15 thoughts on “John Edwards-Turning over the mess to our children”
maryb2004said:
win on but he doesn’t. He is always put on the defensive and has to fight his way out instead of starting on the high ground. This clip is almost a minute and a half and it takes him almost thirty seconds to get off the defensive. By then nobody is really listening to him.
Looking back at it, I think he made a mistake by opening up this issue in the way he did in Chicago. He did it by putting Hillary in a gotcha moment – and that has resulted in everybody else trying to catch him in a gotcha moment about his hedge fund money donations. And the public tunes it out and thinks, well everyone does it.
Edwards is right when he said that this is not an issue about THIS campaign but about the future. It is about the SYSTEM. But then he he doesn’t talk about the SYSTEM and how to fix it. He does (to give him credit) talk about how the SYSTEM has screwed things up and he gives tangible examples. And the children line is a good emotional appeal. But he never says why electing him will change the SYSTEM. He never gets around to talking about the SYSTEM itself and WHAT HE WILL DO about it when he’s president.
His decision to go the public funding route is not a fix for the SYSTEM. It’s a personal decision. He needs to to have a succinct non-defensive answer on this question about the SYSTEM and what he will do to fix it if he becomes president. That is how he wins on this issue. Without that the public tunes him out and says — yeah, yeah, the system if broken, we know it but it all seems such a big problem that it’s never going to be fixed. He has to differentiate himself on this issue by how he will fix the SYSTEM. Not just on his own personal ethics.
maryb2004 said:
win on but he doesn’t. He is always put on the defensive and has to fight his way out instead of starting on the high ground. This clip is almost a minute and a half and it takes him almost thirty seconds to get off the defensive. By then nobody is really listening to him.
Looking back at it, I think he made a mistake by opening up this issue in the way he did in Chicago. He did it by putting Hillary in a gotcha moment – and that has resulted in everybody else trying to catch him in a gotcha moment about his hedge fund money donations. And the public tunes it out and thinks, well everyone does it.
Edwards is right when he said that this is not an issue about THIS campaign but about the future. It is about the SYSTEM. But then he he doesn’t talk about the SYSTEM and how to fix it. He does (to give him credit) talk about how the SYSTEM has screwed things up and he gives tangible examples. And the children line is a good emotional appeal. But he never says why electing him will change the SYSTEM. He never gets around to talking about the SYSTEM itself and WHAT HE WILL DO about it when he’s president.
His decision to go the public funding route is not a fix for the SYSTEM. It’s a personal decision. He needs to to have a succinct non-defensive answer on this question about the SYSTEM and what he will do to fix it if he becomes president. That is how he wins on this issue. Without that the public tunes him out and says — yeah, yeah, the system if broken, we know it but it all seems such a big problem that it’s never going to be fixed. He has to differentiate himself on this issue by how he will fix the SYSTEM. Not just on his own personal ethics.