Edwards' campaign has put the central issue of our time center stage: Who controls our country--corporations or the people? He's the only candidate who says, fearlessly : "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." We haven't heard words like that in our campaigns in a while, at least not from anyone near top of the polls.
What Edwards brings that Obama and Clinton so far haven’t is a confrontational, fighting spirit to take back our government from corporate power, lobbyists and special interests. Obama and Clinton speak lots of populist fluff--and, yes, they’re more moderate in tone—but they both have avoided being specific and so far lack much detail or substance on the issues of economic fairness, justice for ALL and dignity for the lower classes. The only one of the top three finishers who has called the 'corpies' on their class warfare against the poor and middle class is, so far, John Edwards. I know others like Kucinich and Ron Paul have made similar points, but they are not achieving a significant portion of the vote, so far, but Edwards is.
The status quo is scared of John Edwards because he not only can drive that message home into the next primaries and election but he is not taking special interest money and he earned his way where he is from his roots as a poor boy. John Edwards could carry the 'solid South. That scares the GOP.
Now, that said: One day after the Iowa caucuses, something seems queer to me about the media coverage of the Iowa results. Has anyone else noticed that the “lamestream” news media, even in their very early hours of reporting, seemed to already act as if John Edwards no longer mattered at all?
What I see in the reporting so far is Edwards’s second place finish being 'dissed' by a deafening silence of coverage. It is as if Edwards were not even relevant and had lost big! If these media talking-heads mention Edwards at all, they lump him into the ‘loser’ category with Hillary in Iowa and then continue to treat Hillary and Obama as the two main players going forward into the next primaries. I noticed in the wee morning hours of Friday after the Iowa caucuses, for example, that ABC News had hardly mentioned Edwards at all, scarcely even once in a whole night of reporting on the results of the caucus. And when they did mention Edwards’ for just a nano-second, they dismissed him as a loser basically, now, out of the running.
If this is not an example of mainstream media bias, I don't know what is. The reporting has just simply glossed over what should be announced as an absolute shocker: John Edwards actually BEAT Hillary Clinton, who was expected to be a shoe-in.
That’s pretty impressive, even if Edwards didn't come in first.
All the corporate media shills can do is to repeat the mantra of Obama vs. Hillary, over and over, still framing everything in terms of a Clinton-Obama horse race.
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