Meanwhile, Novakula thinks McCain/Condi would be the ideal Repug ticket…. Bwhahaha…

Yeah, sure! People really would want to be in Iraq for the next 100 years, if they voted THAT ticket in.

Someone should point out to McCain that he won’t be around to fight the last 96 years of those wars, even if he was elected President by some miraclous technical glitch in vote counting!

Don’t take my word for, look at the Actual Voting Record of John Edwards.

It’ll take a bit of work for you to actually do the counts and digest the votes.

95% of the time his votes match up with the majority of Democrats. These aren’t necessarily the most enlightened votes (the progressives may actually vote against them) but maybe he felt he needed to support the whip. That might explain his support for the Patriot Act, for example.

I’d suggest focussing in on cases where the Republican and Democrats voted antagonistically. Look to see if Edwards voted with the Republicans. Then go and look at the actual vote counts to see where the progressives actually stood. I think that you’ll find that in those areas where he votes against the stream it’s not with progressives…it’s with the Republican majority and Blue Dogs. There are about 50 votes like this, on issues as diverse as Yucca Mountain, tax issues (inheritance taxes and tax code rates for the wealthy), mad-cow disease safety, restricting giant agribusiness mergers, campaign finance rules, fuel economy standards on pickup trucks, internet gun sales (and Trent Lott’s “Sense of the Senate” that “militias” are just about any group that wants to carry guns rather than organized units regulated by Congress and the States), base-closures agreement, drug education programs in low income housing, amendments to constrain and limits Bush’s application of the Iraq AUF (note that Edwards voted vs. his parties majority on these), giving Bush Fast-Track authority, instituting human and labor rights requirements on the Caribbean Trade Agreement, supported the China and Andean Trade Agreements. He shot down Amendments by Wellstone, Feingold, Boxer, Dodd and Lautenberg on several occasions.

He was absent for several critical votes, evenb when he wasn’t out on the campaign trail. Admittedly the latter explained his lengthy absences during 2004, a critical time in fighting the Bush agenda. But. like Obama has been accused of, there are many, many votes where Edwards should have been there standing up for a “progressive view”…except perhaps his position would have been less than beneficial to that end.

The pattern, if there was one, was that he sided with about 10-15 Blue Dog/Bush Dog Democrats to block the Democrats, although for several years they actually had a majority. Sound familiar?

I suspect that this is why many progressives in the Senate find Edwards progressive rhetoric a little self-serving.

Take a look at those votes. The facade is not necessarily the reality.

A Letter To The Senate
by Hunter

Thu Dec 13, 2007 at 09:28:00 PM PST

Dear United States Senate,

Please pass a bill that gives me immunity from breaking the law. Now — and this is awkward — I can’t tell you which law I broke or when I first broke it, or the specifics of how I came to break that law. I can’t tell you what the results of my breaking of the law have been, and I cannot tell you how long I have been breaking the law. I can, however, assure you that I broke whichever law I broke for a very good reason, which is that President George W. Bush told me to break it.

I can’t tell you whether or not George W. Bush had the authority to tell me to break the law, because I can’t tell you how I broke the law. So maybe I didn’t break the law at all, because George W. Bush says I didn’t, but on the other hand George W. Bush lacks the power to declare who did or did not break the law, because it is not for him to say, so I probably did break the law, in a manner I can’t discuss.

Anyway, I think you will agree that the only available option is to pass a law declaring that it is OK that I broke whatever law I broke, if I broke it, because if you do not I will be sad and people will be mad at me and possibly try to hold me accountable for breaking the law that I can’t tell you I broke.

It is very important to give me blanket immunity for breaking the law, whichever law I broke, for reasons that I am also not allowed to tell you. Please get right on it — preferably tomorrow. If you have time.

P.S. I am not a crackpot.

They are on the brink of becoming a regional party full of bitter, old white men.

They face a demographic apocalypse.

-G

Citizen Quaker Girl and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Bless your heart…I can’t but agree with your assessment of the average middle class, white American voter but we do have some reason ta hope for the immediate future. First of all, non-white voters , particularly hispanics, are gunna make up an increasin’ percentage of votes beginnin’ this fall. Second, the youngsters who are gettin’ involved are much like the new wave of diverse voters in that their politics are bein’ formed by the synthesis of their experience with their intellect…once turned on like these kids are, they won’t turn off easily (I got two of these new voters in my family and they are actually blowin’ up their older brother’s political cynicism). Finally, the new communication technology makes it impossible to convince a majiority of people that what they are experiencing they really aren’t experiencing.

KEEP THE FAITH AND DON’T GIVE IT BACK TO THE BASTARDS!!