Eric Lee

It's the morning after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. It now seems pretty clear to everyone that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee for President. The question now is -- what can we do to ensure that he defeats John McCain in November. And not only defeats McCain, but defeats him decisively.

We need more than a Democratic victory in November -- we need a landslide. We need huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. We can only achieve that if we have the kind of unbeatable team at the top that unites the party and the nation.

It's obvious that Hillary Clinton is not going to be Obama's running mate. Obama has to choose from among many outstanding Democrats, including some who ran against him in the early primaries, to find a great Vice Presidential choice. But one man stands head and shoulders above all the others as the obvious choice: John Edwards.

John Edwards set the agenda for all the candidates in the early stages of the primary battles. He came up with the first and best comprehensive health care plan. He raised the issue of poverty as no leading politician has done for 40 years. His charisma, his abilities and his appeal to those voters Obama must win in November are beyond dispute.

An Obama-Edwards ticket in November is the Democratic party's best chance of winning a resounding victory. If you agree, please visit http://www.ericlee.info/edwards4veep and sign the form there. (That address will soon be http://www.edwards4veep.org.)

We'll make sure that Obama gets this message loud and clear from the many Democrats who we're sure agree with us.

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A spectre is haunting American politics -- the spectre of John Edwards. A week after "suspending" his campaign, the former North Carolina Senator received over 380,000 votes in super Tuesday primaries.

Continue reading "Edwards' ghost still haunts Democrats" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." - Otter, "Animal House" (1978)

I am about to propose something which is certainly futile and maybe stupid too.

I've been talking in recent days to people who, like me, supported the candidacy of John Edwards.

I've found that most of us are in a bind: we don't really have a clear preference for one or the other Democratic candidate.

Continue reading "How I'm going to vote tomorrow" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The withdrawal of John Edwards from the contest for the Democratic Presidential nomination on Wednesday has made the race suddenly less interesting. Like many other progressives, I was fascinated by the Edwards candidacy and by its promise to put radical ideas on the national agenda.

Continue reading "A race less interesting" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

With the non-primary in Florida behind them, Democratic Presidential candidates have less than a week to prepare for what some are calling Tsunami Tuesday, when 22 states will hold primaries. A few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that the selection process for the Democrats would essentially end on this day with Hillary Clinton's coronation.

Continue reading "A deadlocked convention?" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 10:47 AM | Permalink

Florida is the fourth largest state in the US, with 27 electoral votes and 210 delegates to the Democratic national convention. It's where George Bush (or Al Gore) won the 2000 elections. And depending on your point of view, it either is or is not holding a Democratic primary today.

Continue reading "Clinton in Florida" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 09:45 AM | Permalink

Dick Morris knows something about the way Bill and Hillary Clinton think. In 1996, he managed Clinton's successful campaign for re-election. After having fallen from grace, he's turned against the Clintons and is no longer close to them. Still, people pay attention to things he says. And three days before the South Carolina primary, Morris said something that made people sit up and pay attention.

Continue reading "South Carolina: Clinton's victory?" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 10:21 AM | Permalink

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Continue reading "Winners don't quit" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 10:54 PM | Permalink

"He doesn't know it's a damn show! He thinks it's a damn fight!" - Apollo Creed's trainer, "Rocky" (1976)

Continue reading "Edwards still standing" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Voters in today's South Carolina Democratic primary are not following the script. They're not playing their part. And it's confusing pundits and pollsters to no end.

Continue reading "Edwards surges in South Carolina" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 12:43 PM | Permalink

Much of the debate between the presidential candidates will reflect uniquely American issues. But sometimes the arguments will be instantly recognizable to people in Britain. This was certainly the case with Senator Obama's recent comments regarding Ronald Reagan and the Republicans.

Continue reading "Democrats divide over Reagan legacy" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 12:46 PM | Permalink

For an entire generation of Americans, Upton Sinclair will be known -- if he is known at all -- as the guy who wrote the book that was the basis for the movie "There Will Be Blood".

Continue reading "From EPIC to Edwards: Upton Sinclair's Legacy and the 2008 Election" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:41 AM | Permalink

The South Carolina Democratic primary, due to be held on Saturday, is the first in which race matters. The first states to vote in the year-long battle to choose the party's presidential candidate were the overwhelmingly white (and rural) Iowa and New Hampshire. But nearly 30% of South Carolina's voters are African-American.

Continue reading "Race and class in South Carolina" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 12:48 PM | Permalink

The latest Zogby poll taken over 3 days in South Carolina puts Edwards nearly tied with Clinton for second place, but on each day of polling Edwards has gone up dramatically day by day in the wake of his performance in the CNN televised debate.

