The swiftboating of John Edwards Political Courage

Still basking in the glow of victory in New York City, a victory that was earned by the feminist-loving, GLBT-positive, new labor rising grassroots of New York state, I was going to hop into an article about John Edwards political courage. Instead I woke up to this :

Edwards’s Bloggers Cross the Line, Critic Says - New York Times:

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions.

Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, is among the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”

Mr. Edwards’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said Tuesday night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers.

The Washington Post has the AP arcile that is the obvious "fair and balanced" source the Grey Lady does not acknowledge using for their article.

John Edwards is not new to the dirty tactics of the extreme Republican right in this country. He had a front-row seat to the Swiftboat Veteran's smear campaign of John Kerry, a campaign so out-of-control that it has become a verb and part of the political lexicon of this country.

What is galling about this particular campaign is that it is being done by bashing two of the most courageouly outspoken feminist bloggers in this country : Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister.

And make no mistake about it : this controversy has nothing to do with my blog sisters. No. This controversy is being created by extremist religious hypocrites like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League because John Edwards scares them with his political courage.

The Donohues of the extreme right go out of their way to push views on choice and homosexuality that are completely against the mainstream views of their base. They do so because it has been effective in the past to scare politicians into wearing their political leashes.

John Edwards hiring of Marcotte and McEwan sends them a strong message of how he will not wear that leash for the sake of political power.

Especially when it so goes against the mainstream.

A simple Google search of CATHOLICS + POLL + ABORTION will generate the necessary evidence to my point of contention.

The non-partisan Pew Forum on Religion and American Life published a survey last year on exactly this issue. The survey shows how well ensconced in the mainstream Catholics are. Catholics are like anybody else when it comes to issues like stem-cell research, abortion and gay marriage. Yet Donohue insists that Amanda's criticism of extremist Catholics is out of line.

Check out also Quinnipac, Faith in Public Life and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Religious Consultation, CBS/New York Times, and even a not so favorable poll by ABC News/Beliefnet.

There is no denying that women like Amanda, Melissa and yours truly have chosen to use strong language against people like him. Yet we do so because ridicule and profanity is sometimes all we have when unmasking hypocrites who break not just the first but many of the Commandments they allegedly have faithfully embraced, just so they can advance their theocratic agendas.

Yet, when it all comes down to it, people like Donohue are using Marcotte and McEwan to hurt John Edwards for one reason alone : Edwards has taken a bold and courageous statement against poverty, against mysogyny, against gay bashing and against the dreams of a never-ending war machine that has taken our country into the mess we call now Iraq.

When I was at the DNC this past Friday I was struck by the audacity of John Edwards speech. I was astounded at how woman-centric his language was.

Here's some of the raw notes I took :

WOW! John Edwards is getting as many cheers as Obama. The whole room is giving him a standing ovation.

He gave a shoutout to Molly Ivins!

Interesting but John is speaking in the feminine:

• a little girl goes to sleep hungry ...
• a housekeeper is trying to unionize ...
• a mother who loses her son in Iraq ...
• a father take care of his little girl but has no medical insurance for her

John's meme : "It doesnt have to be that way"; also talks to young men struggling to get ahead through petty jobs and with no financial support for college.

"It's time to be patriotic about something other than war", gets him one of the longest standing ovations we have had in this room so far.

This is the reason the John Donohoues of the extreme right are so scared. People like him have made it a sport to use and abuse women and the young to advance their agendas of power and greed.

It is clear this scuffle over Marcotte and McEwan is a test of the integrity Edwards called for during his speech when he said, "This is not the time for political calculation, this is the time for political courage".

Was it a mistake to hire two of the top feminist bloggers for his campaign? Of course not. It was a complete and deliberate message not to us, to the progressives of the blogosphere, but to the power-hungry extremists who want to pocket them for their own purposes.

More importantly, this fight over feminist bloggers is a fight over the issues that matter the most to mainstream voters, even Catholic ones. It's a fight that pits "issue activists" against "war pundits".

To put it bluntly and from a blogospheric point of view, the swiftboating of John Edwards' political courage is the infamous DailyKos pie fight brought to the national political landscape. This fight is about whether we should start taking care of business here at home or continue supporting the failed endless war machine that has given us the mess that is Iraq.

John Edwards' decision to hire Marcotte and McEwan completely makes sense in light of that Friday morning speech. He has decided to break away from the flip-flopping tyranny of the double-talk centrism that got Democrats nowhere in 2004.

When he was out fighting for clarity, action and the truth, "the powers that be" went for obfuscation, reaction and truthiness. When he was ready to fight for a recount, "the powers that be" caved in to the Rethuglicans.

John Edwards in 2008 is not the John Edwards of 2004. He is a completely different man. Burnt in the pyre of political comformism, he has risen from the ashes and has come out as an unstoppable powerhouse of progressive action.

"We don't need to redefine the Democratic party, we need to reclaim the Democratic Party", were his closing words at the DNC winter meeting.

Those words earned another long standing ovation because this country is ready for political courage and John Edwards has plenty to spare.

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