Edwards' Withdrawal is Our Loss and America’s Loss

America just lost its best and brightest hope for real change when John Edwards gave up the presidential ghost. Edwards did something that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and certainly none of the Republicans would dream of doing. He made poverty no longer a dirty word in the mouths of many, and that included Clinton and Obama, for a minute anyway. But Edwards didn’t stop there. He relentlessly pushed the envelope on America’s next greatest crime and sin, the absolute refusal of the nation to provide decent health care for more than fifty million persons no matter whether poor, working class, middle class and even some with a few bucks to spare. He didn’t stop even there. He hammered corporate and special interests for their shameless and unabashed pillage, loot, and rape of American consumers.

Edwards was truly a modern day Jeremiah crying in the wilderness against poverty, corporate greed, and the health care abomination, and predictably was bum rushed by the gaggle of ultra-conservative slam artists, the Fox network crowd, talk shock jocks, and the New York Times neo-liberal bunch. They slandered, slurred, and ridiculed him, and ultimately tried to marginalize him as a bare after thought, warm up act to Clinton and Obama.

Edwards became the first Democratic presidential candidate to go where no other Dem or certainly Republican candidate has gone in four decades and talked up poverty disgrace, universal health and economic democracy. He bucked history, negative public and political attitudes, and of course ridicule for championing these populist causes. But here’s the deal. Edwards may be out of the race but his message and the reason for that message won’t disappear like Houdini. Obama and Clinton will continue to pilfer and repackage parts of his message, while of course giving no credit to the messenger.
No matter. Edwards did himself, us and the nation proud when he boldly stepped up and tried to shame the shot callers into facing up to their sorry and disgraceful neglect of millions of poor and uninsured Americans. We owe Edwards a profound debt of gratitude for that. Here’s a guess. Edwards won’t and shouldn’t go quietly into the night. We still desperately need his voice and we should do everything we can to make sure that his voice continues to be heard.

John, you have my eternal thanks for who you are and what you did. You are truly the better angel of America.