Continue reading "Edwards rises from the ashes - pulls ahead of Clinton in South Carolina poll" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 11:14 AM | Permalink

When the mainstream media gets it wrong covering the campaign, one can suspect conspiracy. But when they get it wrong concerning unions in the campaign, it's almost always due to ignorance. To put it bluntly, most journalists know f***-all about labor unions and can't make head or tail of the information they're given.

Continue reading "Union endorsements: The mainstream media gets it wrong, again" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:44 AM | Permalink

CORRECTION: A couple of people have pointed this out to me - the numbers I was reading off the Nevada Democratic Party website were for the delegates to the state convention. The actual number of voters was 116,000 -- a record. Edwards got considerably more than the numbers I give in the first two paragraphs, below. And one respected political commentator has written to tell me that Edwards' actual vote total was probably closer to 10%. Still, it was a disaster and the rest of my column stands.

Let us begin by being completely honest. John Edwards suffered a stinging defeat yesterday in Nevada. He polled only 3.75% of the vote state-wide. Fewer than 400 people in the state voted for him. In Clark County (where Las Vegas is), Edwards polled only 1.5% of the vote. There, where Hillary Clinton won over 4,000 votes, Edwards had 115 supporters. The scale of the defeat cannot be overstated -- this was catastrophic.

Continue reading "After Nevada: How Edwards can still win" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Clinton down 7 points, Obama down 3 points in one week.

If the mainstream media's right and this is a two-horse race, where are all those voters going?

Continue reading "Latest CNN poll shows Edwards picks up 3,000,000 new supporters in one week" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 10:28 AM | Permalink

To write, as Sacha Ismail does, that U.S. "Republicans and Democrats are ... almost identical in policy terms" betrays either a startling ignorance of American politics or a form of ultra-leftism.

In either case, he gets it wrong about the parties in general and about the differences between the Democratic candidates in particular.

To put this as clearly as I can: on every single policy issue that concerns American voters, regardless of their class, Democrats and Republicans come down on different sides.

While it's true that neither party supports the creation of soviets, the collectivization of land, or the nationalization of industry, back in the real world if you want abortion to be safe and legal you vote Democratic. If you want US troops withdrawn from Iraq within our lifetimes, you vote Democratic. If you want labour laws to be changed so that it becomes easier for unions to organise, you vote Democratic.

Continue reading "US elections: Reply to article in "Solidarity"" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 01:47 PM | Permalink

The BBC has replied to my complaint. See below.

Continue reading "BBC: "We have not excluded Mr. Edwards"" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 12:09 PM | Permalink

Someone forgot to tell the voters that the Edwards campaign was over. According to the latest poll from the Reno Gazette-Journal, there is a three-way-tie as we head into the final hours before the Saturday caucus.

According to the paper, "The poll was conducted Jan. 11 to Jan. 13 , with samples of 500 likely Democratic caucus-goers and 500 likely Republican caucus-goers statewide by Maryland-based Research 2000. The margin of error is 4.5 percent."

It is the only current poll available from Nevada.

Oh, and one more thing. Four years ago, John Edwards got only 10% in Nevada. He's now polling three times that amount, against Clinton and Obama.

As Mark Twain would have put it, reports of this campaign's demise have been somewhat exaggerated.

***

Update: David Sirota got here first.

Posted by Eric Lee at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Update: The BBC has replied to this.

The BBC news website -- one of the most popular news websites in the world -- is running a story entitled "Democrats clash over civil rights". With the South Carolina Democratic primary only 12 days away, naturally I assumed this was following up on reports like the one from CBS News which bore the title "Race Enters Discussion Now That Edwards Is In S.C."

Continue reading "BBC blacks out Edwards on race" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There has been something of a mainstream media blackout of the John Edwards campaign and it has nothing to do with his campaign prospects.

Continue reading "The invisible candidate" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On the face of it, all three leading Democratic candidates for president represent great news for unions and working people.

Continue reading "Which candidate should American unions support?" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I haven't been blogging about the American presidential election, though I've been following it as closely as one can. And I notice that no matter how John Edwards does in the early primaries and caucuses, he is not the focus of media attention. When he beats Hillary Clinton into third place in Iowa, the focus is on Obama's rise and Hillary's fall. He barely gets a mention. And when he places a poor third in New Hampshire, he doesn't get mentioned at all.

Continue reading "Why John Edwards is still in this race" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 07:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Today, former Senator John Edwards announced his candidacy for the Presidency in the 2008 elections. And, you may be asking yourself, why would this even remotely concern me?

After all, practically everything on this website is about two subjects – the labour movement and the Internet, and where they intersect.

So that's what I want to talk about – how the Edwards campaign may turn out to be one of the great experiments, answering two questions which have preoccupied me for several years:

1) Can the Internet play a real role in promoting social change?

2) Does the trade union movement have a future?

Continue reading "John Edwards, the net and the renewal of a democratic Left in America" »

Posted by Eric Lee at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)