He Said She Said

John Edwards Is A Loser
Lawrence O'Donnell

John Edwards is a loser. He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency. Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now. All presidential candidates are egomaniacs but some of them have party status worth preserving that forces them to drop out when they hit the wall. A loser like Edwards has no status or dignity to lose. Campaigning and losing is his life. So, he will continue his simple-minded, losing campaign and deny Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the one-on-one contest they deserve
If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.
Maybe Edwards is already not a factor in the campaign because Edwards voters would split evenly between Senators Obama and Clinton if Edwards dropped out. But we'll never know unless Edwards does the right thing and gets out of the way of the only two candidates who have a chance to get the nomination.
The white male monopoly on the Democratic nomination has finally come to an end. Someone has to tell John Edwards.
Look at this racist crap!! If Obama can't win without John Edwards dropping out they he Obama doesn't deserve to Win!
I hope Edwards takes it away from Obama by siphoning off votes he might have gotten if Edwards dropped out which he won't do!

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Shut Up, Larry
Posted January 11, 2008 11:58 AM (EST)
Jane Smiley
When I read Lawrence O'Donnell's post calling John Edwards a "loser" and threatening a lifetime of infamy if he doesn't get out of the race, I immediately went to O'Donnell's bio to see his party affiliation. I was sure it would say "R" -- but it didn't. It didn't say anything.
However, I am fairly sure in my own mind that Karl Rove paid him to write that post. Look at it this way: O'Donnell attacks the only candidate in the race with explicitly progressive policy positions, and the only candidate in the race who hasn't accepted corporate money, and the only candidate in the race who understands how corporations are poisoning American politics and American life with their unrestrained power and influence.
In addition, O'Donnell maintains that the only two candidates we can have to choose between are Clinton and Obama. Both Clinton and Obama have serious electability issues. If you believe that there was no Diebold factor in New Hampshire (something that I think requires further investigation but will not get it, I am sure), then you have to acknowledge and fear the Bradley factor -- that there is a core group of American white voters who will not vote for a black man no matter what they say to pollsters. By the same token, polls among voters of all types have shown that Clinton has the highest negatives -- the highest number of voters who will not vote for her under any circumstances.
Hillary Clinton aroused incredible antagonism in the 1990s. The antagonism she aroused was not rational, but then, neither is voting. So, what O'Donnell proposes is prematurely reducing the choices of Democrats to the two candidates that are, on the face of it, the least electable. It was clear from the op-ed that Rove wrote a few weeks ago that the Republicans, whose own candidates run the gamut from the ridiculous (Fred Thompson) to the psychopathic (Rudolph Giuliani) and the theocratic (Huckabee) have already begun to see finagling the Democratic primary race as their only chance. If O'Donnell happens to be a Democrat and he buys into this strategy, then the infamy is his.
But I thank him for one thing -- he persuaded me to send a nice fat donation to John Edwards.
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Pro-Clinton BET Founder Attacks Obama, Hints At Past Drug Use
Robert L. Johnson, the billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television, injected himself into the middle of a flaring campaign controversy on Sunday. During an appearance with Sen. Hillary Clinton, he seemingly raised the specter of Sen. Barack Obama's youthful drug use.
Speaking to a crowd in Columbia, South Carolina, the African-American business tycoon chastised Obama for a memo his campaign put together documenting instances in which Clinton or her surrogates made allegedly racially-insensitive statements.
"I am frankly insulted," Johnson declared, "that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in the book - when they have been involved."
The comment was greeted with ire by the Obama campaign. In the past, Clinton surrogates have raised the drug issue. Hours later, Johnson claimed he was simply referring to Obama's work as a community organizer.
The episode illustrated just how charged the Democratic primary has grown in the wake of Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses and Clinton's win in the subsequent New Hampshire primary. It also threatens to bring wider scrutiny to Johnson's political activism, which is highly controversial in Democratic circles.
To be sure, Johnson is a major figure within the black community, a key voting bloc in the upcoming South Carolina primary. He also has been a big-time contributor to Democratic causes and candidates. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, he's offered up more than $1.5 million in donations since 1992; with $4,600 going to Clinton on March 6, 2007 and $2,100 to Obama on May 31, 2006.
But, over the past few years, Johnson has waged political battles that put him drastically at odds with Clinton, the candidate he now supports.
Johnson served on President George Bush's commission on privatizing social security. In January 2005, he convened a summit whose stated purpose was to raise and answer questions about the African American community's political affiliations, but whose true design, critics claim, was to peal black voters away from the Democratic Party.He has repeatedly called for the repeal of the estate tax, saying that the policy is propagated by "a liberal, noblesse oblige attitude that they have probably had in their families for generations."
He even called Republican Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to express his concerns on the issue.
There are certainly issues that bind Johnson and Clinton. One of those is Johnson's service as a member of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative in 2006.
In addition, Johnson's Liberia Enterprise Development Fund has worked with CGI to promote business ventures and entrepreneurship in the West Africa country.
There are political and policy agreements as well. And in the wake of his controversial comments, Johnson was forced to reiterate those.
"My comments today were referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect," said Johnson in an email statement. "When Hillary Clinton was in her twenties she worked to provide protections for abused and battered children and helped ensure that children with disabilities could attend public school. That results oriented leadership -- even as a young person -- is the reason I am supporting Hillary Clinton."
In a statement about Johnson, Obama spokesman Bill Burton said, "His tortured explanation doesn't hold up against his original statement. And it's troubling that neither the campaign nor Senator Clinton -- who was there as the remark was made - is willing to condemn it as they did when another prominent supporter recently said a similar thing."