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Sunday, August 05, 2007

I'm with the trial lawyer
Posted by Jill | 5:58 PM
I arrived back home early this afternoon, both energized and exhausted. I still have more to write about the convention, particularly about the "Blogging White Female" panel, but I have to stuff some more handfuls of sleep into my brain before I can focus on what I want to say.

On the plane home, in between freaking out every time one particular tightly-wound flight attendant shouted "WE ARE ABOUT TO GO THROUGH SOME SEVERE TURBULENCE I NEED EVERYONE IN THEIR SEATS WITH THEIR SEAT BELTS FASTENED NOW!!!", I was thinking about the Obama supporters I'd spoken with who said that they can't support Edwards because he comes across "like a trial lawyer."

And this is bad.....how?

I'm not going to deny that there are trial lawyers who are sleazy. Mr. Brilliant once described to me an ad in the New York City subway for an ambulance-chasing law firm which featured stylized drawings like international airport symbols depicting things like people on an operating table with their thumbs up. And we all remember those radio and late-night spots from that one ambulance-chaser saying "You may be entoitled to a lawge cash rewawd." Certainly litigation has been blamed for everything from the high cost of health care to our crumbling infrastructure.

But at its best, the work that John Edwards has done is about holding negligent people and corporations accountable. When a pool drain is sold without adequate warning that the cover is required at all times and sucks the intestines out of a five-year-old, or when a doctor amputates the wrong leg, or when an unscrupulous financial adviser bilks people out of their money, is such accountability a bad thing?

Republicans like to paint corporations that get sued as hapless victims of greedy plaintiffs. I'm not saying that greedy plaintiffs don't exist. A number of years ago a woman stepped off of a curb and in front of Mr. Brilliant's car the second he took his foot off the brake, and was bumped. The woman claimed to be uninjured until the police arrived. We later received a huge packet of legal papers, full of references to permanent damage, loss of society, services and consortium, and the rest of that crap that goes with this kind of lawsuit. This so-called permanently damaged woman settled for $7500, and we paid sky-high car insurance premiums for five years. But there's a difference between suing as the result of a genuine accident, and suing because a corporation decided it was cheaper to put people at risk than to add a two-dollar part to a product.

The idea that corporations are victims of people like you and me is laughable on the face of it.

I don't know about you, but I WANT someone on my side who fights for the little guy. I WANT someone who's got that little hint of scumbaggery that you have to have to fight these guys. I WANT someone who can get in front of a room full of people and explain himself. I WANT someone who can disarm an enemy with pure, steely logic, delivered in a velvet glove. I WANT someone who can think on his feet. All the traits that make a good trial lawyer are the traits we need in a president.

I've been leaning towards supporting John Edwards for a while, but have been fighting this nagging sense of being played. After getting the chance to see Edwards in person, seeing how he understands the concept of "intelligent people of goodwill can disagree" as he explains himself to those who disagree with him on issues such as the death penalty, and especially after seeing candidates with no chance, a candidate who is an unabashed and unrepentant corporatists, and a candidate who doesn't seem to understand that you cannot "reach out in a bipartisan way" to people who want to crush you like a bug, well, I'm with the trial lawyer.

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