Look what he did today. The Florida primary was last night. But are we talking about McCain’s win, or Hillary’s sorta win? Nope, we’re talking about Edwards. And so Edwards is completely undercutting everyone’s Florida bounce.
The thing is, he only gets one news cycle out of his withdrawal, whether he endorses anyone today or not.
But if he calls another news conference for 1pm Friday to announce an endorsement, he’ll get another day’s worth of coverage out of the deal.
So it’s two bites at the apple: two chances to get on the news to talk about what he was running for, two chances to move the national dialogue a few centimeters his way.
That’s the one thing he has successfully done, btw. Hillary and Obama have universal and near-universal health care plans because of Edwards’ doing so first. Same thing for viable plans to deal with climate change. Same thing for a bunch of other stuff, too: this campaign is being fought on turf well to the left of where it was a year ago, and John Edwards is the reason.
So he converts his withdrawal and endorsement (assuming there is one) into two separate opportunities to get the country’s attention - something that’s eluded him for most of the past year. Good on him.
Meh. He’s not obliged to endorse anybody, just like he was not obliged to drop out early (despite the tone some people took) just because he wasn’t winning. And yes, there’s another reason not to endorse: he can wait to see which candidate, if either, does more to address the issues Edwards focused on.
You say he doesn’t want to back a loser, but if he waits too long, his endorsement won’t matter anyway. I think he’ll probably throw his lot behind somebody in the next few days.
When someone with no money is physically harmed as a result of negligence of some corporation, what are they supposed to do? Hope that the corporation will make them whole out of the goodness of their heart?
BTW, he’ll endorse Obama. If he endorses Hillary after all the crap he said about her, he’ll sink even lower in my estimation. Which is hard to do, since I already hold him in low esteem.
That would be true. Except that in Liberal’s libertarian utopia, all the people are “peaceful honest people” holding hands, so nobody ever needs to sue anyone else.
Not in my study of it. I’ve consistently said that I favor strong regulation against coercion and fraud. And penalties for those should include loss of property and liberty (what you might call criminal and civil). Government itself should “bring suit” on behalf of people who are victims of such things. That’s what it’s for.
!!! I had thought valuing the Anglo-American legal system and tradition, including plaintiffs taking their own private actions on their own judgment and initiative to redress their private wrongs before an impartial state adjudicator, was pretty central to the American libertarian tradition. I could see hard-core Libs wanting to replace the state adjudicator with a private one, but not going the other way and expanding the state’s role and introducing the state’s discretion into that sphere.
Remember, John Edwards made a legal career out of doing things for injured persons that the state wasn’t doing at that time and never has. Should it take over what he does?
Or, more importantly, should citizens have no recourse if government fails to act on their behalf?
Lib, ISTM that your solution would put greater trust in government than I would, by a few orders of magnitude. Nothing wrong with that, but it sure isn’t libertarianism.
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