Mount Pleasant, Iowa -- John Edwards continued his 36-hour tour across Iowa this morning, meeting with canvas organizers over cider and donuts and fielding a few questions from the growing pack of reporters tracking his "middle class marathon." Writing on the front page of today's New York Times, defense correspondent Michael Gordon reports that Edwards has "staked out" an Iraq policy auguring "a more rapid and complete troop withdrawal than his principal rivals," so I asked Edwards whether he is claiming the mantle as the most antiwar candidate in his closing argument. He responded:
I don't make those kind of evaluations. I'm doing what I think is the right responsible course for America, which is to get all our combat troops out of Iraq in the first year of my presidency; end combat missions and have no permanent military bases. America needs to end its occupation of Iraq and I will do that as President.
Tom Hayden sees the Times article as a new development, but I don't really see a major shift in the policy or tone here. Edwards is still closing on economic populism, but reaffirming his Iraq plan when voters or reporters raise the question. Iraq is not mentioned in his current, truncated stump speech, though Edwards did add a reference to ending the war during a pitch to undecided voters at a café in Fairfield this morning. But it's clear that the focus of his closing argument remains beltway-bashing populist passion, as he emphasized today:
The people of Iowa and the people of America are unstoppable when they commit themselves to stopping these entrenched special interests. And I believe that's going to happen, I think it's going to happen tomorrow night in the caucus, and it's going to continue after the caucus through the rest of America.
Ari Melber
Mount Pleasant, Iowa — John Edwards continued his 36-hour tour across Iowa this morning, meeting with canvas organizers over cider and donuts and fielding a few questions from the growing pack of reporters tracking his "middle class marathon." Writing on the front page of today’s New York Times, defense correspondent Michael Gordon reports that Edwards has "staked out" an Iraq policy auguring "a more rapid and complete troop withdrawal than his principal rivals," so I asked Edwards whether he is claiming the mantle as the most antiwar candidate in his closing argument. He responded:
I don’t make those kind of evaluations. I’m doing what I think is the right responsible course for America, which is to get all our combat troops out of Iraq in the first year of my presidency; end combat missions and have no permanent military bases. America needs to end its occupation of Iraq and I will do that as President.
Tom Hayden sees the Times article as a new development, but I don’t really see a major shift in the policy or tone here. Edwards is still closing on economic populism, but reaffirming his Iraq plan when voters or reporters raise the question. Iraq is not mentioned in his current, truncated stump speech, though Edwards did add a reference to ending the war during a pitch to undecided voters at a café in Fairfield this morning. But it’s clear that the focus of his closing argument remains beltway-bashing populist passion, as he emphasized today:
The people of Iowa and the people of America are unstoppable when they commit themselves to stopping these entrenched special interests. And I believe that’s going to happen, I think it’s going to happen tomorrow night in the caucus, and it’s going to continue after the caucus through the rest of America.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.