John Edwards Emerges from the Shadows

As noted on my blogroll, John Edwards was slated to speak at Hoosierville, and indeed he did. About 1000 students attended the talk which was about the general election.

(photo courtesy of the IDS)

IU's student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, has more on this talk, but to add from what I read on the Daily Kos, it sounds like JRE kind of stayed on message about Barack Obama. He also acknowledged the 200,000 homeless veterans.

I want to make a special comment here.

I've been very appalled at what I read by fellow Dems about John Edwards at the DU , Open Left, the Daily Kos, and to a certain extent, by one of the editorial board members at Progressive Blue. Most have treated Edwards as though he were a pariah in the party, even though someone like Joe Lieberman (an independent who caucused most of the time with the Dems) who is fighting to keep his chairmanship, was worse by campaigning for John McCain, and questioned Barack Obama's leadership. I don't know why all of the sudden we have purity trolls out there when we know that the lure of any politician is power, and their misgiving about it can end up on the tabloids of the National Enquirer.

Martin Luther King Jr was a great leader, but he was sinner like Edwards. He had his share of womanizing during his time. One of the differences of course, is that the sentiment of John Edwards is more of disdain because his sin was revealed after it became known that Elizabeth had permanent cancer.

I remind readers of what Elizabeth wrote at the Daily Kos back in August:

Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.

John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.

The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.

John has spoken in a long on-camera interview I hope you watch. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown. But now the truth is out, and the repair work that began in 2006 will continue. I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.

There are many who wish John Edwards would disappear, go home to Elizabeth, Emma Claire and Jack, and not crawl out of the hole. I disagree. The issue of poverty has not disappeared. Poverty is going to be in the forefront, more than ever, because people are losing their homes. Banks are doing what they want with the $700B bailout and our taxpayer dollars will never be recooped. I seriously doubt they will try to renegotiate with foreclosed owners because their losses have been covered and no need to sell the assets back to the government.

As much as I like Obama and Biden, poverty disappeared from their rhetoric most of the general election cycle. It was good that they talked about the middle class, but frequently, they didn't say that many of them were one bankruptcy away from sliding into the ditch.

There are too many uninsured people, and too many in poverty or undernourished.

To those of you who wish John Edwards gone, I say to you: you owe a lot to this man for pushing the progressive envelope. You owe him for a victory to the WH and you owe him some graciousness for admitting his sin when he did, and for dropping out when he did. Yes, his hubris has cost him political capital, but I for one am better off for knowing him, and his progressive agenda is likely to make it in many forms in Congress and Obama's cabinet. David Bonior is on the senior economic advisory team and likely to be the Labor Secretary. Many staffers who went over to Obama will have jobs on the Hill or in an Obama West Wing. And today, Max Baucus has decided to take up the populist cause of mandated health insurance.

John, you screwed up dude. But I never felt you betrayed me. You didn't betray your supporters either. You betrayed your family and put them in a horrible spotlight that no one wanted. However, I cannot judge you by your indiscretion. I can judge you for your ideas, and most of them were right.

Come out of the shadows, John. Continue to wear your ring. When the door seems to be closing, your family is waiting for you but so are your hardcore supporters. I'm ready to hear more about what you propose to do about poverty and push the others to take action too.

UPDATE: Bonior has told the press he is not interested in the Labor Secretary's job