I like Edwards and I like what he’s saying about the “Corporate Democrats” that run the party, but I can’t help but think it’s motivated by where he’s polling nationally relative to Hillary and Obama. That’s not to say that he doesn’t believe it. He very well may. I just wonder why he’s been ramping up the rhetoric these past several months. I’d like to think he’d be saying these things even if he were leading in the fundraising race, but I don’t know. I suppose on some level it doesn’t matter. What ultimately matters is that, for whatever reason, he’s shining a light on a system that’s horribly damaged. Hopefully he’ll have an opportunity to keep going, despite the corporate media’s insistence on making the Democratic primary a two-person race… Here’s a clip from AlterNet:

Last week, John Edwards fired a broadside against corporate America and, more significantly, “corporate Democrats,” the likes of which hasn’t been heard from a viable candidate with national appeal in decades.

Edwards is en fuego right now, and if he keeps up the heat, his candidacy will either be widely embraced by the emerging progressive movement or utterly annihilated by an entrenched establishment that fears few things more than a telegenic populist with enough money to mount a credible campaign.

“It’s time to end the game,” Edwards told a crowd in Hanover, New Hampshire. “It’s time to tell the big corporations and the lobbyists who have been running things for too long that their time is over.”
He exhorted Washington law-makers to “look the lobbyists in the eye and just say no.”

[Quoting Edwards:]

Real change starts with being honest — the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It’s rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It’s rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it’s rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They’ll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are — not for the country, but for themselves.

[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it’s perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don’t stand a chance.

[End quote.]

It’s a structural argument, and Edwards didn’t pull punches in calling out his fellow Democrats, saying: “We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.” The rhetoric was a clear signal that Edwards is going to beat the drums of reform as a contrast to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the primaries…

My hope is that momentum really starts building for him like it did for Dean at the grassroots level… And, I think I know what might do it for a lot of people. I think that Edwards should reach out to Gore and offer him a cabinet-level position focusing on the environment and alternative energy. Gore, I’m thinking, may go for it, as he probably wouldn’t have any shot at all to guide policy in a Hillary Clinton White House. The only thing stopping him, would be the thought that Obama might take the nomination, but I think that’s unlikely if it comes down to him and Clinton. So, there’s my advice. Get Gore on the ticket in some non-VP capacity. It would give Edwards the push he needs to break into the top tier. And that and a win in Iowa would put him in the Oval Office.