Two years ago I was the bane of the John Edwards diaries on dailykos, criticizing--or more accurately, vituperatively attacking--his vote on the Iraq War, questioning the sincerity of his anti-poverty crusade and reminding kossacks at every opportunity of his DLC past. Now, he has my vote, my money, and should he make it as far as the February 5 primary here in New York, my volunteered time. On the issues that matter most to the future of the country, he leads with principle and conviction, and I am glad to admit that I was wrong.
Smarting from all the disappointments and heartbreaks of 2004, I have thought quite deliberately about how to choose who to support this time around. Too often, people seem to make these decisions on dailykos as if they are deciding on horses at the racetrack, singlemindedly obsessing over general election chances and electoral votes to the exclusion of what is really the crucial matter, which is who will govern with ideals we can be proud of, who has identified the crucial issues the country must deal with in the next four years, and who offers the best answers to these problems. We should decide what we stand for, then figure out how to win with those principles.
So the story of my turn towards Edwards is really the story of him meeting these tests for me. I don't really care for it when his supporters say he is a candidate who could "run everywhere" or cite the polls showing him defeating any member of the Republicans' presidential field, just as I don't like it when Obama supporters claim that because of his "we can disagree without being disagreeable" post-partisanship, the Republicans will go easier on him. If the right choice is merely to scare or offend the fewest independents and moderates so as to win the most votes in November 2008 against a hard-right Republican nominee, then the Democrats' choice should be between Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh or Joe Lieberman. Bon appetit.
So of course it's not enough merely to choose whomever will give us the biggest swath of blue on election night. The reason for this is partly because the most inoffensive candidates will also be the one to offer the least compelling ideas, not because an idea must offend to be effective but because a real-world solution to a major problem will bring with it winners and losers. So to keep things at the more general level, to talk about "bringing people together" in such a way that no one loses, is really to talk about the change the country needs in such a vague and abstract way that it's not helpful.
So when Edwards' led the way with his plan universal for health care, led the way with his plan to deal with global warming, led the way with his plan to fight rural poverty, and did so in a way that dared to identify the winners and losers under his plans, he differentiated himself for me as the candidate most able to bring about the change the country needs. And when he admitted his error in supporting the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq he demonstrated that he is a politician able to admit his mistakes and learn from them, a sight in the era of George W. Bush so odd it qualifies for "Ripley's Believe It Or Not."
By contrast, the faith Obama's supporters have in him seems to arise not from what he plans to do but from who he is. I recognize the powerful message America's electing the first African-American president would send. But symbolism has its limits. If, the day after the election, that African American president is cutting deals with Wall Street to privatize Social Security piecemeal, or with big pharma to protect exorbitant health care profits, then that symbolism becomes a cruel joke in which the symbolic "message" of Obama about the boundless unrestricted nature of opportunity in America is belied by policies that keep the poor sick and the sick poor, and that channels the funds of our great social insurance system into the coffers of the big investment houses. And that Obama was undeniably and unquestionably right in opposing the decision to invade Iraq means nothing, if his character is so driven by a need for consensus and compromise that he will then be unable to execute an actual withdrawal from Iraq in the difficult early days of his presidency.
If the story of my turn towards Edwards has been about watching him--with increasingly forthrightness and gravitas--declaring where he will lead the country, what he will do, what his principles are--the story of my turn away from Obama was been about watching these witless triangulations: attacking Clinton and Edwards' universal health care plans with logic seemingly ripped, not just from Republican talking points, but from the Goldwaterite fear of "mandatory" social security; his willingness to lend credibility to Donnie McClurkin and the ex-gay movement and its vicious pseudo-science under the fig-leaf of "dialogue"; and his instinctual willingness, documented ad nauseum, to when in doubt blame the Left first, whatever the issue. When Obama first announced his candidacy I had thought he would be the successor to the Senator who had been my first choice for President, Russ Feingold, an unapologetic and proud voice of the Left. In my eyes, Obama has fallen as low as Edwards has risen high, and I am as ashamed of his campaign as he evidently would be of the support of someone like me, an anti-war economic populist gay man.
That said, if the Edwards campaign misfires in Iowa I will reluctantly stand by Obama and support him against Clinton.
But I hope it will not come to that. Over Christmas I visited my parents in rural North Carolina. Driving from the airport in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to our farm we passed through the pine forests, the neat orchards, the fallow fields and ranch houses that distinguish our corner of the world. And we passed the boarded-up country stores, the dying towns, the homes with ageing for-sale signs in the front yards. And when we stopped for gas I saw faces, white and black, cut with the chisel of care and desperation and need. And I saw the ubiquitous jar placed by the register for some child needing expensive surgery, unable to afford it. And I thought to myself, not that "John Edwards comes from this place, so electing him will give these people hope", or "John Edwards understands the experience of hardship in America because he has lived it", but that John Edwards has the actual toolkit of policies and plans and visions to turn our country around and to make life better for these people.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, not "who is most likely to win a landslide", or "who is most likely to take Republican votes" or "who will scare Wall Street least", is how you choose who to support for president.
And I am voting for John Edwards because, Goddamn it, I never want to walk into a convenience store again and see that a family has had to slap a photo of their child on a mason jar and set it by a cash register because that is the only way for them to pay for medical care!
Hope without action is just another lie.