Edwards Jumps the Shark (updated)

by Taylor Marsh

It's getting ugly. First we had Obama talking about Clinton as "Bush-Cheney lite." Today we have a new twist and it isn't into presidential territory.

Who said this?

"Wake up America. The White House is not for sale; the Lincoln bedroom is not for sale.''

Republican Bob Dole said it in 1996.

How about this:

"I believe they have had moved that sign the buck stops here from the Oval Office desk to the buck stops here on the Lincoln Bedroom. And that's not good for the country."

George W. Bush spewed this crap in 2000. As most everyone knows, the Lincoln Bedroom smear became a Republican standard against the Clintons.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush sanctimoniously accused Clinton of "virtually renting out the Lincoln bedroom to big campaign donors." He condemned the use of the "hallowed" chamber for political payoffs.

Selling Lincoln bedroom disrespectful, by Helen Thomas

In 1997, Ann Lewis had to go on "The News Hour" to address the attack that became a continual talking point from wingnuts: For two straight days President Clinton denied there was any improper use of the Lincoln Bedroom and other White House functions in raising campaign funds for his 1996 re-election campaign. Jim Lehrer leads a discussion with Ann Lewis, assistant to the President, and White House Deputy Director of Communications, and three regional commentators who disagree with the President's view.

Fast forward. Now how about this beauty. Who said it?

"The American people deserve to know that their presidency is not for sale, the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent, and lobbyist money can no longer influence policy in the House or the Senate."

Rudy Giuliani, right?

Nah, Mitt Romney, that's got to be it!

Wrong.

It's John Edwards in a speech he gave today in New Hampshire.

This is how an email from NBC First Read characterized the speech:

The Re-Launch: So is Edwards trying to re-launch his campaign? It depends on how one interprets a speech he's giving today in New Hampshire, where he attempts to re-frame the race in a way that makes him the real change agent in the Democratic race. "The choice for our party could not be more clear," Edwards will say, according to advance excerpts. "We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other." He also will say, "The choice we must make is as important as it is clear. It is a choice between looking back and looking forward. A choice between the way we've always done it and the way we could do it if we dared. It is caution versus courage. Old versus new. Calculation versus principle. It is the establishment elites versus the American people." This, it seems, will be the argument that Edwards plans to use against Clinton for the rest of the campaign. At a minimum, consider this the new stump speech.

They just left out the Clinton money quote Edwards used today, which is straight out of the right-wing playbook. There are plenty of ways to come at Clinton on the issues, especially Iraq. But if this is the Edwards re-launch, I hope it makes a turn into better territory. Because between Obama's "Bush-Cheney lite" and Edwards talking about "The Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent," I've got to say that these guys sound positively desperate.

UPDATE: Edwards aides respond, via an email exchange I had with the campaign.

Comments

[maryinbelltown]

Clinton is the one on the cover of Fortune Magazine and Edwards is the one on the cover of In These Times. Say more?

Want to move your guy John Edwards up in the pundit poll? Help us raise grassroots funding and change the story. Come to my page or make your own.
http://johnedwards.com/action/contribute/mygrassroots/?page_id=MjgxOTc

[RUKiddinme]

As much as I despise the Repubs, it really burns me to hear all this annointment of HRC, especially at the expense of one of the best candidates in the Democratic Party.
I was undecided on who I should even think about supporting in '08, but after all the things that HRC has said lately, coupled with John Edwards' comments, I'm convinced that only John can lead our country down the path of REAL CHANGE.
HRC is Bush-Cheney lite.
Time to find a new path.

Edwards '08

[austinobserver]

If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, the Republican nominee is going to bring up everything Edwards said or could possibly say and more, much more. Shouldn't the Democrats get a sense of how the public would react to such attacks on Hillary before they nominate her? Sure, they attacked her before, but they have been sharpening their claws and working on new avenues of attack. And only the completely naive and unsophisticated would not expect the Republicans to exaggerate the claims and even make up new accusations out of whole cloth. So, in a way, Edwards is even doing Clinton a service, not to mention the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole, by leveling honest attacks on her.

