PrintJuly 28, 2007
John Edwards: Too Paranoid to be President
Trailing Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama badly in the polls, John Edwards is getting desperate.
In fact, the only way to describe this speech in Iowa yesterday made by the Senator is a full blown panic attack. Edwards believes that the reason late night comedians, bloggers, and others writing and talking about the campaign keep bringing up his $400 haircut is because dark, powerful forces do not want him to win:
"You remember the Swift Boat stuff? This stuff's not an accident. Nobody in this room should think this is an accident. You know, I'm out there speaking up for universal healthcare, ending this war in Iraq, speaking up for the poor.Needless to say, Edwards never bothers to mention who "they" are although here, he seems to be talking about people who make over $100 million a year:
"They want to shut me up. That's what this is about. 'Let's distract from people who don't have health care coverage. Let's distract from people who can't feed their children. Let's people who can't pay for their medicine. Let's talk about this litlte silly frivolous nothing stuff so that America won't pay attention.'
"They will never silence me. Never. I'll tell you that right now.
"They're going to control the media. They're going to control what's being said. They do not want to hear us talking about health care for everybody.That's a pretty select group of people - perhaps no more than a couple of hundred at most who might be worth that much. Perhaps Edwards could name some names? And then he could give us the dates and locations of the meetings "they" attended to plot the destruction of John Edwards. And for good measure, Edwards might want to name the individual responsible for forcing him to get that $400 haircut which, after all, was part of the plan to destroy him that "they" concocted.
"They don't want to hear us talking about a fair tax system. You think these people who make $100 million a year, you think they want to pay their fair share of taxes? Thats why they hire all those lobbyists for in Washington, D.C.
"They hate listening to people like me. Well, I got bad news for 'em, they're going to have to listen to me for the next eight years."
To hear a candidate for President in either party talk like this should send chills down your spine. If you think it sounds like Nixon you would be absolutely right. Of course, in Nixon's case, it was all true - that people were out to get him - but wildly untrue that they actually plotted against him the way that Edwards seems to be saying here.
Maybe we should start talking about three Americas; rich America, poor America, and the America out to get John Edwards.
UPDATE
Ed Lasky points us to this Ben Smith piece in Politico which suggests that this was no off the cuff rambling by Edwards but rather a planned and canned moment to "get the message out."
If so, it's even more chilling. Edwards will be deliberately appealing to people's darkest fears about "them" from here on out. It should be interesting to see if it works.
