The Trail: A Daily Diary of Campaign 2008

If John Edwards truly believes in what he's been preaching to us about, then he should convert to an independent and run for President. That would split the votes to a ratio of pulling Bloomberg into the race. Now that would be exciting!

It is easy to analyze why a candidate lost after the fact. But I like easy work so here it goes.

Edwards ran his campaign as if he was the frontrunner and did not change or expand his message from 2004.

His operatives tried to cast him as the candidate of specifics but it never got beyond the see my website for my detailed plan on (fill in the blank) stage.

At any rate, he never advocated any great plans in public and just stuck to vague themes on helping the poor and the middle class.

To win, Edwards had to take risks and he never did. He got caught in the same trap that he did in 2004. He bet the farm on Iowa and once again lost.

Edwards may have one more presidential run in him if the Democratic nominee loses this fall. But if he gets another chance, he has to come up with specific plans and not just play the class warfare card again.

If he just runs his 2004 and 2008 campaign again, he will become a political joke, a modern day Harold Stassen who was ridiculed for running for president constantly beginning in 1944 and ending in 1980 I believe.

Edwards is a proud bordering on vain man and would not consciously subject himself to such ridicule. But he also seems to believe that it is his destiny to be president so that might override his better judgment.

If he does go again, I hope, for his sake, that he can come up with something besides the vague us vs. them populist message. Otherwise, he runs the risk of becoming even more of an object of ridicule.

jpecoraro5, I came from beginnings at least as humble as Edwards', and spent years living paycheck to paycheck, while skipping vacations, working overtime and weekends, and going wherever and whenever my employers asked. Twenty years later I've managed to save enough money to show up on Edwards' list of people who've "won life's lottery." True enough, I've been blessed with good health, and more good luck than I probably deserve. Still, Edwards' populist message is unambiguously poisonous. He blames greedy corporations for nearly every ill, without articulating any actual remedy other than the substitution of perceived corporate control for actual government control. To the extent that some people are smarter, harder-working, and/or luckier than others, there will be income disparities in a free society. Government can't fix that while preserving individual freedoms.

As we all know "underlying personal obligation" is code word for "I've got mine - you get yours" or "I don't give a damn about anybody but myself". It's a mantra that is used to blame the victim.

No matter what you do, the trip through life has its peeks and valleys. If you're born with a silver spoon in you mouth, some of the valleys can be smoothed out with the money on hand. My own trip through life has had both my wife and I get hit with major medical issues in our twenty's (cancer and kidney failure), and long term unemployment during the Bush administration. I recovered fully from my medical problem while my wife still deals with medical issues. We are both hard workers with Bachelor (4 year) degrees which we earned while working nearly full time hours. During my unemployment, we were hammered financially by property taxes that have gone through the roof and Medical Insurance bills that were astronomical. If it wasn't for the fact that we had saved for rainy days (this was more of a monsoon) and that my mother-in-law had some money that we could borrow we would have been part of the awful statistics created by the Bush administrations policies.

If what you got out of Edwards speeches is what you said you got, you were either not listening or you predetermined what you wanted to here. Simply put his message was about stopping corporations from taking away our rights and liberties, stopping these corporations from stealing, poisoning, and causing general bodily harm to us, and to give a helping hand to those that need it. I can't believe you missed that message.

John Edwards fashioned a political persona that at best was an angry, cynical, and contradictory mishmash. Hard work, legal smarts, and an under-developed sense of shame helped him make millions as a personal injury attorney. Yet, the sum total of his campaign message is that you're poor because someone else is rich, and that the government can and should fix that by giving you money taken from that rich guy. Nowhere in his message was any allowance for the underlying personal obligation of each member of a free society to do everything possible to secure his or her own well being. I see two Americas also: one America that believes in individual responsibility first and government support second, limited to the extent that individuals cannot take care of their own needs; and another America that believes income should distributed equally regardless of differences in individual responsibility and individual hard work.