as an elected official, and there isn't a hypocrisy factor (see: Larry Craig and David Vitter), it's not a big deal to me. But John Edwards damn sure knew the political reality, and he knew that the circumstances surrounding the affair made it completely indefensible. He knew that if this got out, it would have opened the door to terrible consequences for the very people he talked about fighting for. And that's what really gets to me.
It's true that FDR, LBJ, and RFK (three of my political heroes; something that probably isn't unusual for former Edwards supporters) were far from perfect on this front. But that was before the press really started covering this stuff. That was before the Lewinsky obsession. 2008 wasn't anything like1968.
20/20
The Edwards campaign did really good things for the Democratic Party message wise. It adopted ideas like Jacob Hacker's public option that became rallying points for the Democratic coalition during the Obama presidency. The Edwards campaign served an important purpose, but it also ended up being a very close call.
As far as Elizabeth Edwards is concerned, the urge of some to counter the notion that she is a saint with a demonization is transparent and ridiculous. Her hands aren't clean on this, but she was (and continues to be) under a tremendous amount of stress in a situation that is probably very hard to understand if you're not in it. That doesn't mean that the role she played is excusable, but in many ways it is understandable. She's not a saint. She's not a demon. She's a human being who, regardless of her personal flaws, cares deeply about very important issues and has done a lot to push them to the forefront.
There are some things about the Edwards campaign that are a source of pride: fellow supporters, a bold and timely message, a labor - netroots coalition, and campaign staff and surrogates who are among the best the Democratic Party has to offer, from David Bonior and Kate Michelman to Chris Koffinis and Cate Edwards.
In an ironic twist, just as John Edwards was admitting that he was the father of the child, President Obama was starting to sound like a progressive populist, though this was short - lived.
In hindsight, John Edwards obviously wasn't the right messenger. Still, there is something at the core of the grassroots support for the Edwards campaign that is not only salvageable, but vital for the future of the Democratic Party. |
