John Edwards to run for president in '08

[Rickypt]

Still very early in the game, but Edwards is topping polls in Iowa and Nevada (the first two caucuses/primaries). A couple of early wins and some strong victories in the south, and he stands a very good chance of getting the nomination. I don't think Hillary is a shoo-in at all.

[Nixxxed]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

I understand what you're saying. From my perspective, there is nothing really politically advantageous to highlighting poverty as a key presidential issue. So I find him to be sincere. And you're right, the idea might not be new, but there have been solutions (or even much of an effort) to poverty.

I agree - it's not adventageous, as important as it is. I hate to say it, but 08 is still going to be about Iraq.

Speaking of Dennis Kucinich, did you catch this mention of him by Matt Taibbi in the last Rolling Stone? (I tried to look for it on the RS website, but no luck. Their web programmers are obvoiusly as stoned as their reviewers...)

"Matt Taibbi writes in the Dec. 14 issue of Rolling Stone of hanging out in antiwarrior Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s office and seeing a thick binder his staffed compiled called “Iraq: Post-election Democratic Stances.”

Taibbi comes to two apt conclusions: “One, the Democrats have already taken enough different positions on Iraq since the elections to fill a large binder; and two, that the party is under intense surveillance by its more progressive-minded wing, who already suspect the leadership of looking for ways to pass the buck on Iraq.”

I read the Taibbi article a few days ago, and it struck me mainly because Matt didn't just happen to see the binder in Kucinich's office. When Matt was interviewing him, Kucinich made it a point to hold up the binder and say something like, "This is something you might be interested in seeing."

Is it 2008 yet?

Here's where I found the summation, btw: http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/20...ate.html#links

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Nixxxed

And I'll never forgive him for his piss-poor showing against Cheney in the 2004 VP debate - and the fact that he's a trial lawyer only makes it worse. How could he not remember sitting next to Satan himself at a prayer breakfast (of all places)? And then he followed that gaffe with the sheepish Mary Cheney comment...

I *do* like his wife Elizabeth, however.

It was the other way around. Cheney said he didn't remember meeting Edwards. Dick pretty much sat there and lied his ass off during that debate. It was horrid.
Also the Mary Cheney comment was made by Kerry, unless there is some comment from Edwards I am unaware of.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

And you're right, the idea might not be new, but there have been solutions (or even much of an effort) to poverty.

Certainly not in the last 25 years or so. The disregard for the sick and homeless in the Reagan era was despicable.

[Rickypt]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

It was the other way around. Cheney said he didn't remember meeting Edwards.

That's right, Cheney was trying to insinuate that Edwards was never around Washington -- shirking his Senate responsibilities-- because of his run for President.

This was also the debate where Cheney said he didn't know African-American women were severely impacted by HIV/AIDS. Something a man in his position should have known.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Rickypt

That's right, Cheney was trying to insinuate that Edwards was never around Washington -- shirking his Senate responsibilities-- because of his run for President.

This was also the debate where Cheney said he didn't know African-American women were severely impacted by HIV/AIDS. Something a man in his position should have known.

That's the night that he showed anyone who was watching what a sick, evil bastard he really is.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by PsychCat

And I'm aware he's not the psychic guy HOWEVER he did claim to be channeling some dead girl in a case he was trying. uggghhh....

Someone's been reading Ann Coulter.

[gldstwmn]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar..._award_debate/

Edwards's career tied to jury award debate

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Senator John Edwards, the North Carolina lawyer running for president, built a career out of winning historic jury awards for children who suffered birth defects allegedly because doctors mishandled their deliveries -- from a record $6.5 million in 1985 to a new record of $23 million in his last trial in 1997.

His summations became legendary, with lawyers crowding the courtroom to listen to Edwards move jurors to tears. "What value do you attach to the emotional suffering that this little girl will have for the rest of her life?" he asked in his breakthrough case, in 1985. "I wouldn't take $10 million for it." Edwards also persuaded the jury that the hospital was responsible, even though the doctor was not an employee.

But in a precursor of battles to come, the trial judge set aside a portion of the $6.5 million verdict as excessive, and an appeals court agreed. The North Carolina Hospital Association filed an unsuccessful protest brief, claiming Edwards had opened a new avenue for malpractice cases.

