Let us hope it's a blip

[fpb]

Do I need to say that I regard last night's Iowa primary as an unmitigated disaster? On both sides, the worst candidate prevailed. What I have to say about Mike Huckabee I have already said; here I can add that a party who votes in the shallow and lazy Fred Thompson in third place is not worth electing. As for the Democrats, they have also voted for the shallowest and least competent candidate - a junior senator with no record and precious little by way of program. Whatever one may think of Edwards, he stands for certain definite things - the defence of the harassed middle class and the poor, in particular - and has taken clear and definite positions on a number of issues. And Hillary Clinton, however dislikeable she may be, has more experience than any other candidate. On both sides, people have voted for shallow personalities and poor records over competence and character. God help America if this is more than a blip.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I would be interested to hear why you feel so negative about Edwards.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

Oh, for some reason I thought I'd already told you. I was watching the vice presidential debate between Edwards and Cheney, and Edwards made that comment something along the lines of 'I congratulate you for having a gay daughter', and then he sat back with the most repulsively smarmy smirk I have ever seen on a man. The point of that remark was obviously to point out to Cheney's conservative base that he was tainted by proximity to a homosexual, and it was a cheap, low blow to use an opponent's child against him. And to me it was doubly bad for Edward's to use homosexuality as a weapon, because much of his base would like sexual preference to be a non-issue. And to top it off, it simply gave Cheney the opportunity to be gracious under an unfair attack, as he merely replied, "thank you for your kind remark", and said nothing else.

I already disliked Kerry at that point, but that really put me against his running mate. If I had liked the Republican candidates better, I would have seriously considered voting against Kerry and Edwards, even though I am a pretty die hard Democrat.

[theswordmaiden.livejournal.com]

I think I know what you're talking about. I believe Cheney's daughter (forgot her name!) mentioned that incident in her book, and said she gave Edwards a huge scowl in response.