John Edwards' Endorsement Speech (Full version) - The Jed Report
This was a helluva speech...will it help Obama? well, it crapped allover Clinton's victory, so yes it will help him. Read it!
Looks promising for Michigan. There are reports now that a resolution to the problem of the past election in Michigan is very close. Hopefully this will be a solution that everyone cab agree to and the delegates can be seated.
Onto Florida, now here is a cluster f*ck. After a couple of days of reporting different possibilities for the this situation the news has broke--a do over for Florida is all but completely dead. Mail in vote--dead, Re-vote--dead, caucus--dead and a privately funded do-over is dead. All options available have been rejexted. Hope is slipping away for the people of Florida.
What can be done? First Dean should get off his fat ass and call the two campaigns and tell them to send a rep to a meeting and then they go behind closed doors and bang out a solution. Or some statesman within the Party should take the initiative and bring the two sides together and find a solution to this problem. Someone like Al Gore. we cannot use the elder statesman, Bill, because of his ties to the candidate, so someone needs to step up and take control. If not then Florida should be left out of the mix at the convention. It was their decision to move the primary and they were aware of the consequences.
Yesterday, all his troubles seemed so far way, but now they are here to stay....sorry, I could hear the Beatles in the back of my mind....Mitt Romney has officially told his delegates to vote for McCain at the convention. Now that had to be hard for Mitt, since he and McCain have no love lost between the two.
This is a cute turn of events. Mitt endorses McCain to save his standing in the GOP? Or does he truly think that McCain is the best they have? If it is the later, then the way some have called him a flip-flop agent , then they would be right. It is more that he was told to do this by the GOP to preserve the integrity of the Party. Mitt being the political whore that he is, will fall in line, so that he can have more support when he runs again. Make no mistake, he will be a candidate again and he will need the GOP machine.
The GOP is tiring of Huckabee and his persistence. They want this soap opera to be over as soon as possible. Mitt is just doing what he is ordered to do. He does give two shakes in hell about McCain's candidacy; he is worried about his political future and his chances of becoming president down the road. With the endorsement, McCain is very close to the magic number of delegates needed. It is all but over for Huckabee, but what will he do now? It will be interesting to see, since he has a paid speech in the Cayman Islands and this was announced while he was preoccupied with his trip.
This is not a surprise, Mitt will do anything to preserve his standing in the Party and to help his future political contests. As i have said that makes him a political whore.
Obama has blown Hillary out in 8 of 8 contests and it looks like there will be 2 more for Obama, Wisconsin and Hawaii. Clinton's camp is starting to look a bit desperate. They are starting to go negative, slowly at first, but it will pick up. They are trying to gain much needed key endorsements and they are trying to shame Obama into a bunch of debates. This alone looks like they are desperate to find a way to bring him down or at least slow his roll.
Clinton is hinging everything on the 04 March primaries. An interesting tactic, but if all will remember there was another attempt at this strategy, let us call it the Rudy Effect, shall we. About the only groups that Clinton still has a commanding lead in is white women and Latinos, and her support in the later is waning. She needs a boost. Will Richardson endorse Clinton? That is the $64 question.
Apparently, no one was noticed that her message of she is ready, she can win and she will bring change, is a sad message. While Obama is talking "we", thus making the voter part of the solution. This is playing well the more that his message gets out. Her experience is still taunted at every venue, but it is not playing well. She is basically applying for the job of Bush, where Obama is a way out of the rut that has been in place for 20-25 years.
Clinton's desperation just keeps growing. Now she is fighting to seat the delegates of Florida and Michigan, two states she won. But she was the only name on one ballot and the other she won on name recognition alone. This could get ugly. But keep in mind that the credentials committee is made up of people that were part of the last Clinton administration. That could make a difference.
As I have said, this is about to get even more ugly than the South Carolina primary. Look for 527s and surrogates to start putting all types of negativity out into the campaigns. Some are saying there is no substance to the programs in speeches. I agree, both candidates are about as vague as vague can get. But the idea of "real" change is in the air. The only way to stop change is through a manure spreading operation and that is about to commence. This could be one of the most ugly election seasons on record.
First there are the delegates that have been selected by the states to go to the conventions and vote for the candidate that has the majority of votes in that state. You have seen them. They are the ones on the floor of the convention that are called upon to state who they support. The ones with the signs and stuff. But then there are the super Delegates.
These are the elected officials, reps, senators, governors, etc that have a say in the selection of the nominee. These public people that have come out for a candidate are gonna vote at the convention. This is where I feel that politics gets slimy. You have heard, in the past, about backroom deals. well guess what? these are the slimy little toads that make those backroom deals.
If the convention is knotted up and no clear winner has been found in the voting, then they go to the super delegates to help make the decision. This is good right? Not in my opinion. Promises are made to gain their vote, like Ambassadorships, cabinet positions, all kinds of promises. And it will work. If these guys and gals are ambitious then they will vote for who makes the best deal.
What will this mean for this election cycle? I can see, if it comes to this, that the Dem Party will split and may signal the death of the party. Let say that Clinton gets the super delegates and becomes the nominee; Obama supporters will feel that they were robbed and that half of the party is being ignored. If the candidates are tied when it comes to the convention in August, then all will have to move carefully, or the party will split and this time it may be permanent.
Howard Dean, as the head of the DNC, will have to move very carefully or he will lose the whole enchilada.
Awhile back Michigan and Florida decided to move their primaries up so they could take advantage of the early days of the campaign cycle. They did so without consulting the DNC. As a retaliation, the DNC said that the delegates from the two states were not allowed and would not be seated at the Dem convention. Clinton, Obama and Edwards signed an agreement that they would not campaign in either of the two states.
Clinton won the non-existent primaries in Michigan and Florida, she did so without campaign there. We win was pretty sizeable, but mostly likely it was because of name recognition and media reports. So, Clinton wins delegates that ill not count. But she is taunting the media about her large wins in these states. A good spin is a good spin, even if it does not count.
News is breaking that Clinton and her machine are trying to cut a deal with the DNC to have the two states delegates be seated and be counted. this makes her look desperate at best. Now she and hubby are showing their true colors of win at all costs. Bill has done his part to spread a layer of bitterness and falsehoods. The "old school" tactic of destroy your opponent at any cost is just pathetic. Is this the change that the people say they are looking for? Bill has got to be in the spotlight, he cannot stand for someone else to stand there and Hillary is egging him on.
Meanwhile, back at the convention. If Clinton and her co-candidate, Bill are successful at having the delegates form Michigan and Florida seated and counted, then I look for the Obama delegates to walk out of the convention. If that truly happens, then the Clintons will have succeeded in dividing the Democratic Party. And this time there may well be no way to put the pieces back together.
Just look how long it has taken to repair the damage to the Dem party from past infighting. If Hillary does somehow get the nomination, she can be proud of the fact that she is the first woman to do so. And same time she can be proud that she, her husband and the DLC have killed the party that bills itself as the party of the people. Nosw that would be an accomplishment!
