Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

I’m still looking for the one Democratic activist who paid any attention at all to the David Geffen-Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton spat this weekend, let alone the one potential primary voter who cared about it. If anything showed the chasm between what the beltway media cares about and what actually matters to voters, it was this made up silliness.

If Clinton wants to complain about Geffen, what about saying something about his responsibility for David Coverdale’s career? How will she use her power as president to do something about that? The people demand answers, Senator.

In the mean time, the other Democratic candidates used their time out of the glare of CNN’s lights to talk to the activists and voters that will actually be selecting the nominee. What was missed by the media pack was the jabs that the other candidates were making at the front runners. Some of it would have been interesting for them to look at, even from the horserace perspective. For example, Bill Richardson, who it is rumored doesn’t get along with Clinton, seemed to take her side in the spat. Does this make it harder for Clinton to go after Richardson later?

John Edwards’s campaign this week took an oblique shot at the two front runners in an e-mail sent to Democratic activists:

You and I know how play-it-safe campaign experts always tell candidates: stay vague; that way no one will disagree with you. Say “end the war!” but don’t say when. Say “health care for all!” but don’t say how. Well, John Edwards must have been absent the day they taught how to dodge and weave in candidate school — because this is not that kind of campaign.

I’ve never been one for demanding lots of specifics, especially in a Presidential campaign. Just give me enough to tell me where you are at and what your thought process is. The moment the next president gets inaugurated, he or she will have to work with 535 other folks that got elected on their own eight point program and those specifics start to become a bit more fungible. Long position papers seem to exist more to satisfy nit-picky activists. By the way this never works. All it does is give people a chance to harrass campaign volunteers by saying, “You know, point seventeen of his twenty-four point energy independence plan doesn’t mention biodiesel.”

Nonetheless, Edwards has been happy to separate himself from the pack by talking specifics. A few weeks back, Edwards unveiled a detailed health care plan. When I first heard it teased, I heard it being compared to the Massachusetts plan. I thought, “Oh God, no.” But this one has some major differences with that plan and seems to have been written with its flaws in mind.

(By the way, remember how that plan was such a great idea last year? How it showed that Mitt Romney could work with people from all over the spectrum and get things done? How it showed that Romney was “presidential’? Anyone wonder why Romney doesn’t mention it anymore?)

Edwards is also touting an Iraq exit strategy. It isn’t quite as detailed as the health plan, but isn’t as muddled as the Iraq rhetoric of at least one candidate I can name.

The fact that Edwards is out of office makes him freer to come up with policy proposals like this, but also means he has to since he can’t use a Senate seat to earn media from work he is doing now. Of course, this is all assuming that we have a media that is interested in talking about the issues. That’s a tall assumption.