WASHINGTON — There’s losing. There’s losing honorably. And then there’s John Edwards.
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Then there is John Edwards. He’s not going to be president either. He stays in the race because, with the Democrats’ proportional representation system, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton might end up in a very close delegate race — perhaps allowing an also-ran with, say, 10 percent of the delegates to act as kingmaker at the convention.
It’s a prize of sorts, it might even be tradeable for a Cabinet position. But at considerable cost. His campaign has been a spectacle.
Edwards has made much of his renunciation of his Iraq War vote. But he has not stopped there. His entire campaign has been an orgy of regret and renunciation.
– As senator, he voted in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that he now denounces.
– As senator, he voted for storing nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Twice. He is now fiercely opposed.
– As senator, he voted for the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind education reform. He now campaigns against it, promising to have it “radically overhauled.”
– As senator, he voted for the Patriot Act, calling it “a good bill … and I am pleased to support it.” He now attacks it.
– As senator, he voted to give China normalized trade relations. Need I say? He now campaigns against liberalized trade with China as a sellout of the middle class to the great multinational agents of greed, etc.
Breathtaking. People can change their minds about something. But everything? The man served one term in the Senate. He left not a single substantial piece of legislation to his name, only an astonishing string of votes on trade, education, civil liberties, energy, bankruptcy and, of course, war that now he not only renounces but inveighs against.
Today he plays the avenging angel, engaged in an “epic struggle” against the great economic malefactors that “have literally,” he assures us, “taken over the government.” He is angry, embodying the familiar zeal of the convert, ready to immolate anyone who benightedly holds to any revelation other than the zealot’s very latest.
Nothing new about a convert. Nothing new about a zealous convert. What is different about Edwards is his endlessly repeated claim that the raging populist of today is what he has always been. That this has been the “cause of my life,” the very core of his being, ingrained in him on his father’s knee or at the mill or wherever, depending on the anecdote he’s telling. You must understand: This is not politics for him. “This fight is deeply personal to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole life.”
Except for his years as senator, the only public office he’s ever held. The audacity of the all-my-life trope is staggering. By his own endlessly self-confessed record, his current pose is a coat of paint newly acquired. His claim that it is an expression of his inner soul is a farce.
A cynical farce that is particularly galling to left-liberals of real authenticity. “The one (presidential candidate) that is the most problematic is Edwards,” Sen. Russ Feingold told The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wis., “who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq War. … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.”
It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the whole world. But for 4 percent of the Nevada caucuses?
January 25, 2008
And then there’s John Edwards
November 18, 2007
Edwards believed faulty science on Yucca Mountain, doesn’t anymore
John Edwards, when he was a North Carolina senator, voted twice to open the dump and once against it.
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The former 2004 vice presidential nominee’s has a mixed record on the issue.
After he was selected as Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s running mate, Edwards announced he would defer to Kerry’s anti-Yucca position and promised Nevada Sen. Harry Reid he would fight the project.
The former North Carolina senator has said he was trying to protect his constituents by supporting the dump in Nevada.
“We had an issue in North Carolina where they were going to start storing nuclear waste in North Carolina unless we had some other place for the nuclear waste,” Edwards said on his first stop in Nevada as a presidential candidate. But looking at the project from a “national perspective” it doesn’t work, he added.
Edwards now says faulty science was used to support the Yucca Mountain project, and he doesn’t believe nuclear energy is a safe energy source.
Nevada Appeal 11/18/07
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20071118/ELECTIONS/111180127
November 15, 2007
Yucca Mountain: Do not call this waffling
By the way, the position of the top three Democratic candidates on putting spent nuclear fuel inside Yucca Mountain are as follows:
Obama: No.
Clinton: Absolutely, positively, I-will-chain-myself-to-the-foothills no.
Edwards: The fact that I once voted yes should not be interpreted as anything but a no. And do not call this waffling. There is only one waffler in this pack, and I don’t even like the way she dresses.
Something weird is going on with John Edwards, who was cheerfulness incarnate when four years ago he was the moderate-Southerner-who-can-speak-to-the-Reagan-Democrats. Then he morphed into a sorrowful populist who thought we should vote for him because he cared the most about the poor. Now he’s running around like a rabid gerbil, telling people he should be president because he’s the angriest. Soon, he’s going to run out of adjectives to embody.
New York Times 11/15/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/opinion/15collins.html
October 21, 2007
What about Edwards’s vote on Yucca Mountain?
