How could DU'ers be fooled by John Edwards? (Please see apology)

[denem]

Last edited Tue Apr 17, 2012, 07:29 AM - Edit history (1)

Apology here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002565489

Three Videos - watch them if you need to.

No Democrat came more strongly for the Iraq War.
JE's 2004 convention speech was more phony than Mitt at the NRA.
It's all there to see, if you don't have blinkers.

1. "Sadam Hussien's regime is grave threat to America and our allies."

2. Sadam ... must be disarmed, including the use of military force of necessary"

3. 2004 Democratic Convention speech. If this doesn't scream FAKE, nothing will.

[Confusious]

1. Yea, you got great hindsight there

Anyone else you'd like to declare bad BEFORE everyone knew they were bad?

Please grace us and prognosticate on who else is bad so we can ignore them BEFORE they become bad.

[sofa king]

7. Oh! I've got one!

If the Romney people really think they've got this wrapped up and can survive any convention challenge, the LDS Church will attempt to pick their own running-mate for Romney. I think Romney will cave into them, too.

That man--and it will be a man--whoever it is? He will be unfamiliar to the public at large, and he's gonna suck.

This is a more exacting definition of "suck" than I would normally use against any and all politicians with the (R) behind their names. Whoever this guy is, he's going to be a dirtball who can't pass a normal vetting. Instead, he will be dressed up with a Potemkin city of fake positions built with all the sophistication that geographically and intellectually isolated cultists can muster.

We should all be able so see his inner asshole within two weeks of the pick.

[frazzled]

15. Many of us declared he was "bad" (not bad, just phony) back in 2004

when Kerry inexplicably picked him as a running mate. His outspoken support for the Iraq invasion in 2002 was still fresh in our minds (he cosponsored Lieberman's IWR, only one of three Democratic senators to do so (Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Zell Miller, and John Breaux, all of whom left the party to one degree or another). I knew he'd been a founding member of the Senate arm of the DLC. I barfed during his 2004 convention speech, where he said, "we will kill you" to terrorists. I always thought he was smarmy and fake; so when he ran in 2008, there were many of us who protested the fawning adulation he was getting from liberals. MANY of us. I actually have never cared about his seamy and steamy sexual escapades so much as the rest of this.

[aquart]

2. I'm impressed by so much superior gloating.

My sister, who is up there with the brighter bulbs, preferred Edwards because he had done good work for decent people as a trial lawyer. That was her reason.

Seems acceptable to me. She judged him on deeds not words.

[RBInMaine]

3. And as I recall Hillary, Kerry, and MANY other Dems supported the use of force against Iraq. So

get real. The guy made a terrible personal mistake and then tried to cover it up and lied about it. Be mad about that if have to. But you stand on weak ground with the rest.

[cali]

5. oh that's just a tiny bit of the fuckwad phony's shit

go look up my dozens of posts about him while he was running.

but hey, start with his stupid lie about working for a hedge fund to learn about poverty. I despise him. I always despised him and I damned well knew he didn't give a shit about the poor. Asshole. That said, I think the current legal mess he's in is political.

[cali]

4. I pointed this- and many, many other things out during the time

he was running, and I got so much vicious shit from his devotees. It was unbelievable.

[baldguy]

6. Like any con artist, he acted the right way & said the right things.

You can't blame his erstwhile supporters for wanting what's best for the country.

[JNelson6563]

8. What an interesting post!

Very revealing.

I didn't have a horse in the 08 primary race, maybe if I had (and it wasn't Edwards) I too could be smug and superior about it! If only I'd had the foresight to have known! Ah well, I guess I'll have to make due with basking in the smug superiority of others.

Julie

[Grillydad]

9. Sometimes the message and policy is important

Many people liked his message and proposed policy choices. We all have the ability to be wrong. The visceral reactions to politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, can become debilitating to getting anything done. Edwards may be a flawed and reprehensible man, but many people just want a government that meets their expectations of protecting its citizens. If we can get past the cult of personality so that we root for a man or woman and move onto addressing policy, our government would be more responsive to its citizens.

[saras]

10. Why not list everyone who came out for the war at the same time on the same page?

It's a much more fair, much more honest way of looking at how Democratic politicians dealt with the issue at the time. But to judge Edwards about the war, we need to compare him to other Dems about the war at the same historical point. Edwards' positions on other issues are irrelevant. And if Edwards was wrong, then EVERYONE with that position was EQUALLY wrong, and deserves EQUAL opprobium.

As for phony, there are different styles of phony. ALL middle-class behavior is phony, to a really profound extent according to nearly everybody who doesn't participate. I have never, in my over fifty years, seen a politician who was NOT phony, not even on the small-town level. The best ones are straight up about it - this is my public mask, and I try to manage it appropriately, neither too informal nor too formal. The worst don't know they're phony, and have an "authenticity" shtick. The next worst are plastic robots with shorts in their wiring (both kinds of shorts).

