Posted on 12/23/2006 7:17:55 PM PST by MadIvan
Against the storm-ravaged backdrop of a New Orleans district, John Edwards will this week become the first Democrat heavyweight to announce his 2008 White House run.
The declaration by Mr Edwards, a former senator and his party's vice-presidential candidate in 2004, will kick off a season of official announcements in coming weeks by the major contenders for the Democrat and Republican nominations.
The choice of New Orleans, where life is barely back to normal 16 months after Hurricane Katrina, is a clear signal that some Democrats will seek to tar rival Republicans with what many see as the Bush administration's inept handling of the crisis.
For Mr Edwards, a -boyish-looking 53-year-old with a folksy southern charm, the location will allow him to highlight the populist, anti-poverty and pro-union platform that he has carved out on his party's Left.
Unless former vice-president Al Gore makes a late entry into the fray – perhaps on the back his successful global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — Mr Edwards is likely to be one of the big three challengers for the Democrat nomination.
Barack Obama, the black 45-year-old Illinois senator and current political sensation, is on holiday over Christmas in his multi--ethnic birthplace of Hawaii, an important symbolic destination as he discusses with his wife Michelle whether to ride the media wave.
A father of two young daughters, he has said he will reveal his plans early next month after assessing the impact a presidential campaign would have on his family. He recently had the first taste of the negative campaigning he would face, when he was forced to admit to making "bone-headed" mistakes over a Chicago land deal with a disgraced party operative.
The Democrats' long-time frontrunner, Sen Hillary Clinton, has also indicated that she will make her plans clear early next year. But since the former First Lady has continued adding heavyweight Democrat operatives to her team, nobody doubts that she will run.
Mr Edwards has taken the risky decision of launching his second presidential run in the normally slow news week between Christmas and New Year in the hope of stealing a march on his rivals, who have become the objects of lavish media attention.
He trails behind the two serving senators in opinion polls of likely Democrat voters, but his backers believe he could claim the "anti-Hillary" mantle among the party faithful, who fear that Mrs Clinton will not win a national election. His "admission" that he was wrong to back President George W Bush's decision to invade Iraq — in contrast to the former First Lady's tortuous attempts to justify her "yes" vote – has won him strong backing among grassroots activists, who play a key role in the primary election process.
Mr Edwards has been out of office since he stepped down as senator for North Carolina to run for president in 2004, and has used the time to court voters assiduously in the key states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where the first party primary and caucus votes are held. His legwork has paid off, giving him a 20 per cent lead over Mrs Clinton in Iowa, where the 2008 campaign begins in earnest in 13 months' time.
He also has the kind of compelling personal history that plays well in US politics. The son of working-class parents from South Carolina and the first member of his family to attend college, he became a millionaire trial lawyer before moving into politics.
His wife Elizabeth recently wrote a bestselling book about her successful battle with -cancer. The death of the couple's 16-year-old son, Wade, in a car accident in 1996, provides a further, sympathetic twist in the Edwards tale. They have three other children.
It is not just the season for declarations of candidacies, but also for withdrawals. Just two weeks after he had established a presidential exploratory committee, Sen Evan Bayh, a centrist Democrat, has now announced that he will not be running against the bigger names.
Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama are already amassing electoral war chests and securing major national profiles, leaving little space for lesser-known rivals. Other Democrats who have expressed an interest in running, but may soon pull out, include John Kerry, the failed 2004 nominee, and Joseph Biden, a perennial White House aspirant.
On the Republican front, the jockeying is no less intense. The current favourites, Sen John McCain, and the former New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, have both set up exploratory committees to investigate possible White House runs. The 2008 showdown will be the most open in decades, as neither the sitting president nor the vice-president is running.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
If this notorious swindler charlatan crooked shyster is a "populist," then I am certainly Mother Theresa.
Hilarity will take care of him, never fear.
And by the way, Merry Christmas to you, sir!
To finish off a lawyer a wooden stake is required. Or at least backing the car over him - and then switching into "forward" gear again.
He's probably counting on his wife's cancer to bolster his popularity with the voters.
IMHO - probably one of your best Photoshops ever.
As a lifelong citizen of North Carolina, I want to apologize to the rest of the nation for inflicting John Edwards on you.
He and his wife have been filling my spam box for the last 2 years.
Just what we need, a PROFESSIONAL LIAR, a man who channeled dead children asserting that if their mothers would have been given C-sections,they would not have died, or not have been born deformed.
Course now that mothers routinely get C-sections, the rate at which children are born dead or deformed is unchanged.
To such a man, no contract is valid if his client is in pain at the end, and he gets his cut. Of course his client's pain doesn't keep him from making millions by getting money from said clients, despite their pain.
We saw what a presidential liar with an ambitious and unlovely wife could do to a country. Let's not go through that again.
Apparently Mr. Edwards thinks there is more money to made as President.
If the Breck Girl is a Democrat "heavyweight" we have absolutely nothing to fear in 2008.
I think the REAL Breck Girls are much smarter than he (edwards) is.
. . . . .Mother Theresa and Person of the Year in less than seven days ----- what a week you are having! /sarcasm
It's worse than that. It was Waaaaaaaal-maaaaaaart. You know, the store where they beat their employees every day and twice on Sunday. The store that carefully studies census data to find potential store locations with the maximum number of mom and pop shops around to bankrupt them. The store that is single handedly supporting the Chinese communist government and was probably behind the invasion of Tibet.
As a life long Mass-hole, I have been trying to apologize for every idiot that pops their head up every couple of runs. First it was Teddy, then Mike, then John...and now Mitt. Oh wait, I am supposed to like Mitt. Now, that's right...he's and lightweight idiot too.
We can apologize all we want. They still run and make our states look bad.
I feel your pain.
As a lifelong citizen of California, with my two glittering fools (errrrr....jewels) as Senators, I'll "see" your apology and "raise you" another!
He's still finished, Ivan. The last poll I saw had him at 4%. He did so badly in the '04 primaries that if he hadn't been from a Southern state I don't think Kerry would have looked at him for VP.
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