I heard this morning about John Edwards' withdrawal from the presidential nomination race while in the car on the way to work, which is why I haven't written on it yet. Well, that and the fact that every time I think about it I get all blubbery and want to wait until I don't sound like one of the overgrown babies posting over at the Edwards blog who are planning to throw a tantrum, scream a lot, then hold their breath till their faces turn blue.

It isn't that I didn't know it was coming; I just didn't want it to happen this soon; didn't want to have to face the choice of voting for the woman who is unrepentant about voting for the war in Iraq and equally unrepentant about giving George W. Bush a free pass to go to war with Iran via Kyl/Lieberman; and a man who's a great orator or speeches that may be written for him, but who phumphers when put on the spot, a certainly transformational candidate who just seems a bit too idealistic to be able to survive once the wingnut hate machine really gets ratcheted up.

Just once in my life, I'd like to be able to cast an enthusiastic vote in a general election. Time after time after time, I've seen the candidates I've supported in the primary races -- smart, capable candidates who see further than next week and think about things other than amassing power -- fall by the wayside because the party hacks will do whatever is necessary -- even lose -- to retain their control over the process. Whether it was Gary Hart in 1984, or Paul Tsongas in 1992, or Howard Dean in 2004, or John Edwards this year, these capable candidates are always shoved out of the way by those who toe the party line, who wait their turn, and dare I say it -- know their place.

When you look at some of the Democratic nominees over the last few decades -- Walter Mondale...Michael Dukakis....John Kerry...you wonder if the Democrats even want to win. It took a dirty skunk like Bill Clinton to finally beat the Republicans at their own game -- and even then he had to fight them (and much of his own party) for eight years just to stay in office. Then in 2000 we watched as Al Gore refused to demand a statewide recount in Florida, and in 2004 we watched as John Kerry joined up with Dick Gephardt to tag-team Howard Dean in Iowa, only to see Kerry take his $14 million in leftover campaign cash and go home before the Ohio vote count was even finalized.

After the tag-teaming of Howard Dean in 2004, I was so depressed and so disgusted and disillusioned with the system that it was all I could do to get out of bed and go to work the next day. I promised myself I would never, ever put myself through that again. It isn't as though I'm not used to disappointment; I am, after all, a Mets fan (though please don't get me started on this Santana trade; does the name "Bret Saberhagen" mean anything to these people?). And yes, there was this disconnect between John Edwards' voting record and the progressive populist agenda he ran on this year.

But while Hillary and Bill Clinton are embodying everything people hate about the baby boomers, with their "Me, me, me" campaign, and Barack Obama has seemed to either not get or refuse to acknowledge the ugliness that has permeated politics, while at the same time seeming to lack the toughness he'll need to get anything accomplished, I felt that a guy who'd made millions of dollars fighting big corporations on behalf of families like the Lakeys was worth supporting. Supporting Hillary Clinton was out of the question because of her hawkishness and her insistence at Yearly Kos last summer that corporate lobbyists are people too, and Obama's tendency to want to reach across the aisle seemed more like dipping his hand into a swamp full of crocodiles.

This isn't the first time the media have set the agenda and selected the candidates for us. It was the media who decided that a dry drunk like George W. Bush should be president because he was a guy you'd want to drink beer with (despite the fact that he's by all accounts a pretty mean drunk). It was the media who turned down the crowd noise at Howard Dean's post-Iowa rally in 2004 so that he sounded like a raving madman. Diane Sawyer later 'fessed up on Good Morning America, but who saw it? And the damage was done. Then it was the media who decided that the allegations of the Swift Boat Liars for Bullshit, allegations they pulled out of their asses, deserved equal time to, say, the truth. It was the media who decided that John Kerry "looked French". Kerry didn't do himself any favors by being the least telegenic candidate in recorded history, but the media aided and abetted in the smear campaign against him. And this year, the media painted John Edwards as a lightweight and a hypocrite, focusing on his haircuts and the size of his house, because he represented a threat to the power of their corporate masters, and because the Black Guy and the Woman made a far more interesting story than just another Southern white guy.

And now that he is gone from the race, after (according to Jonathan Alter on Countdown tonight) becoming frustrated with the fact that even winning EVERY SINGLE DEBATE wasn't enough to garner any attention. And of course in leaving, he finally gets the attention from the media. As if feeling contrition, the nightly news reports spoke of Edwards' departure in hushed tones of admiration, as if it were Mother Theresa herself who had just left the presidential race. Now that he is gone, they've decided maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

But if you're thinking that the talking heads of the media have learned anything, guess again. For Tweety is tweeting his "John McCain is a maverick" meme and insisting that some of John Edwards' voters may go over to McCain, despite the fact that John McCain has done nothing but suck up to George W. Bush for the last seven years. Assuming that McCain continues to prevail, the corporate media will get their candidate on the Republican side. And if the Republican race is over before the Democratic one, Barack Obama had better be prepared. Because these people who are the public face of Viacom and General Electric and Disney Corp. and News Corp. want Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain, and as John Edwards knows full well, they will tear down anyone who gets in the way of the candidates most likely to do their bidding.

And so the nation is a more dismal place tonight. James Lowe goes back to West Virginia, where no one who doesn't already know about him will know that he was unable to speak for 50 years because he had no health insurance until a doctor agreed to waive the fee to repair his cleft palate. The Sarkisyan family will go back to California to mourn their daughter, knowing that the most ardent advocate for universal health care is no longer running for president. The many people who worked tirelessly to fight back the tide that has run against John Edwards will also go home. The offices will be shuttered, the stickers removed from the windows.

And out here in the Super Tuesday states, the Edwards bumper stickers will go into the box with the Howard Dean buttons and the Gary Hart '84 buttons -- relics of days when we were able to delude ourselves for a little while that the game wasn't entirely rigged. And we will decide where we go from here. We'll choose, and we'll go through the drill of voting, knowing full well that it ultimately doesn't mean jack shit; that the corporations always win.

A few months ago, Marc Maron did an amazing rant while subbing for Randi Rhodes that I posted about a month ago about how America manufactures nothing but need and appetite; that instead of "Land of the Free", our motto should be "America: All You Can Eat." But I think he's mistaken. For America's motto is really "America: Show Me The Money."

Labels: 2008 election, Democrats, John Edwards