[MontanaMaven]

Hillary jumped the shark awhile ago and lately is jumping the Oprah couch. "Lobbyists are real people too, bless their hearts. Don't be mean to them."

And now the latest right wingnut talking point from Hillary: "It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."

Then she tells us that she's the only one who could handle the right wing talkers. Huh?
Hey, Hillary, like Michael Moore says, "The Republicans already have a candidate."

Finally we don't have to wait for a Nader. We've got a real old timey forward thinking labor Democrat running, John Edwards. Yee Hah!

[Empire]

"I repeat, I'd much rather Democrats think about the fact that if they nominate Clinton they lose the House and Senate in 2008.

If they nominate Edwards who will win, they get a filibuster proof Senate, and with it the keys to undoing everything that Bush has done."

-StrategicThinker
.........................................
What he said.
What more do you need to know people ?
Edwards '08.
Make. Rove's. Nightmare. Real.

[Thad]

Are you sincerely suggesting that the Bill Clinton wasn't in bed with major corporate donors?

Do "Telecommunications Act" and "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" ring any bells?

Look, I think Bill Clinton was the best President of my lifetime (though the bar's low -- George HW Bush is an easy second), but he sold our rights out to corporate interests at a rate Reagan would have approved of.

[NABNYC]

Edwards speaks truth; Clinton supporters gasp.

When you have to deny the truth, then you have a problem, Hillary Clinton. The truth is that Bill Clinton and his inner circle, such as Hillary's close friends and inner circle, perfected the greed in politics by taking money from everybody and anybody for any reasons whatsoever. They are uniquely responsible for corrupting our democracy, and it's a real shame they are Democrats.

And then we watch Bill Clinton, who I used to like, leave office and become the rent-a-pretty-face boy for the corporate world. And why are people willing to pay Bill Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars to show up at their events? Because they want to be able to bribe his wife, if she does become president? And because Bill Clinton, by appearing for money, gives a stamp of approval to many of these groups.

Following in the footsteps of Reagan and Daddy Bush, Clinton has spent his post-presidency years mostly trawling for dollars, with the occasional public appeal to help the unfortunate.

Look at Hillary's financial disclosures. IBM paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to give a speech. Cisco paid him $150,000. General Motors paid him $200,000. I wonder what they wanted? Does it have anything to do with tougher requirements for autos? The Mortgage Banker Assn paid Bill $150,000. The Jewish National Fund paid him $150,000. Citigroup also came in at $150,000. This is just in 2006, by the way, and is just a partial list.

The Clinton's trawling for dollars is notorious, is despicable, and is a perfect example of why Hillary Clinton will be a corporate-sponsored president with the stamp of approval from Rupert Murdoch and wall street.

So please, let's not gasp when somebody mentions that the Clintons are money grubbers. I think the real shocker would be if either one of them did something because it was the right thing to do, and not just because someone paid them to do it.

[Boadicea]

This is a very disengenuous comment.

Most politicians make a living doing speaking tours, and the Clintons were not only broke, they were deeply in debt from ridiculous legal battles when Bill left office. Of course the guy does speaking tours - he's the most popular speaker in the country. Your attempt to turn it into a negative against Hillary is ridiculous. Edwards did plenty of speaking to earn dollars, and look at his hedge fund foray.

If we don't want Hillary to win (and I don't) then we have to stop all this ridiculous cheapshotting and focus on the real issues where she falls down, like foreign policy. Those get lost in the name-calling, and then are dismissed en masse as anti-Hillary ranting. losing their impact on her poll numbers.

[NABNYC]

I expected Bill Clinton to do a little better than "most politicians." After all, most politicians spend their lives grubbing for money and tell us that they hate it, they absolutely hate having to do it, but what can they do? It's the system.

Yeah, okay, but once they're out of office, why keep taking the money? Are you kidding me as to why General Motors, and the real estate brokers and mortgage brokers industry, and Citicorp are giving Bill Clinton this kind of money? Are you really that naive? It's all part of the same system.

