Reply #12: I'll bite [View All]

[Bryan Sacks]

John Edwards. He is the only candidate on the big stage saying radical things. It's very important that he last in the race as long as possible.

I don't know if he means a word he says. But he's decided to play the populist, and the message is resonating. Not surprisingly, because people are basically progressive, and obviously disgusted with corporate domination.

Yet here's the devastating rub: Edwards will lose, not so much because he lacks money (which he does), but because when push comes to shove (as it will if he wins a few of these early states), the sheep (most of us) will choose the captivity they know over the chance (however rhetorical) for freedom. The way Edwards is voicing is exciting. But destroying the corporate grip does not only mean a chance at a truly participatory, egalitarian, healthy, caring and peaceful society. That has to be weighed against less (or no) American Idol, Ted Koppel and NFL Football. Fewer supermarkets and shopping malls. Higher prices. Less automation.

I want people to be confronted with the rhetorical possibility of what they've been clamoring for, and then have to accept that they lacked the makeup to actually take it. That we HAD A CHANCE to try for what we've all said we need, and failed to bring it off.

That is what John Edwards offers all of us. He is a major candidate; he has been delivering the most anti-corporate message of any recent major candidate in recent history (way more than Dean); he is promising the return of power to the people, and while that's not exactly unique among campaigners, he has identified and pointed the finger squarely the major cause of the people's disenfranchisement. THAT is unique (to candidates not named Nader).

But the problem of corporatism is so large that it has deformed people's ability to conceive of, and to truly support, the making of a non-corporate world. John Edwards is promising that remaking. When he doesn't win, hopefully then we can begin to accept to coldness of our political reality.

And if I'm wrong: then we get Edwards, who has been promising the moon, and would at least have to try to deliver some of the stars. I will vote for him if he makes it to PA.