"Your voice will be heard": John Edwards as the Democratic Party's conscience

I don't think even John Edwards believes anymore that he can get this nomination, not after his paltry, if still better-than-expected showing in South Carolina lately. But unlike Hillary Clinton, who along with spouse Bill, is showing that there are no depths below which she'll sink to obtain the nomination for the presidency, Edwards seems to see his role now as the anchor on the other side of the Democratic tug-of-war between the Liebercrat wing of the party, for which no capitulation to the most extreme right-wing position is too great a price to pay for "bipartisanship", and the progressive, Democratic wing of the Democratic party.

With forces from the DLC to the talking heads of the media persisting in the erroneous notion that this is basically a conservative country pulling both Hillary Cinton and Barack Obama towards the right, John Edwards is right there, tugging them back, reminding them that there are still American individuals who need to be represented, not just corporations and their lobbyists. He's necessary to keep the other two candidates at least slightly in touch with ordinary Americans. And he's still necessary in the unlikely event that the escalating ugliness being perpetrated by the Clintonistas succeeds in destroying both Clinton's and Obama's candidacies in the days before SupercalifragilisticexpialiTuesday.

If New Hampshire's result was a smackdown of the mainstream media, especially Chris Matthews, by New Hampshire women, South Carolina's result was a smackdown of Clintonista race-baiting by African-American voters in that state. Obama's solid trouncing of Hillary Clinton in yesterday's primary should send a message to the Clintons: Sorry, Bill, you're not the first black president anymore.

Who would have believed, after black Ohio voters stood in the rain for ten hours in 2004 and still were not able to vote, that it would be a Democratic former president and his candidate spouse who would be the ones to rip open the scabs of race relations in America, all for nothing but pure, blind ambition. If Obama is the nominee, I will support him despite my reservations about his toughness against an attack machine the likes of which the Clintonistas are just a pale imitation. But last night, in a spectacular victory speech, he was simultaneously gracious, grateful, and defiant:

I'd like to see more of this from him, particularly if Bill 'n' Hill's polling in the February 5th states starts to show their restoration slipping away. At a time when the economy is in tatters, were embroiled in a war without end, and in debt up to our eyeballs, watching the Clintons' "Me, me, me, it's all about me" campaign is almost enough to make me understand just what it was about them that the wingnuts hated all those years.

The contrast between John Edwards' carefully worded promise, no longer to win, but to make sure the voices of ordinary Americans are heard, and Clinton's "Let's pretend this never happened and go on to our certain victory on Super Tuesday" stump speech made it clear where all this is going. Edwards is aware that his role in this campaign has changed, and seems to accept it. Clinton will accept nothing less than victory, even if she has to destroy her own or Obama's eventual candidacy and cede the presidency to the Republicans to do it.

On Friday's Countdown, Keith Olbermann talked about the pledged "superdelegates", who could very well throw the nomination to Clinton even if Obama is ahead in state delegates at the time. With the Clintons seemingly doing everything they can to alienate both black voters and the progressive party base, it would be appalling to witness a bunch of party hacks, all of them in thrall to wads of corporate cash, override the will of the people in an effort to retain their own power. That spectacle could do more to convince Americans that democracy is dead in this country than anything the Republicans could do.