Who would have thought writing a column starting with these three words - "I was wrong" - and saying I made a "mistake" could ever help a candidate in a political race. Edwards' WashingtonPost editorial came out a week before Murtha turned against the war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I never thought saying Iraq was a mistake would be a big deal - I mean can't everybody see that?
Anyhow, the person helped the most by Hillary's non-denial position may actually be Edwards.
Carefully avoiding the copyright rules these 5 paragraphs from this column are interesting.
http://www.buffalonews.com/...
Hillary faces tough campaign
2/17/2007
By DAVID SHRIBMAN
It's almost a year before the New Hampshire primary, and already the pressure is building on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. She's been a candidate for about a month, and religious conservatives are salivating at the prospect she might get the Democratic presidential nomination; they have no strong candidate to support, but they are taking solace that they sure might have someone they can oppose....
....Obama is safe in making these comments. He wasn't in Washington for the Iraq war vote, but he made his opposition clear at the time. Now he advocates withdrawal of American troops within the next 13 months. Another 2008 candidate, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, voted the same way Clinton did, but he has repudiated his vote and said it was a mistake. He's calling for an immediate withdrawal of American troops.
Clinton's reluctance to repudiate her support for the war - the furor is not over the way she thought but over the way she voted - is empowering Edwards, who only several weeks ago seemed to be an afterthought in the 2008 race, but who now seems to be a serious threat to Obama and Clinton. Edwards may lack the high-profile support (and the big-money power) of either of his rivals, but he has a real authenticity and passion that are swiftly making him an important factor in the race.
His very presence in the race - not necessarily his poll ratings - is making it difficult for Clinton to parse her Iraq remarks as carefully as she has been doing. Edwards sounds as if he is expressing his outrage, and she sounds as if she is testifying before a grand jury. That's an unfortunate image but an apt one. And the result is that Clinton unwittingly may be permitting Edwards to transform himself into a purist in a contest where much of the energy, and a substantial portion of the vote, comes from purists.
Before Obama jumped into the race, before Edwards found his voice, Clinton was planning a hurried but triumphal gallop through the primaries and caucuses. No one makes that assumption anymore, and yet she is clinging to a campaign strategy based on that assumption. It can't last, and it won't.
Hillary's parsing has really painted her into a corner. The more people analyze her speeches and comments between 2002-2004 the more it is clear that Hillary knew that military force would be used (the codepink YouTube video) before the invasion; and that she was happy with her vote after they found Saddam after mostly unilateral military force was used.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/...
Never did I think "I was wrong" would be such a big deal
Here's a video of Edwards on Bill Maher's HBO show from last week
http://www.jwharrison.com/...