You know it is a slow news day when Greg Sargent of TPM Election Central is dissecting a fundraising email from the John Edwards campaign. I got the same email. Here it is slightly shortened to remove the direct fundraising appeals
Dear Friend,Why do I have a feeling that Prince might be right? Has the Washington media elite decided to "cheap shot" the Edwards campaign? First he is attacked for being pretty. Then his hair cuts are too expensive. Somebody writes that he had the largest house in the country (er county.) Who can forget Katie Couric implying that he is wrong to continue campaigning in the face of his wife's cancer. His poverty fighting efforts are challenged in the New York Times. It is as though somebody has decided that the best way to defeat John Edwards is to label him a hypocrite and the big time media is sparing little expense in pushing that narrative. I would suggest we all remember the hatchet job Al Gore received at the hands of the very same mainstream media back in 2000. Do you think they did America any service then?
What happens when the candidate who will shake up Washington the most also has the best chance of getting elected?
Everyone who likes things just the way they are gets scared and goes on the attack. If they can't attack the substance, they'll create "scandals" any way they can.
We are fighting back hard . . . .
The whole Washington establishment wants our campaign to go away, because they know that John Edwards means the end to business as usual. The Washington lobbyists and PACs don't want us to win because John is the only candidate who has never taken money from them. The political mercenaries and the chattering class don't want us to win because they can't imagine a president who doesn't play by their rules. And you can bet that the big corporate interests—from the insurance companies to the drug companies to the oil companies—don't want us to win because John has been taking on special interests his entire life. So they attack him—personally.
It's classic—they don't want the American people to hear the message, so they attack the messenger. They call him a hypocrite because he came from nothing, built a fortune while standing up for regular people during some of their toughest times, and—heaven forbid!—he has the nerve to remember where he came from and still care passionately about guaranteeing every family the opportunities he had to get ahead.
Enough is enough. Together, we can put substance above cynicism and beat back these desperate attacks.
Like many of you, I've been with John since 2004. The same folks who are attacking him now went after him then. You know why? Because the Bush inner circle sensed what the polls tell us today—that John Edwards is the best general election candidate we've got. Last time they attacked his hair; this time it's his haircut. But it's the same sad game. And this time, we can beat it.
For all the reasons we got into this—to bring our troops back from Iraq, to solve global warming, to guarantee universal health care and to eliminate poverty—and because we believe the politics of substance and purpose must trump cynicism and personal destruction—this is a fight we must win. And together, we can.
Sincerely,
--Jonathan Prince
Deputy Campaign Manager
John Edwards for President
Monday, June 25, 2007
P.S. Last week The New York Times ran a story suggesting that it was wrong for John to have spent the last three years raising awareness of poverty and advocating for solutions. As if there's any way to draw attention to poverty without publicity! And to make matters worse, the reporter just refused to even talk with any of the people who benefited—like any of the 200 young people who got scholarships through the College for Everyone program, or the 700 students who went to New Orleans with John to help rebuild. So we really need your help to get our message out; please, give what you can today.
Question, do the big time media types have teleconferences to talk about how they are going to whack somebody or are they just an easily lead herd of hacks?
