Image copyright Steve Bates

Many thanks to the irrepressible and irreplaceable Steve Bates at the YDD for the links.  And while I’m at it, I want to return the favor:  Steve’s post, "What Edwards Accomplished," underscores some important points that I failed to make about the role that Edwards has played in this primary.  As he notes, we owe Edwards a debt of gratitude for (among many other things) making the subjects of this campaign relevant to ordinary folks. 

That’s one too-seldom-recognized element of the GOP’s success:  It couches its corporatist, expansionist, fundamentalist agendas in faux-populist rhetoric to persuade voters that it really is watching out for the little guy.  Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, but the Rethugs have been veritable geniuses at it.  And so racism becomes about "illegal immigration," which morphs magically into "protecting jobs," and criminal lawbreaking becomes about "catching terrorists," which transmogrifies into "protecting children," and so on and so forth down the slippery slope to authoritarian hell.

What Edwards has managed to do - and this is one of the reason Teh Villagers hate him so for being so "angry" - is to turn the GOP’s bullshit rhetoric inside-out (or rather, to take rhetoric that’s already inside-out and turn it back to reality), by breaking down the establishment agenda into terms that are relevant to ordinary people’s lives.  Doing so has shown average voters that, in fact, voting Rethug is not in their own self-interest, long-term or otherwise.

And I still say, vote Edwards.  It’s time to hold his delegates hostage until we extract some real action from the eventual nominee.