"How long are we going to allow drug companies and insurance companies to run America? America doesn't belong to them. It belongs to us."
"For 25 years corporate greed has gotten its way in Washington, destroying American jobs and the middle class, while the establishment did nothing."
"Corporate greed won't be stopped without a president who fights for you. Saving the middle class will be an epic battle."
"It's time to tell the truth. These big corporations, and their greed, they are stealing your children's future. We will never change this country unless we are willing to take these people on."
When is the last time you heard "corporate greed" on your television? I can't say it doesn't happen. But when guests say such things on talk shows, they don't get invited back.
The corporate controlled media has an unwritten rule - don't bite the hand that feeds. So it's incredibly rare that the much needed discussion about corporate power over our government is allowed to occur. This despite the fact that corporate power, and its instruments of control over our democracy, is the central issue of our time.
Now, that's a strong statement. There are a lot of important issues facing our country and the world. But they all point back to money and corporate power because it is this corruption of our democratic process that keeps us from solving these problems. In fact, it is this corruption that has caused most of these problems in the first place.
I remember how exhilarating it was when John Stewart first began to speak truth to power by attacking the Bush administration. He was a lone voice in a sea of right-wing spin and propaganda.
This is what we can look forward to if John Edwards wins the Democratic nomination. Someone who, the big media will finally HAVE to cover, saying things no serious contender for the White House has said since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
This is an incredible opportunity for America. To finally have a voice who speaks truth to power, given a platform to be heard by all.
I've taken so long to decide who to support in this race because I really like Barack Obama. But as brilliant as Obama is, his message of some kind of undefined change, based on a new "tone", is abstract and unconvincing.
It is as though Obama wants to usher in a new era of "change" without making any enemies. Do you really believe that you can get serious healthcare reform, which must inevitably cost insurance companies billions, without making them your enemy? People have killed for much less.
Do you really believe that the people who run Halliburton, and CIGNA, and Monsanto Inc. are otherwise good people who just haven't been properly invited under the happy tent? Do you really think a new tone of bipartisanship is what we are missing? These are not moral people. They demonstrate over and over again that they will choose profit over people every time. There is no way to change anything without fighting these people and defeating them. And defeating them requires a mandate.
Here it is in a nutshell: You cannot run a stealth campaign, keeping all your cards to your chest, and expect to change things once you get into office. You have to run on the change you want to make, put your cards on the table, and let the people decide. Only then will you have the mandate for real change.
Only then will you have a mandate for real change.
John Edwards has done that. He has taken his fight, in no uncertain terms, straight to the American people. The American people, on the other hand, have not yet heard Edwards' message. The veritable media blackout of the Edwards campaign is blatant and obvious. The Democratic establishment, the media establishment, and the establishment in general fear and despise John Edwards. He didn't graduate from Yale, he speaks with a Southern accent, and his message of economic populism is a severe threat to the status quo of record profits for the corporate owners while the middle class evaporates.
We have one voice who has the courage to tell the truth, not in abstract terms, but in clear, concise statements that make the war profiteers, the healthcare profiteers, the media elites and the monied interests afraid.
We have one voice who can take this message to the American people. Who can actually win the nomination, and use that bully pulpit to reach millions of Americans. It will be a long time before we have a voice like John Edwards', speaking real truth to power, unafraid of the enemies such truth creates, in a position to get plastered all over our televisions for the next year and, most likely, 10 years.
It's really a no-brainer for me.