Beyerstein turned down the offer, and did her best to warn the Edwards rep she was dealing with of the potential problems of hiring an outspoken blogger for the campaign. The message clearly didn’t get through, and of course we know how it all turned out. When a well-positioned wingnut went on the attack against Marcotte and McEwan, the Edwards campaign was clearly caught off-guard, with no prepared response strategy.
I like what Edwards stands for, but this campaign is clearly not firing on all cylinders. Hopefully that’ll improve: the executive responsibilities of running a country are considerably greater than those of running a campaign.
Hopefully Edwards has learned from the experience. I don’t particularly like Edwards as a candidate myself, but it’s still early in the campaign, the campaigns are still getting organized, and if he has to learn to improve his team’s campaign discipline, it’s better he does it in January-February of 2007 than January-February of 2008.
I fail to understand the attraction to Edwards. He’s a one-term Senator who declined to run for re-election because he knew there was a good chance he would lose his Senate seat. He has some half-baked ideas on poverty (most of which would likely make poverty worse) and a horrible idea that would ruin health care in America.
As a nominal Republican, I hope the Democrats nominate him, because he’d be by far the easiest candidate for anyone running in the GOP field to beat. This most recent experience with the blogger illustrates this perfectly.
I think it only makes Edwards look better that he doesn’t want to censor or ideologically profile those who work for him. We’ve had enough enforced lockstep public stances and intolerance for dissent with Bush. Why is it a bad thing to let people disagree with you?
I like Edwards, but I just don’t think that there is enough money to go around with Obama and Clinton taking so much of it. I think he’s now in there with Bill Richardson hoping for a VP slot.
Because the goal of a campaign organization is to get the candidate elected. So any employees who are controversial or off message hurt the campaign. Whenever the story becomes about the campaign and campaign staff, rather than about the candidate and how great he or she is, that hurts the candidate. It’s much better for Edwards if the press is talking about what a great speech he made last night than if they’re talking about how one of his staffers is being criticized because of anti-Catholic stuff they wrote on their blog. Ideally, if it were a perfect campaign, there would be no articles about the staff at all.
spaz, on his poverty issues, Edwards seems to fail to understand that the way people move out of poverty is through work. Government programs do not eliminate poverty; only people in poverty getting jobs will move them away from poverty. Edwards’ campaign is focusing pretty heavily on raising taxes on the rich and on corporations. Attacking the rich, while politically popular with the economically ignorant, is exactly the wrong thing to do if you want to encourage businesses to grow and thereby employ people. The rich and corporations create the jobs in this country. If you tax them, you reduce the rate at which they create these jobs. That’s bad for people in poverty.
On his health care plan, he fails to see how government involvement in health care has produced most of the problems we see today. The sykrocketing costs of health care, the poor service for people on Medicaid, and a 14% uninisured rate have a lot to do with the fact that government is so heavily involved in distorting the health care marketplace. Edwards plan would raise taxes and essentially give everyone “free” health care. This will lead to much higher health care spending than we have today as well as waiting lists and poor quality health care. The system we have now is certainly flawed, but it’s much better than the one Edwards proposes.
Thankfully, he’s too incompetent (and ignorant) to be elected President, so we don’t have to worry about his bad ideas being implemented.
That’s a flaw in the press, not the candidate. I also think the press will find ways to derail the message and talk about bullshit distractions no matter how careful the candidate is. The last thing the media wants to do is talk about a candidate’s message.
I’m telling you guys, Edwards ain’t your boy. He is too green, too shallow, and too full of himself. I *want *the Democrats to win. I wanted them to win *last *time. I voted for them last time, even though the thought of John-boy being a heartbeat away from the president was extremely unsettling.
Just that we’re talking similar qualities involved here in running a campaign and the White House. Thinking ahead, making sure you know the more obvious potential consequences of your actions, having contingency plans in place - you gotta do these things as President too.
I didn’t say that all people who work will move out of poverty; I said that working is the only way to move out of poverty (with the exception of the rare lottery winner or the discovery of a rich uncle who left you everything when he died). You can work and still be in poverty; it’s almost impossible to move out of poverty if you don’t work, though.
Dio hit this already. People in poverty already work.
Are you trying to say that if insurance and health care were deregulated that we’d end up with a better system and more coverage? Because that’s contrary to what has happened with every other deregulation in our country’s history. Deregulation is followed by consolidation and cherry-picking more profitable coverage areas. I understand that some government involvment has been bad - but some has undoubtedly been good, and without it less people would have access to health care.
So what it really comes down to is that you don’t agree with his stances. Like it or not there is large support for a progressive populist candidate.
I fail to see how hiring industry leaders to help your campaign is a bad thing, regardless of some of their views.
So when did incompetence keep anyone from being elected. Electioning is a business by itself and because the campaigns are all run similarly , the elections seem to be gradually getting closer. Bush and co. brought incompetence to a new level (levee) which will be hard to reach again.
The point is that work isn’t aways sufficient and that many people need help. I’ve never seen Edwards say that people shouldn’t work. I think that’s a strawman.
You made similar observations, which you weren’t getting attacked for. You made very dissimilar observations as well, and you were getting attacked for those.
Yes, we’d be far better off. The government would also need to remove the tax incentive it gives to companies (but denies to individuals) for the purchasing of health insurance. That right there is the root of much of our problem.
You need to read some more history, then. Look at airline deregulation, cable deregulation (although we are really only in the beginnings of that, since states only recently began to truly deregulate cable service), and a variety of other things that have been deregulated over the years. The failure of wage and price controls during the 70’s clearly indicates that your premise is flawed.
Yes, some “deregulations” of the power industry have gone badly, but those were hardly deregulations. In my state, for instance, the power industry was “deregulated,” but price caps were imposed for a period of time. That’s still regulation. When the price caps came off, prices soared. They only did so because the price caps had distorted the market so badly during the time they were in place.
No, some government regulation has provided health care to those who couldn’t afford it (Medicaid and SCHIP, primarily). Most regulation, however, drives up the price and eliminates the variety of health insurance. It also drives up the price of health care. Doing this reduces the number of people who can afford insurance as well as the ability to afford health care.