Those of you who clicked on this diary thinking, or maybe even hoping, that it was going to be yet ANOTHER diary trashing Edwards -- sorry, nope, not this one. No, the disappointent I'm referring to in my title is in you. You know who you are.

We are on tour at the moment, but we recorded this little song in our van about the MSM's nonstop coverage to the affair of someone who doesn't hold public office and isn't currently running for one -- and their lack of attention to Ron Suskind's revelation that the Vice President ordered a forged memo to provide a false Iraq/Al Qaeda link to help start a war that has killed over 4,000 Americans. Great job, press folks!

Enjoy "Antiseptic", and forgive us for being more lo-fi than usual.

I offered the following comments over at the Huffington Post in response to an article by none other than Moby.  While I am generally skeptical of entertainers promoting political strategies, I have to admit that Moby's point is well taken.  The Dems have to fight back against the McCain jihad of lies and innuendo, lest they once again sail off into the sunset on a Swiftboat of self-serving sanctimony.  

Important straw ballot results

Disclaimer: Yes, this is another diary about John Edwards.  If you are sick of the topic, you don't have to read it.  If your main goal in reading it is to have the opportunity to berate others about feeling hurt nor not hurt, believing or not believing, continuing to support or not continuing to support, then I HOPE you won't read it.  Ditto those who just want to "it's none of your business/I'm sick of this topic" scold.  If you're over it, that's great for you, but I'm not, and I still want to talk about it.  

Basically, I've been wrestling since yesterday with trying to decide whether or not I believe the story that Edwards is telling us now, and I wanted to ask other people what they think.

I hope we can do this without digressing into sniping or namecalling or scolding or berating people for supporting/not supporting believing/not believing Edwards.  There are lots of other diaries out there where this is already going on, and I don't think we need another.  I'd really just like to have a frank and honest discussion about whether or not we believe this latest story.  And if so, why, and if not, why not.

I for one was quite shocked that the Edwards affair turned out to be true. I won't hide the fact that I always supported Obama during the primary, but Edwards was always my second favorite and I had hoped he would either be Obama's VP or Attorney General. I can see now that this isn't in the cards. For all intents and purposes his political career is probably over. I can't help but really be pissed off as well.

I have been avoiding the MSN like the plague since the Edward's affair has hit the airwaves. I knew it would be alot of handwringing, and sanctimonious blather about something that will have no long-lasting affect on the political process, the Democratic party, nor anyone except the Edwards' family and their close friends.

I am still surprised about how upset so many people got on this site with the Edwards affair.  I supported Edwards initially, but then I switched to Obama.  My only concern with Edwards was his original Iraq war authorization vote.  But I still believe he has a great message and he would be a great attorney general.  And I could care less about his affair.  

Here are some reasons for which I disagree strongly with all the attacks on Edwards by some great bloggers here:

Since the Edwards' affair story officialy broke today there have been over eighty diaries on the topic.  This outstrips the early response to the New Yorker Obama cover fairly significantly.  The New Yorker cover was ultimately the subject of over 100 diaries.  The Edwards affair seems headed for an even  higher number.

While it's my contention that the New Yorker cover diarying was overdone(by me, too--I wrote one of them suckers), I don't think the Edwards' outpouring is. The site has such a deep and personal connection to  Edwards that a stream of feelings was inevitable.  Nothing even approaching the profound here, just a couple of random notes.  

This latest fiasco with John Edwards has me rethinking my political alliances.  Personally, I never trusted John Edwards anyway--he was a fairly right wing senator who conveniently morphed into a populist.  Now, we learn he had an affair that would sink his presidential aspirations but he did not have the decency to stay out of the race.  In sum, he lacks solidness of purpose and good judgment.  Worst of all, his hair does not look very good.

I looked at Brad Pitt recently and think he looks much better than John Edwards and even Barack Obama so I think we need a whole new movement and should draft Brad Pitt.

Also, after my brother, a bachelor, watched the Paris Hilton spoof, he wanted to know where he could sign up as a Paris Hilton volunteer.  So, this just shows how important good looks are.

That does it.  With this new found insight, I'm off to start a new campaign!  Brad Pitt and Paris Hilton -- hotties for president and VP!

I was an Edwards supporter and to this day felt his stances on corporations was the way to go-- but now I realize, even in Edwards, we would not find the perfect candidate.

This won't be long, just a little diary to acknowledge the truth-- in a world where Obama is held back for his name and his race, where Clinton is held back for her gender and Richardson for both his skin and his eloquence (or relative lack), it's a damn shame that the only one of the candidates I thought would be the sure-fire winner, the guy who comes in with no "inherent" weakness and plenty of strength...

Would have failed... because of his own choices.

This race was never ours to win, no matter who the Nominee was going to be. It was always, always going to be a fight.

Alright. I'm fully committed.

Go Obama. Go.

Official statement on the affair from Edwards.

Frankly, I don't think decades of microscopic attention has done much to clean up the behavior of politicians, and unless we're catching these folks with live boys or dead girls, I could gladly go through my day blissfully unaware of it.

We can pretend to ourselves that these folks are somehow supposed to be different from us between the legs and between the ears, but who are we kidding?  We're selecting these people from among ourselves, folks, and in case we haven't noticed, there are people screwing around, there are people having children out of wedlock, and I bet at this point a huge number of people who will have exposed body parts in some corner of the internet that will come back to haunt them.

Our intense focus on hunting down ever smidgen of sexual impurity, while well intentioned, is futile.  These offenses, by their nature, will tend to be kept private by people. And kept private, people will have very little encouragement to be forthright about it.  Why are we forcing these people to lie?

Like most issues, on the topic of Edwards, everyone is probably in the wrong.

Should you mad? If you want to be - but lets not get the anger focused on the wrong issue. Should you not care? If you don't want to - but lets not shrug and move onto the next topic.

There is a middle ground.

(update: The poll goes from 1 (I don't care) to 10 (I care more than life)

The elder and younger statesmen of philandering on one ticket. It could work.

....Main plank in the party platform: if it feels good, do it.

Administration-in-waiting:

Attorney General: Eliot Spitzer
Secretary of State: Bill Clinton
Secretary of Defense (or Offense?): Larry Craig
Secetary of Treasury: Newt Gingrich
Secetary of Labor: David Vitter
Secretary of Transportation: Mark Foley
Seceretary of Education:The Mayor of Detroit (wasnt he the guy who texted his girlfriend?)
....???

Add your other nominees inthe comments:

I was not going to write a diary, but I had enough of this Edwards hit pieces.   All of the sudden, there are several diaries discussing how "bad" Edwards is and there is even a lead story on this site about this issue.

Ok, here it is what I think:  No big deal.  Edwards had an affair.  So what?  
What does this have to do with his ability to be president or vice-president or to serve as an attorney general in the Obama administration?

John Russell a populist progressive is running to unseat NeoCon Moron Ginny Brown-Waite in 2008... John was the Democratic nominee in 2006 and with the dramatic shift in public opinion due to all the economic pain inflicted by their failed policies we could oust Ginny and replace her with a Populist Progressive in the mold of John Edwards.

Run time: 10:08
http://www.youtube.com/...

We've been tremendously blessed, so to say, that we have had the field of Democrats that we did.  And even though my guys (Kucinich and Edwards) didn't win, I'll be happy to vote for Barack Obama in the general election.

But there are some angry voters who have stated their intent to vote for or seriously consider John McCain, and I see this as not only a slap to the Democratic Party, or the Progressive movement, but a slap in the face of many very real people.