For Edwards, one step forward, one step back

There is little doubt that Ann Coulter's verbal smear of John Edwards helped the former North Carolina Senator's campaign.  Just hours after the incident, the Edwards Campaign sent out an email that encouraged its supporters to help raise $100,000 in "Coulter-Cash."  In terms of money, the weekend was definitely a success for Edwards.

However, on Sunday, Edwards was over-shadowed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- both of which appeared in Selma, Alabama, the symbolic birthplace of the civil rights movement.  While Obama and Clinton spoke at predominantly black churches, Edwards was embarrassingly desperate to get some media exposure that day.  This excerpt from an AP story on Edwards only makes you feel sorry for the guy:

Democratic presidential contender John Edwards on Sunday called a janitors' campaign for better wages at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, a continuation of the civil rightsstruggle that began in the 1960s.

If someone can make the connection between janitors and the 1965 civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, then maybe Edwards is the guy to do it.  But still, it's a stretch.

It just shows how Edwards is saying almost anything he possibly can to stay in the news amidst all the hype about Clinton and Obama.  Ten months before the the Iowa Caucus, the media is already proclaiming this to be a two-person race, regardless that there are other quality candidates, such as Edwards, worthy of getting that same amount of attention.

Comments

[CommonGood]

It seems your personal perception of John Edwards might be coloring your coverage. You and I and anyone else paying minimal attention to the U.S. economy knows we have been experiencing a re-emerging plantation system for a generation. The Oligarchy now owns enough of our federal and state legislative and regulatory heirarchy that they are able, almost at will, to impose ever-increasing economic burdens on the middle class and the poor; e.g., the 2005 federal bankruptcy law, which creates a permanent debtor class. The Oligarchs increase regressive taxation (sales taxes, for example) while protecting their own massive wealth by cutting or eliminating taxes on capital gains, on huge estates, on executive and corporate incomes. They facilitate the flow of capital across national borders in search of higher returns, but they impede the movement of labor. They crush collective action by the people while engaging in massive consolidations of markets among themselves. So, for John Edwards to stand up on Bloody Sunday and make an allusion to the struggle for civil rights in his call for economic justice for janitors seems, to me, not only perfectly reasonable but exactly on the bullseye of the target I'd like American voters to be watching right up to November 4, 2008.