Why John Edwards Will Be Elected

It won't happen because I say he will be elected or even because I will vote for him. It will not be a few votes close. Edwards will be the nominee because voters are smart enough to know that the historically-rooted racism and chauvinism that is part of the cultural DNA of America's power elite will allow neither an African-American nor a woman to be elected President at this point in our history. Does anyone really believe we are going to go directly from Dick Cheney to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? For those white liberals who love Obama because he doesn't remind them that he is black, I am wondering how many of them will find that lever or touch screen as color blind or gender blind?

In the privacy of their own hearts on caucus or primary day, will they, will we, all patriots so desperate to hope that the Republic can be salvaged after eight years of battering, will we pick someone we know that the Republican Slime Machine is laying in wait for? If they could derail a moderate white man like Michael Dukakis with a Willy Horton scare ad, how many nooses do they have prepared and how many good ole boy media tricks and slime balls do they have stored up for either Obama or Clinton?

And why are Clinton and Obama soaking up the corporate media coverage, vapid though it may be? Both Hillary and Barack are Wall Street Democrats who can be trusted to lose in a close, angry, dirty, scandalous race--or in media terms, a campaign made in heaven. And if all dirty tricks somehow fail, a Hillary or a Barack will deliver to the corporations what they require, along with the anchorwoman checks in much the same way that the Wall Street Republicans can be counted on to do the same.

The power elite, neoliberal or neoconservative, are scared shirtless that John Edwards will become the candidate, because they know that when he gets the nomination, America will, indeed, rise up like it hasn't done since the Depression to establish once more some semblance of fairness and equity in all things social and economic. With Edwards the nominee, it won't even be close. Edwards, 52, McCain (or anyone else), 48.

John Edwards is the dormant hope that regular people cannot hope for yet. But Iowa is going to change all that in a little over two weeks. And there is nothing the corporate media or the slime machine can do about it once that hope is born. After all, he is a white Protestant man, remember?