According to USA Today:
"We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other," Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards plans to declare today in what the Associated Press is calling his "toughest" attack yet on his rivals for the party's presidential nomination.
I haven't seen this anywhere on Daily Kos, but if it has been posted here, someone please alert me and I will delete the diary.
Edwards finally gives voice on the campaign trail to the discussion we have been having here for years. No one can tell me that this discussion, conducted continually and publicly, hasn't finally "trickled up" to having become part of the discourse among the actual candidates.
David Sirota, among others, has been beating this drum consistently, and he mentions Edwards' speech in passing today. I'm sure David, an Edwards supporter, will weigh in on this later.
Edwards goes on to say:
Those wedded to the policies of the '70s, '80s, or '90s are wedded to the past -– ideas and policies that are tired, shop worn and obsolete. We will find no answers there.
But small thinking and outdated answers aren't the only problems with a vision for the future that is rooted in nostalgia. The trouble with nostalgia is that you tend to remember what you liked and forget what you didn't. It's not just that the answers of the past aren't up to the job today, it's that the system that produced them was corrupt -– and still is.
People can read into it what they want to. I take it as a frontal assault on Hillary Clinton and Clintonist "third way" corporate-friendly politics and policies.
I continue to wait for Al Gore. Barring a Gore candidacy, Edwards had looked like Plan B. By putting into words what many of us have been discussing, and one hopes, by forcing the "Corporate Democrats" to defend themselves and their policies, the discourse takes a new and long-sought turn, and Edwards looks a hell of a lot better to me today than he did yesterday.