I'm sorry that I don't believe this money is needed for poor Bill to pay the debt-collector. As I recall, his wife got something like $8.0 million for her little book, and I can't even remember what Bill got for his. They don't need this money.

They take it because corporations are willing to pay money to politicians to buy influence. I mean for heaven's sake this isn't really like the Clintons holding a car wash to pay off their legal bills.

This is a systematic and on-going nationwide corporate-sponsored ATM for the Clintons. Every penny given to them is taken out of our pockets ten-fold. How can anyone defend this level of corruption?

The way Hillary has locked up the nomination, as an aside, is by taking more corporate money than any other candidate, and getting these corporations to commit to give money only to her. She wins because she's taken the most money. Not because she's liked, not because there was a grassroots movement to get her nominated, not because even one working person wanted her. She wins because the corporations selected her. And yes, I do think that is an enormous issue in this election.

[JB64]

Edwards comments smack of the absolute desperation of a man realizing just how incredibly quickly he is becoming an afterthought, to the point of taking up Republican talking points in order to get his campaign in the 24 hour news cycle. It's pathetic.

I think the man has some really good ideas, and to some extent I can almost believe he means them. But truthfully, he simply does not look like a President, and that's his problem.

As to the comment itself, why does everybody think that HRC is open game? I expect this sort of thing from republicans, and clearly from the majority of the comments on the story, you have all already swallowed their narrative of the woman. I can't remember how many times in 2000 I heard from my progressive friends about how Al Gore was corrupt, or "republican-lite" so when I hear these same labels attached to HRC it makes me realize that we haven't really learned a thing from that election.

The only way HRC is a big set-up by the GOP is if she manages to split the Democrats the way Nader did in 2000, which I'll remind anyone who voted for him that YOU are responsible for the current mess this country is in, and if you don't get your head straight, you're going to make it happen again.

[Boadicea]

I agree with you about Clinton being "open game" at least in here. Were the same sorts of comments made about the other Dem candidates, they wouldn't be posted.

Still, I can't feel too sorry for her - she's got Murdoch on her side. And the rest of the MSM. This blog (and a couple of others) have a lot less influence than we think - otherwise, Hillary would be toast.

[drblack]

Hillary, Just like Bill and Bush and Reagan will put Money and power for Big Business ahead of Freedom and prosperity for the "regular" American.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

It really makes me hopeful to see so that many people can actually focus on what is important. I hope this is reflected in the next election. We just have to get rid of those Diebold machines, and I, in my state, have to get rid of Katherine Harris (just that name makes me sick!).

I cannot wait to see John next Tuesday. I really think he and Obama are a great match.

Go EDWARDS!!

[NotaBeliever]

If Edwards is trying to differentiate his candidacy from any other, he gets to strike at their weak points. [shrug] He didn't jump the shark, he's just making a move on first place.

[Chubbster]

John Edwards would single handedly collapse the American and world economies with his antique populism and dramatic finger-waggling distortions. Reality is challenging enough without inputs from the clearly delusional.

[Boadicea]

Well, ok, eating some crow here, Taylor.

I think you're absolutely right about the purpose of Edwards' remark. You're not discussing the rightness or wrongness of the remark, you're referring to the purpose of it.

I went to wikipedia and looked up the meaning of "jump the shark." It refers to the moment when an entity - in this case, the Edwards campaign - does something over-the-top in a last ditch attempt to re-attract fans who are moving on.

I do think that that is what Edwards was doing.

[Whipcord1200Jesus]

Wow the candidate in the race with the least distingushed resume and absolutely zero achievements in government is getting a little desperado...how surprising.

[INQUIRER]

By characterizing a speech in which John Edwards called for the dismantling of the corporatocracy which currently rules our nation as based on a "Clinton money quote" which "is straight out of the right-wing playbook", Taylor Marsh has completely destroyed her credibility in my eyes.
Did you read or hear the speech, Taylor? Unbelievably shallow and defensive analysis.