HE'S OAKLAND:

Democrats Need Route From Political Trap (Sam Parry, January 6, 2003, consortiumnews.com)

And so it begins, as predictable as clockwork. Just hours after Sen. John Edwards said he is setting up an exploratory committee as the likely start of a presidential run, the right-wing attack machine was already in gear, grinding out a caricature of the North Carolina Democrat, an early glimpse of what's to come not just for Edwards but for all the Democratic hopefuls.

On CNN’s Crossfire the day Edwards announced his plans, Republican consultant Ed Rogers began "defining" Edwards. He was a "parasitic" trial lawyer, a multimillionaire with no gravitas.

"When [Edwards] started this quest four years ago to buy himself a Senate seat and get into the game, he thought there would be a market for a Clinton-lite or for a wannabe wonder boy," Rogers said. "[Edwards’s] background, his qualifications, make it a farce that he would run for president of the United States." [Crossfire, Jan. 2, 2003]

On the same day, talk show host Rush Limbaugh clipped together an attack montage for his radio audience belittling Edwards’s desire to be a "champion for regular people." Limbaugh devoted a chunk of his three-hour radio show to explain to his millions of listeners that Edwards was really just using "code for you’re a helpless little ninny who can’t do anything without me helping you."

The next day, the Republican National Committee published a 5,100-word, two-part report on its Web site calling Edwards "an unaccomplished liberal" who is "not ready for prime time" -- although Edwards has the same number of years experience in government as Texas Gov. George W. Bush had when he ran for president in 2000.

The immediate lambasting of Edwards – like early attacks on Sen. John Kerry – is only the start of a coordinated campaign by the RNC and its allies in the powerful right-wing media to tear down any Democrat who may pose a threat to Bush.

One reads the rest of this essay eagerly, searching for a single word refuting those comments by the attack machine. There are none. In fact, there can be none. Edwards is a lightweight whose main selling point is that he's a Southerner who comes across like a TV news anchor--pretty, unthreatening, and capable of reading a teleprompter without looking shifty-eyed. If he left politics today there'd be not one piece of significant legislation to show he'd ever been there, nor would he leave behind a single idea that has to be reckoned with. Recent polling in NC suggests that he'd have trouble being re-elected to the Senate in '04, which may be why he's moving on. The thought that he's "a threat to Bush" is simply absurd. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 7, 2003 1:29 PM