[Alexander]

11. Don't forget - John Edwards co-sponsored the Iraq War Resolution.

He won exactly one election in his entire life, by a very small margin.

His own constituents felt like he was too busy running for president to care about them. That's why he had middling approval ratings throughout his one term in the Senate. And while in the Senate, he was very much a DLC/Blue Dog Democrat.

I had him pegged for a phony the minute he started running for president. He couldn't even stay on message on the Kerry/Edwards ticket and he didn't help in the South at all. He was so useless as a running mate, I think Kerry would've been better off picking Gephardt, his original choice.

And when he ran again in 2008, apologizing for everything he ever did in the Senate, my suspicions about his phoniness were confirmed.

This was all before Reille Hunter became well-known as his mistress, which again just confirmed that the man is as phony as a 3 dollar bill.

The problem here in the US, and also on DU, is that people fall in love with politicians too easily. This leads to a lot of hero worship situations and sets people up for disappointment when the politician can't or won't deliver on all their promises, or in Edwards' case, when they turn out to be a lying scumbag.

[madrchsod]

12. time to stop beating the horse..

it`s dead.

[frazzled]

16. Not really: it's a cautionary tale about ...

how people here (and elsewhere) make judgments about candidates all the time. We see it repeatedly: idolizing certain people while ignoring their actual records or their character failings. Falling into line with a few bloggers. Closing their eyes to inconvenient truths. Instead of having real discussions with us about Edwards at the time, when many of us, like the OP, were cautioning against him, both for his previous political record, his flip-flops, and what we perceived as his "used-car salesman" shtick, we were ridiculed, and called "not real progressives."

No candidate should be idolized, and each of them should be scrutinized for their record, positions, and character. It doesn't guarantee that they might be able to achieve the things they put forth in a campaign, or won't be constrained for other reasons, but it's the baseline thing you have to think about when considering who you want to put forward.

[phleshdef]

13. I always distrusted him, for one simple reason. The constant blinking when he talks.

I know its a superficial thing, but I could never get past it.

[BlueStater]

14. I bet you're so happy that he actually did turn out to be a sleazeball.

Now you get to act like an arrogant ass and rub it in his former supporters' faces until the end of time.

[Alexander]

17. Some of us didn't need Reille Hunter to demonstrate what a sleazeball John Edwards is.

Some of us were on to his act long before anyone ever heard of Reille Hunter. And some of us didn't appreciate being told we weren't "true progressives" or "true Democrats" because we chose not to buy the snake oil he was selling.

Quite frankly, a little research and scrutiny would've led most DUers to the same conclusion. It's not like he had a long career in office or anything.

But sure, go on and attack someone for not falling into the hero worship trap.

[BlueStater]

18. You want to be the better man?

How about you let it go already. It's been four years. His political career is over. He'll never hold elected office again. He's publicly disgraced. He might be going to prison. What will make you happy enough to finally drop it already? When he's dead?

There's such a thing as a "sore winner" and many of you Edwards haters, with your arrogant, obnoxious gloating, have proved to be that.

[Alexander]

19. There is such a thing as a "sore loser", which includes many who refuse to admit they were duped.

You were duped by John Edwards. I wasn't. You're still sore about it. That's all there is to this story.

[BlueStater]

20. Could you be anymore smug if you tried?

Good lord.

[Alexander]

21. Could you be anymore in denial if you tried?

John Edwards conned you. Just admit you were conned, that you're an easy mark, and this will all be over with.

Good lord.

[BlueStater]

22. I don't have to admit anything.

Like most people, I've disowned Edwards. I hardly ever think about him anymore. In the rare times when I do comment on him, I say things like this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101480025#post4

Enough already. How about this? I'll admit I'm an "easy mark" when you admit you're a petty, vindictive, pompous ass. That sound fair?

[CTyankee]

23. Sounds like what happened to me. I really wanted to believe JE. I had great sympathy

for Elizabeth and the kids. I wanted to believe that here was a guy who stood by his wife through a serious illness, that they were fighting this together.

I also wanted to believe in his message about the two americas. Nobody else was talking about the poor. I thought it was great that he did.

I liked his health care plan. I liked what he said about the insurance companies, that you can't sit down at the table with them because "they eat all of the food." I liked that attitude, fighting the big health insurance industry.

When I think about how I was duped, I remember how dispiriting it was during the 8 Bush years. The psychological assault on us progressives took its toll. At least it did on me.

If some of you here were not fooled, well, god bless you. I am now very wary of being "taken in" by high sounding politicians. I won't be fooled again. Lesson learned.

[Odin2005]

24. He's a sociopath, IMO.

Lots of superficial charm.

[Arkana]

25. Hindsight is 20/20.

He talked a good game, much like a lot of politicians. I can see why people liked him.

[Capt. Obvious]

26. "To the former Senator who is having trouble hiding his affair"

"HOPE IS ON THE WAY"