Now, spurred by President Bush, Republicans are seeking to limit awards for pain and suffering, saying juries are driving up the cost of health care. On Saturday, Texas voters narrowly supported a $750,000 cap on pain and suffering awards. Today, North Carolina is scheduled to consider limiting such awards to $250,000. While Edwards helped block a similar bill in the Senate last July, Republicans are vowing to take it up again, putting Edwards -- and his career -- back in the spotlight.

"To the extent that he's been able to persuade a jury, he's succeeded," said state Senator Robert Pittenger of North Carolina, referring to Edwards's ability to make a jury cater to his client's needs. But Pittenger, a Republican supporting limits on jury awards, insists, "That's not, to me, an equitable way to try to stabilize the health care industry."

A Globe review of Edwards's career from the mid-1980s through 1997 reveals that he was more than just a practitioner of medical malpractice law. He was one of its most prominent specialists, stretching the reach of the law for nearly two decades. But he also came to personify some of the alleged excesses that reformers have sought to curb.

For instance, his summations routinely went beyond a recitation of his case to a heart-wrenching plea to jurors to listen to the unspoken voices of injured children.

"I have to tell you right now -- I didn't plan to talk about this -- right now I feel her, I feel her presence," he said in his record-setting 1985 lawsuit on behalf of Jennifer Campbell, born brain-damaged after being deprived of oxygen during labor. "She's inside me and she's talking to you. . . . And this is what she says to you. She says, `I don't ask for your pity. What I ask for is your strength. And I don't ask for your sympathy, but I do ask for your courage.' "

Critics say such emotional appeals can lead to pain-and-suffering awards that go beyond what's warranted. "There's a feeling that jury verdicts are not based on just the facts," said Nick Ellis, president-elect of the North Carolina Association of Defense Attorneys.

Edwards, who declined to comment for this report, has said he opposes limiting awards for pain and suffering because they "will affect a situation where a child is blinded for life, where a child is paralyzed for life," and compensating them for medical costs or lost income wouldn't account for their hardships.

In some of his cases, the awards for pain and suffering exceeded his clients' economic losses.

For instance, in a 1994 case, one of Edwards's clients had a double mastectomy based on the doctor's mistaken belief that she had suffered a recurrence of breast cancer. An arbitrator awarded her $850,000 for emotional distress. Without a pain and suffering award, her damages would have been limited to medical expenses.

In other cases, Edwards argued that decades of medical care should justify enormous damages.

Edwards's largest malpractice verdict involved a child who was brain-damaged at birth. At trial, Edwards presented expert testimony that the child might live for more than 40 years and incur lifetime medical expenses of tens of millions of dollars. Defense witnesses testified that the child might die within a few years.

The jury awarded $23 million in 1997. Afterward, both sides settled for an undisclosed amount. As it turned out, the child died at age 6 from her injuries.

Her death spurred critics to propose another change in the law: allowing defendants to pay in installments rather than a lump sum. "I don't know what the downside is," said Ellis.

But making payments in installments could cause a significant drop in fees to plaintiffs' lawyers. Most personal-injury lawyers get a percentage of what their clients receive. Edwards's firm typically received between 25 and 40 percent of the verdict, according to his former partner, David Kirby.

Plaintiffs' lawyers say they depend on contingency fees because many clients can't afford the high cost of hiring specialists and taking depositions; under a contingency fee, the lawyer pays those costs upfront. Contingency fees "provide access to the court system that would not be available to a huge segment of society," said Kirby.

Critics counter that jury verdicts are supposed to compensate plaintiffs, not their attorneys. Edwards, according to financial disclosure forms, is worth between $12.8 million and $60 million.

Beyond obtaining large awards, Edwards expanded the limits of personal-injury law. The Campbell case, for instance, involved an expansion of liability for hospitals, even when the treatment was by a private physician.

Six years later, in 1991, Edwards won a $2.275 million verdict for the family of a woman who killed herself in a hospital a few days after she was taken off a suicide watch. The case appeared to be the first time in North Carolina that a hospital was found liable for a patient's suicide, according to North Carolina Lawyers Weekly.

In 1994, Edwards won a lawsuit against a doctor who failed to diagnose prostate cancer, even though his client allegedly missed several follow-up appointments.