Q: You’re against the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, but why wasn’t the project halted while you were Energy Secretary?
A: What do you mean halted? Well, I wasn’t going to close it down. But when I was secretary they couldn’t bring the waste in, and I stopped that. Because there was a determination there were serious water problems.
Q: Why weren’t you going to shut it down?
A: Well you can’t shut it down. There are thousands of jobs there. I want to make it a national laboratory. I want to make it into a research facility. I wouldn’t have it as a depository. I would switch it’s focus. We cannot expand nuclear power in this country until we figure out what we are going to do with the waste. The two options on the table are unworkable …
Ask (former U.S.) Senator (Richard) Bryan who was his biggest ally in making sure it didn’t move forward? Why don’t you ask (former U.S.) Senator (John) Edwards why he voted for it? Check the record. I don’t need to defend that.
Reno Gazette-Journal 10/21/07
http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071021/NEWS/710210339/1321
May 6, 2007
Reversals on war, education and Yucca Mountain
Democrat John Edwards, his party’s 2004 vice presidential nominee, underwent a tough grilling Sunday on ABC’s This Week about his evolution from what host George Stephanopoulos called “hawkish new Democrat” to “ultra-liberal.” Click here to see a video clip.
Stephanopoulos said Edwards has changed his mind about a number of positions he supported when he was a senator from North Carolina — starting with the Iraq war but also including bankruptcy reform, free trade with China, the No Child Left Behind education law and storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
A few of their exchanges:
• Edwards has called his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war a mistake. He was asked about a Boston Globe report that he urged privately in 2004 that he and nominee John Kerry stand by their votes and not admit to making a mistake. Edwards said that when the election was over and he had time to reflect, “I thought it was my personal responsibility to be honest.”
• Edwards said he did not remember saying his vote for No Child Left Behind was a mistake. He said the law “needs to stay in place” but it should be changed because “the testing regimen is too intrusive.”
• Stephanopoulos said Edwards criticized offshore tax shelters in the 2004 election but went to work the next year for an investment group with hedge funds incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which get tax breaks. “I learned about this after the fact. I didn’t know it at the time,” Edwards said. He said he remains opposed to offshore tax shelters and would try to eliminate them as president. He said his pay from the Fortress Investment Group will be on his next financial disclosure report.
• Edwards did not address the trade, bankruptcy or Yucca Mountain issues on the show. Nevada has moved to the beginning of the nomination process with caucuses scheduled Jan. 19. Majorities there oppose the nuclear waste repository.
USA Today On Politics 5/6/07
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/05/edwards_grilled.html
July 7, 2004
Voted for the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., spoke with Edwards and Kerry shortly after the announcement and said he received assurances that Edwards would defer to Kerry’s Yucca stance. Kerry has pledged that the mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas will not hold a repository if he is elected president.
“I’ve spoken to both of them today,” Reid said. “John Edwards is totally on board on nuclear waste. He is committed to having no nuclear waste dump in Nevada.”
In 2000, Edwards voted against a bill for temporary storage of waste at Yucca. That bill passed and then President Bill Clinton vetoed it. Edwards then voted to override Clinton’s veto. In 2002, he voted for the permanent repository.
Las Vegas Review/Journal 7/7/04
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Jul-07-Wed-2004/news/24257674.html
February 7, 2004
Statements on Yucca Mountain NV
– Sen. John Kerry “John Kerry is a longtime opponent of Yucca Mountain Storage. He has a 16 year history of opposition to the plan to place hazardous waste in Yucca Mountain,” said spokesman Dag Vega. Kerry voted against Yucca Mountain in the Senate in 2000 and 2002.
– Sen. John Edwards Edwards voted for the Yucca Mountain plan in 2000 and 2002, a spokesman said, because North Carolina has nuclear power plants that want to get rid of the waste
– Gen. Wesley Clark “I am against the nuke dump at Yucca Mountain, period. I will use the full force of the presidency to kill this dangerous project, which would put the lives and health of Nevadans at risk for generations,” Clark said.
– Gov. Howard Dean Dean supported building Yucca Mountain in the late 1990s because Vermont had a nuclear power plant that had stored nuclear waste. Dean said last year that he has since changed his stance and that Yucca Mountain needed more study before moving ahead. Dean’s office did not return phone calls for comment.
Reno Gazette Journal 2/7/04
http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2004/02/07/63499.php
