No, not me; Mr. O. I'll get to that in a bit...
Lord, how I've hated what these candidate wars have become. So I write this with trepidation, because I hate when these things get ugly. So be it. I'll do my best to not bash any of our candidates, and I will not respond to those who do.
But I have to--HAVE TO--say it one more time, loud and clear to those who continue to insist that Barack Obama is the only other choice there is besides Hillary Clinton, and that John Edwards should get out of the race...
Why? If you really care about "having more than two choices", make the jump with me now...
Edwards is staying in. Deal with it. It's PRIMARY season.
Now, the three of us move on to February 5th, where millions of Americans will cast their vote and help shape the future of this party and help shape the future of America.
And why shouldn't he? First and foremost, his campaign is reporting a major surge in online donations:
In the first 25 days of this quarter, the campaign has raised more online than the whole 4th quarter - the vast majority of which will be doubled by federal matching funds
There has to be a really good explanation for that.
At this point, I'd venture a guess that it has to do with the fact that a lot of Democrats are just plain disgusted: by the media, who continue to feed our people misinformation and half-truths, couched in the high-arching tones of "punditry-via-polling"; by the rhetoric coming from the Clinton and Obama camps, ISMing us to death between "racism" and "sexism"; by the steady drumbeat of style over substance at every turn (culminating in the dropout of my candidate, Dennis Kucinich); and by the continued and frightening accusations of disenfranchisement of our votes.
And while all this goes on, real, substantive discussions on ISSUES are being ignored, in favor of the Jerry-Springer-like sound-bytes foisted on us by the coverage given--IMO, free, extended-length campaign commercials--by the American media.
Yet in the face of all this, Edwards remains steadfast and determined, refusing to waver from discussion of the kinds of things that really matter most to our people. And he's talking about them in what appears to me to be in much clearer specifics than his worthy opponents.
These things are resonating in this great nation. And I believe that the uptick in donations that the John Edwards campaign is seeing lends credence to that assertion. I can tell you it resonates with me. I'd already started leaning toward Edwards when things started looking pretty bad for Kuc.
So meanwhile, back at the ranch, I posted this diary on January 9th, offering kudos to Clinton for her NH victory, one that shared the juxtaposition of a man and a woman living under one roof, where his candidate = Hillary and her candidate = Kucinich:
I'm not gonna rain on her parade, I promised you, and I meant it. Props are clearly in order for her--it looks like she kicked some serious butt in New Hampshire! As we watched her "thank you" speech this evening, I felt very proud, even though I've not been very fond of her up to this point.
See, I was trying to open my mind! That meandering diary came about, period, because Mr. O and I watched her NH victory speech, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of why he liked her. And I was very happy for her. He was thrilled, and it was contagious.
But I've been trying to understand since last fall why he planned on voting for her ("she has the most experience" is the main reason he cited, over and over). And we've had more than a few heated discussions about that, for reasons that have been done to death around here, so I am not going there. But still, I was trying to come around, at least for his sake. Even so, it hasn't been easy. As Ekaterin joked in a comment I made a couple days later about it:
Uh-oh...Does this look like dinnertime at your house? :)
Hehe. Yeah, well, that's one way of putting it ;)
So a couple days after NH, things got real interesting. The sound-byte wars ratcheted up between Hillary and Obama. In the midst of that, along came a very powerful, defacto endorsement from Martin Luther King III to John Edwards, after the race-soundbytes started flying thick and fast from their respective campaigns, via COM.
Well that got MY attention, I'll tell ya. And then came the SC debate. That was a big turning point in our home. A BIG turning point. And do you see Edwards talking points repeated ad-nauseam, even though he was, at times, the only adult on that stage?
What do you mean, what did he talk about?
How many times have you seen that repeated?
So in the last week or so, I'd noticed that Mr. O had started getting real quiet about all this. That all changed last night during the SC election return coverage--not only did he go ballistic at Bill Clinton's oratory, he also let fly with a number of epithets when his candidate appeared, threw in a "congratulations" one-liner, almost as an afterthought to Senator Obama, and proceeded to regale us all with her standard stump speech.
Oh, man. Katie bar the door at that point. Sass (our cat) ran and hid under the bed, he got so loud. And this is a man who is very laid-back and peaceable, otherwise (I'm the motor-mouth around here, thanks. I was stunned, to put it mildly).
Finally, he stopped to take a breath, turned back to the teevee (did I mention the part where he yelled at me to unlock MSNBC? I grabbed the remote and punched in the code. I just ain't used to this guy yelling, and we've been together going on six years now).
So by now, John Edwards' concession speech is on:
He just looked at me after Edwards was done and (well, first he apologized for yelling :)) and he said "I think I am sick of the politics of division. I need to think about this guy a little more". And then his daughter went out for the evening, so he snagged her laptop and started surfing. He was still at it when I went to bed.
And this morning, over coffee and newspapers (and more laptop surfing, this time on my part), he says "well, that does it. I've had it with Hill, and I just can't get behind Obama at this point. Because all they do is snipe, snipe snipe. BFD! Talk about the issues, huh? Right now, (Edwards) has my vote. Fuck it, at least he's talking about THE IMPORTANT STUFF".
Er, I redacted what he usually calls Edwards, because it will probably irritate the hell out of other Edwards supporters. The only reason it don't piss me off is 'cuz he's my guy and I love him. So I gave him a big ol' smoochie anyway.
UPDATE: I thought this deserved its' own spot in the diary:
And the link to that page is now here.
Thanks, poligirl!