But the case remembered as his biggest win came in 1997 and involved a 5-year-old girl who was injured by a swimming-pool drain. The drain cover was off and the girl was trapped by a suction pump with enough force to extract her intestines. The manufacturer argued that if the cover had been installed correctly, the accident would not have happened.

Edwards countered the company should have provided better warning labels. "Some of the covers say nothing," he said during his summation. "If that continues, it's not a question of whether there's going to be another child hurt. It's just a question of when."

Later, he pulled a newspaper out of his jacket and started to read.

"There was a wonderful, wonderful thing written this past spring. . . . It involved the death of a young boy who shouldn't have died, and what he wrote was this: `We have to gather around this family not because we understand what they're going through, but because -- but because they have to know we share their pain. Our feelings -- our terrible, terrible feelings prove that we really all are part of the same family. Their loss was our loss. Their child was our child.' "

What Edwards did not tell the jury, although some lawyers in the audience knew, was that the piece referred to his own son, Wade, who had been killed in a 1996 car accident at age 16.

When the jury came back with the $23 million verdict, 10 of the 12 jurors were crying, recalled the judge who presided at the trial.

To those who had worked with Edwards for years, the result was familiar. So was the familiar air of empathy.

Said Wade Byrd, a fellow plaintiff's attorney, "John then and now had almost a Clintonesque ability to understand a complex subject and break it down to very simple terms."

[Nixxxed]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

It was the other way around. Cheney said he didn't remember meeting Edwards. Dick pretty much sat there and lied his ass off during that debate. It was horrid.
Also the Mary Cheney comment was made by Kerry, unless there is some comment from Edwards I am unaware of.

Right - Cheney said Edwards was never in Washington, and it (the debate) was the first time the two were meeting. And Edwards didn't correct him. We had to find out after the debate, when the Kerry/Edwards camp went into overdrive circulating the photo of the prayer breakfast, where Edwards was seated right next to him.



Never mind the fact that Edwards had also met Cheney when Elizabeth Dole was sworn in. The thing that always stuck with me was that Edwards didn't correct him.

http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004b.html

CHENEY: Gwen, I want to go back to the last comment, and then I'll come back to Israel-Palestine.

The reason they keep trying to attack Halliburton is because they want to obscure their own record.

And Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished. You've missed 33 out of 36 meetings in the Judiciary Committee, almost 70 percent of the meetings of the Intelligence Committee.

You've missed a lot of key votes: on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform.

Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone." You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate.

Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session.

The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

In respect to Israel and Palestine, Gwen, the suicide bombers, in part, were generated by Saddam Hussein, who paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers.

I personally think one of the reasons that we don't have as many suicide attacks today in Israel as we've had in the past is because Saddam is no longer in business.

We've been strong supporters of Israel. The president stepped forward and put in place a policy basically that said we will support the establishment of two states. First president ever to say we'll establish and support a Palestinian state nextdoor to Israelis.

But first, there has to be an interlocutor you can trust and deal with. And we won't have that, we don't have it now, in a Yasser Arafat. There has to be reform of the Palestinian system.

IFILL: Senator Edwards, it's your turn to use 30 seconds for a complicated response...

EDWARDS: That was a complete distortion of my record. I know that won't come as a shock.

The vice president, I'm surprised to hear him talk about records. When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors.

He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

It's amazing to hear him criticize either my record or John Kerry's.

IFILL: Thirty seconds.

CHENEY: Oh, I think his record speaks for itself. And frankly, it's not very distinguished.

Now, I understand that Edwards was trying to bite back against Cheney's laundry list. But if he had simply said, "Actually, Mr. Cheney, I've met you more than once. I even sat next to you at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2001. I couldn't have met you any other time because you refuse to allow Democrats to meet with you when you're on the Hill. You only meet with Republican leaders and lobbyists," then all of Cheney's earlier points would have been moot, especially when the pictures had been released after the debate.

I'm probably just splitting hairs tho, hindsight 20/20, blah blah blah. I find it hard to believe that he could let that slip, especially being a trial lawyer.

And the Mary Cheney thing:

EDWARDS: "Now, as to this question, let me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy."

Awwwwwwwwww....