Edwards Rally
I went to an Edwards rally today and really enjoyed it. If it wouldn't cost me $5 I'd email the cell phone picture I took to myself and post it. Instead, here's someone else's (Disclaimer: I don't have the rights to this photo).
Erin, Nathan, and I rode the 81 up to Central City-Wilshire and joined 100 or so people in line around the corner of the SEIU Local 721. The sun then blazed this building rooftop during the hour-long wait for the man to show.
California SEIU's Council President opened the event with a perfect introduction of LA City Councilmembers Richard Alarcon and Herb Wesson. A few cheers and minutes later, Edwards makes his way to the stage.
He's joined by:
- the parents of a girl - the girl died because some HMO wouldn't pay for a liver transplant
- public service workers from LA
- politicians and college-age kids holding signs
What bothered me was his almost-phony smile and southern accent. Otherwise, he's a great campaigner and I expect he'll continue through February 5th with a strong presidential bid.
The end.
Post script:
I would like to do some more blogging on the presidential race. If you have ideas or questions, send em this way as comments. Example: what attention are republican candidates paying to organized labor? labor, in general?
2 comments:
yay for edwards. too bad his chances are slim though. and kucinich dropped out.
i don't know anything about the repuplicans and labor in this race -- i don't even know any democrats who favor a strong labor movement.
this is what i read from chomsky yesterday, about reagan, but i think this is true about probably every "frontrunner" in today's elections too (sorry, long quote):
WOMAN: You mentioned Reagan - I've heard you say his administration
was the first time the United States didn't really have a President. Would you enlarge on that, and tell us what your thoughts are on the future of that
kind of government?
I think it has a big future, myself -- in fact, I think the Reagan administration was sort of a peek into the future. It's a very natural move. Imagine yourself working in some public relations office where your job is to help corporations make sure that the annoying public does not get in the way of policy-making. Here's a brilliant thought that nobody ever had before, so far
as I know: let's make elections completely symbolic activities. The population can keep voting, we'll give them all the business, they'll have electoral campaigns, all the hoopla, two candidates, eight candidates -- but the
people they're voting for will then just be expected to read off a
teleprompter and they won't be expected to know anything except what somebody tells them, and maybe not even that.
I mean, when you read off a teleprompter-I've done it actually-it's a very odd experience: it's like the words go into your eyes and out your mouth, and they don't pass through your mind in between. And when Reagan does it, they have it set up so there are two or three of them around, so his head can keep moving and it appears as though he's looking around at
the audience, but really he's just switching from one teleprompter to
another. Well, if you can get people to vote for something like that, you've basically done it --you've removed them from decision-making. It won't work unless you have an obedient media which will fall over themselves with what a wonderful, charismatic figure he is -- you know, "the most
popular President in history," "he's creating a revolution," "the most amazing thing since ice cream," and "how can we criticize him, everybody
loves him?" And you have to pretend that nobody's laughing, and so on. But if you can do that, then you'd have gone a very long way towards marginalizing
the public. And I think we probably got there in the 1980s pretty close to there, anyway.
In all of the books that have come out by people in the Reagan administration, it's been extremely difficult to hide the fact that Reagan didn't have
the foggiest idea what was going on. Whenever he wasn't properly programmed, the things that would come out of his mouth were kind of like -- they weren't lies really, they were kind of like the babbling of a child. If a child babbles, it's not lies, it's just sort of on some other plane. To be able to lie, you have to have a certain degree of competence, you have to know what truth is. And there didn't seem to be any indication that that was the
case here. So in fact, all of the fuss in the Iran-contra hearings about "did Reagan know or didn't he know" [about the National Security Council's illegal
dealings with Iran and the Nicaraguan contras], or "did he remember or didn't he remember?" I personally regarded as a cover-up. What's the difference? He didn't know if nobody told him, and he didn't remember if he forgot. And who cares? He wasn't supposed to know. Reagan's whole career was reading lines written for him by rich folk. First it was as a
spokesman for General Electric, then it was for somebody else, and he just continued to the White House: he read the lines written for him by the rich folk, he did it for eight years, they paid him nicely, he apparently enjoyed it,
he seems to have been quite cheerful there, had a good time. He could sleep late. And they liked it, the paymasters thought it was fine, they bought a nice home for him, put him out to pasture.
Too bad Edwards has dropped out. I was cheering for him.
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