Cynical Nation

...same as better than the Old Democratic Party. As the new GOP grows less and less attractive to me with each passing day, my disappointment is offset by the fact that the Democrats are looking much less repulsive in the post-Clinton era than at any other time in my life.

Consider the hapless John Edwards, who couldn't even muster a second place in his Clinton-hating home state yesterday. I think it's fairly safe to write his obit at this point. Let's face it, we're about as likely to see John Edwards in the local Super Cuts as we are in the Oval Office (LOL! I crack myself up sometimes with my rapier-like wit.)

So why did it happen? He's charismatic, attractive (not in that way, of course... not that there's anything wrong with that), intelligent, and he comes from the prime demographic for a Democrat seeking the White House -- a southern white male. He's perhaps a bit light in the experience department, but that clearly wasn't a factor, as the two candidates who've been cleaning his clock in every state thus far have similar resumes.

What set Edwards apart was that he ran an unabashedly liberal campaign, the only one among the top-tier candidates to do so. Edwards is not some Kucinich or Gravel who never stood a chance. In fact, when he entered the race, it was very easy to imagine him as a front-runner.

Last week, some pundits, including Russ Feingold and Charles Krauthammer began to notice belatedly that Edwards is a big phony, campaigning passionately against many of the very items he voted for himself while in the Senate. It wasn't just the war in Iraq -- it was the Patriot Act, the bankruptcy bill, No Child Left Behind, nuclear waste storage in Yucca Mountain, and others. But far from running as someone who's undergone a Damascus Road conversion, Edwards would have us believe he's a lifelong crusader for the progressive causes he now espouses.

They're right, of course. I'm not buying Edwards' faux-populist schtick any more than they are. But Feingold and Krauthammer seem to be trying to retrofit an explanation for Edwards' demise after the fact, and I don't buy his radical makeover as a reason. God knows there's enough flip-flopping among this crowd that there's no need to single Edwards out.

I think the explanation is much simpler. This is not the same party that nominated McGovern and Mondale. It took them a while, but they finally learned their lesson. Edwards employed a calculated strategy to run to the left of both Clinton and Obama, and yet he's getting soundly rejected in every state contest thus far, by Democratic voters!

Unfortunately for Edwards, the Democrats aren't the party they used to be. They're the party that wants to repeal the AMT, not the party that gave it to us in the first place. That's bad for Edwards, but it's a good thing for the rest of us. Especially since it's looking increasingly likely that the Democrats will be governing both branches of government for some time to come.