Why I'm for Edwards

[Mythsaje]

He's declared war on our behalf against the greed, corruption, and casual malice of the status quo. He knows the score, knows how compromise with certain agencies is killing America. He speaks the language of labor, and understands the blue collar blues. When he looks at someone and says, "I know where you're coming from," he isn't just spitting game. When he speaks out against the industry lobbyists and the DC insiders, he's talking to people like you and me, the kind of people who don't trust the suits. He's talking to each and every one of us who's felt the bite of the insurance companies, the credit card companies, the banks, and saying "government isn't here to protect them from you, it's here to protect YOU from THEM."

And every time he says something like this for people to hear, he makes another enemy. Powerful enemies, with lots and lots of money. But he's faced such foes before, and beaten them soundly. He got rich doing it.

People say he's selling "snake oil," and he's "just in it for his ego."

You show me a presidential candidate who doesn't have a healthy ego and I'll show you someone who'll never win. There are arenas in which humility and self-doubt do not belong, particularly in this day and age.

I like it that he's pulling aside the curtain to show us the mechanisms of the Class War. He's talking about how money is influencing politics, and how the people are losing because of it. He's speaking the language that anybody in jeans and a workshirt can understand. The "suits," the corporate lawyers, the insurance execs, the bankers, the downsizing and outsourcing CEOs, are the people the common man naturally distrusts. With good reason.

He's speaking to the awareness that greed isn't good, that those who live for money are picking our pockets, and the government is acting in collusion with corporate plunderers who are taking from us and giving us almost nothing in return. That our government as it stands is working to protect them, to hold them behind walls of legality while the rest of us scrabble and suffer.

And he's saying this out loud, speaking to the very heart of the hard-working sod just trying to feed his or her family...to buy a house, or send at least one kid to college. To have a chance to build a better future for his or her kids.

Saying it out loud, pointing this out to the common man or woman, is not a way to win friends in high places. If he's selling "snake oil," what's the end game? To be President to what--help the friends he doesn't have? We know what Bush's friends are getting out of HIS administration.

How many Jack Abramoff's do you think are on John's Christmas Card list? How many insurance company execs show up to his barbecues? How many media moguls do you think the Edwards family plays kissy-face with? How many Saudi Princes know him by name?

One thing I'll bet on. He has very little in common with the people in the White House now. Rich or not, I'll bet he has more in common with US in that regard than any Bush.

I think he's a winner for all of these reasons and more.