Best Edwards line: "It doesn't have to be this way"

[midnight armadillo]

This was better than the hope is on the way slogan. "It doesn't have to be this way" is pretty much the foundation of the progressive viewpoint, and repeating it loudly and with great frequency could help motivate people to try to change their situations for the better.

[olddem43]

1. Agreed. We should get this out there.

[On the Road]

2. Yes -- One of the Most Successful Republican Strategies

is creating a sense of inevitability. Nothing we can do to keep from high oil prices, outsourcing jobs, defecits, recessions, invading other countries. Proposing sensible solutions or alternatives results in blank incomprehension.

Once enough Americans feel that, yes, it can be different -- that will turn the tide.

[flpoljunkie]

3. I found this passage profoundly moving regarding Iraq war toll on troops..

Some of our friends and neighbors, they saw their last images in Baghdad. Some took their last steps outside of Fallujah. Some buttoned their uniform for the final time before they went out and saved their unit. Men and women who used to take care of themselves, they now count on others to see them through the day. They need their mother to tie their shoe. Their husband to brush their hair. Their wife's arm to help them across the room.

The stars and stripes wave for them. The word hero was made for them. They are the best and the bravest. And they will never be left behind. You - you - you understand that. And they deserve a president who understands - understands it on the most personal level what they've gone through, what they've given and what they've given up for their country.

To us, the real test of patriotism is how we treat the men and women who have put their lives on the lines to protect our values. And let me tell you, the 26 million veterans in this country will not have to wonder, when they're in office - when we're in office, whether they'll have health care next week or next year. We will take care of them because they have taken care of us.

- John Edwards

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/politics/campaign/28TEXT-EDWARDS.html?position=&pagewanted=print&position=

______________________

This, is in contrast to the Bush administration, which has rushed our troops into an unnecessary war-- obvious to everyone but the feckless, pliant media who trumpeted the Bush administrations trumped up claims of a "grave and gathering" threat from Saddam Hussein.

And then they have the chutzpah to ponder if John Kerry is strong on national security! Taking a country to an unnecessary, bloody and costly war is not a sign of a competent Commander-in-Chief! Perhaps they cling to this idiocy because they were so complicit in cheerleading this nation to war. They did not do their job. We must remind them of this failure.

[shawmut]

4. His speech is on c-span right now

just starting.