Why We Must Be Suspicious Of Edwards

While I've long been openly admiring of the domestic platform that John Edwards has campaigned on, I've always questioned whether it was sincere or not. That's in large part because unlike Obama, he didn't have the resume to back it up (read about Obama's efforts against the war, protecting our civil liberties, and towards ethics reform as both an Illinois State Senator and a U.S. Senator here). A fair number of the issues Edwards speaks most passionately about are one's that he helped authorize during his time in the Senate. These include the affront to our civil liberties that the Patriot Act allowed (and that he voted for), the Iraq War (which he voted for), and the unfair nature of trade with China (which, again, he voted for even though it did not have environmental and fair labor practices requirements).

During this election cycle, he has attacked all of those positions in addition to making the fight against lobbyists central to his platform. However, since his campaign has not been able to generate the funding that his opponents' have, there is now clear evidence that he has worked with a lobbyist group labeled a 527 so as to have commercials run in Iowa, something he vowed not to do. We've known for a few days that the group had several former Edwards campaign advisers working for it leading us to suspect that there was corroboration between the group and the former senator. But now, The New York Times writes that there are e-mails that erase doubts about the connection and corroboration. Edwards and his campaign have maintained that "527s should have no role in the political process," but the email states that the 527 in question should prepare to roll out endorsements in a "coordinated [oops!] press strategy with the Edwards campaign," and to "discuss with the Edwards campaign what specific sort of support they'd like to see from us...."

In this instance, the group appears to be a genuine organization, and not some corporate interest. But it doesn't change the fact that 1) Edwards went back on his word and 2) that the whole point behind refusing to work with 527's is that "they allow donors who are sometimes anonymous to spend large amounts outside the limits of the campaign finance laws." Meaning you refuse to accept money from these guys so that corporate billionaires can't get their special interests into play by anonymously funding campaigns. By accepting even one of these forms of contributions, Republicans--who regularly use 527's--could argue that the 527 groups that advertise on their behalf are also "genuine" and thus allow their corporate cronies to dump millions into their campaigns through anonymous fundraising.

This latest disappointment on Edwards' part further arouses my suspicions that he is someone who is too willing to compromise his ethics for the purpose of getting elected. After all, the Patriot Act and the Iraq War were politically convenient at the time he voted for them, but now that they've become political liabilities, he speaks out against them.