Well, you might have a point there. But we have to evaluate the totality of their records as well, public and private.
How would you stack John Edwards’ public sector service against Rudy Giuliani’s?
As a resident of NC it is a very big deal to me. Are you really saying “He’s no worse than George Bush” is a *good *thing? Has anyone ever been damned with fainter praise?
It took us a long time to get a Democratic senator, and he pissed it away for political ambition. Fuck him. His allegiance is to himself and his ambition.
No, I’m just saying that this is so common it is nothing to damn Edwards for. Taking one position shouldn’t keep you from seeking a higher one.
I’m not sure.
I personally rank the importance of a candidate’s work experience, both public and private, somewhere considerably below my evaluation of his/her politics, judgment, character, and vision. I don’t care if you were a blacksmith before running for President if I think you’ve got the intellectual and interpersonal skills to bring about a vision with which I agree. To the extent that such experience is indicative of these skills/vision, I think Edward’s experience as a trial lawyer doesn’t say much one way or another. I’m simply rebutting the notion that it does.
:dubious: Lawyers contribute to the economy too. They don’t produce anything you can hold in your hands. Neither do soldiers or police officers, but no modern society has found a way to get along without them.
I’m sorry. I don’t see that. You cite one example and that speaks to how common it is? George Bush is the best you could come up with? I should think if it were common there would be plenty of better choices for comparison.
Of course not. But taking a position with no intention of fulfilling it is bullshit. His only purpose in running for the Senate was to run for President. He served 1/3 of his first term. Y’all are getting the wool pulled over your eyes if you think Edwards is a good choice for President. He’s not.
And some contribute more important things than others.
It’s sort of like a middleman in a business transaction. Sometimes they act in a role to bring buyers and sellers together, when they otherwise would not. Sometimes they’re parasites who insert themselves into a transaction to extract arbitrage profits.
The first guy is performing a service that helps make the economy run. The second guy is doing nothing to make the economy run, but is sucking off money from the transaction. “Middlemen” as a group are not evil, but I’m not going to let that stop me from having an opinion on our local parasite.
I see the personal injury lawyer as being way more often the parasite than the facilitator. They don’t generally make medicine better, they just suck out a bunch of money from an insurance company (and ultimately, everyone who pays for health care) when a doctor makes a mistake.
What about Hillary? Anyone with a pair of brain cells could have told you in 2005 she was going to run for president in 2008. Yet she ran for the Senate knowing full well she had no intention of serving more than two years.
A) It was her second term. B) Hillary is a modern carpetbagger. She moved to NY just because she could win the Senate seat. Same as Dole, who replaced Edwards in NC. For that reason, I have little respect for either of them.
I thought it was fairly clear from context, but I guess not. Do you think one’s stance on the war in Iraq is of similar significance, in terms of selecting a leader, as one’s square footage of house space?
My prediction, as Cardiwen said, is that there will be plenty of people who are just so all too ready and willing to vote Democratic, except that Edwards’ house is too big, or Hillary is a carpetbagger, or whatever other lame excuse gets circulated around the right wing.
I don’t care if you don’t like a candidates positions on issues or prior performance as an elected official. But don’t bullshit me that it has anything to do with John Edwards house.
It’s not a lame excuse, and I am not a right-winger. Naked political ambition is distasteful to me. I will vote for Hillary if she is the Democratic candidate; that vote is not an endorsement of her character, only a vote against another Republican in the White House.
One thing we have to realize is that Republicans have spent a lot of time, effort, and money to demonize trial lawyers over the last 15 years or so. Why? So they could push for so-called “tort reform,” the pet project of the insurance companies that contribute to Republican campaigns. Doctors have also pushed for this, thinking that “tort reform” will mean lower premiums for them. Suckers. Insurance companies are not going to lower premiums; they’re going to pocket the profits.
In service of this campaign of demonization, every big plaintiff’s verdict gets seized upon and trumpeted as evidence that jury verdicts are out of whack. (Sadly, the press has been uncritically complicit in this.) What doesn’t get reported? The cases where a trial lawyer spends four or five years of his life pursuing a claim and the case winds up with a defense verdict. Guess how much the plaintiff’s lawyer gets for that? What else doen’t get reported? Record profits for liability insurers in states that pass tort reform.
It would not surprise me at all if verdict amounts (adjusted for inflation) have been declining since the 70s. I get the sense that decade was sort of the high-water mark for plaintiffs, and it’s been downhill since then. (I don’t have the stats at my fingertips to back that up, though.)
Judging from some of the posts to this thread, the smear campaign has been successful, to the point that resentment of trial attorneys is reflexive for a lot of folks.
1.) Dole replaced Helms, not Edwards.
2.) Dole was born in NC and lived there until she graduated from Duke. Somehow I think spending the first 22 years of your life living in a state exempts you from the title “carpetbagger” when you come back, but YMMV.
Quite the contradiction if you ask me.
That’s right.
It does vary. She had lived elsewhere for what, 40 years? And claimed to live in her mother’s house as a condition of residency. She no more lives in Salsibury than you do.
Unless you are a NY voter, I’d say whether or not she was an appropriate choice to properly represent the needs of NY voters is fairly irrelevant to whether or not she should be president of the United States. Excepting of course, whether she did a good job or not.
As for naked political ambition, I’d say running for president fairly well excludes anyone without naked political ambition. Is there anyone who you’d say has run in recent history who was doing so out of something other than political ambition?
I don’t remember commenting on her qualifications as a senator one way or another. What I object to is calculating in what state one might have the best chance of winning, and establishing residency there for the sole purpose of running.
I have no political ambition. What are you getting at? The fact that I might find her the lesser of two evils is not politically ambitious.
I’m just saying if you say on one hand that you dislike naked political ambition but yet can stomach voting for Hillary, I find it quite amusing and indeed contradictory. Hillary is the definition of ambition.
Seriously, whatever her other strengths or weaknesses, she is the embodiment of undiluted political ambition. To say you find it distasteful and then want to vote for her is almost schizophrenic.