THE DAILY BLADE: Ebony And Ivory
The suspense – such as it was - is over: Erstwhile presidential candidate Fmr. Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) has endorsed Barack Obama (D-IL). During many of the Dem debates, the two attacked Hillary Clinton (D-NY) together in perfect harmony, and politicos and pundits alike are wondering whether Obama and Edwards will run side by side in the general election.
Here’s The Nation’s John Nichols on the possibility of an Obama-Edwards ticket:
No one missed the fact that Barack Obama and John Edwards looked right together.
“They looked fantastic together,” gushed Jill Zuckman, the Chicago Tribune's able political writer. “They looked like a ticket.”
Even Obama seemed to notice.
“I haven't been seeing John as much,” said the Illinois senator. “I forgot how good he is.”
Though Obama would have liked to have Edwards’ endorsement before OH, PA and IN, it’s hardly a TLTL deal for the candidate:
† Heading into the KY primary Edwards could help Obama recapture some of the white working class voters who’ve embraced Hillary’s candidacy when the field narrowed to her and Obama (second item), thus negating the only remaining rationale for her candidacy. If the superdelegates see a solution to Obama’s problem with poor white folks, they won’t have to think twice about supporting him.
† Edwards won 19 pledged delegates that now get added to Obama’s total – as of this writing, Obama has 1,891 of the 2,025 needed to capture the nomination, Hillary has 1,719. KY has 51 delegate at stake, OR has 52 and under the Dem proportional allocation rules, Obama stands to gain more delegates in KY than Hillary will in OR if Edwards and his organization can help him erode her blue collar base; she has little hope of making a dent into Obama’s young, ultra-liberal, highly educated latte-sipping base in OR.
† In the general election, an Obama-Edwards ticket could prevent a mass exodus of blue collar Dems to John McCain (R-AZ), who seem poised to cross party lines, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.
But for every argument that Obama and Edwards are a match made in Dem political heaven, there is a counter argument that Edwards will add little or nothing. The Wall Street Journal notes that Edwards is choosing the lesser of two evils:
People close to Edwards have said that he sees deep flaws in both Clinton and Obama. He thinks Obama lacks the fire to wage war against special interests in Washington, and objects that Clinton takes money from lobbyists and is part of the inside-the-beltway aristocracy, which he considers to be the problem with American politics.
Not surprisingly the Republican National Committee isn’t too impressed, either:
Barack Obama and John Edwards share an out-of-touch agenda that would raise taxes on families while cutting funding for our troops. The only question is why didn't Edwards endorse sooner? Edwards' endorsement of a candidate he previously blasted as inexperienced, hypocritical, and lacking substance will not help Obama with voters looking for real change.
Still, Obama could do worse than choosing Edwards as his running mate. It would be a black-and-white ticket that could heal some of the racial animosity that has surfaced in the drawn-out fight for the nomination; a black-and-blue ticket that could prevent a percentage of Hillary’s base from defecting to McCain; and a red-and-blue ticket that could make Obama more competitive in Southern states.
The Missing Link?
In Ben Stein’s documentary, “Expelled,” there is a delicious scene where Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion,” admits he cannot explain the transition from inorganic to organic matter – the origin of life – and proposes that life on Earth could have been seeded by extraterrestrials. But he then concedes he cannot account for how this advanced race of aliens would have come into being.
Well, it appears the Vatican has the answer – and Dawkins isn’t going to like it one bit: G-d created all the life in the entire universe, not just here on Earth. Reports Reuters:
“In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists,” said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, a 45-year-old Jesuit priest who is head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.
“How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere,” he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview … explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.
Funes also said that as an astronomer he considered the Big Bang theory as the most likely explanation of how the universe was created – but that this does not change his belief in who created the universe: “G-d is the creator. There is a sense to creation. We are not children of an accident.”
Meanwhile, in a somewhat related development, Reuters also reports that the Britain’s Ministry of Defense has begun a public release of its files on UFO sightings from 1978 to the present:
The ministry dismisses 90 percent of the reports as having mundane explanations and leave 10 percent with a question mark and the assurance they are no defence threat. …
The ministry has files on 11,000 sightings dating back to the 1950s. A few of the sightings made it into the national press and all were checked out in case they were Soviet aircraft probing Britain's defences during the Cold War.
Some of the reports appear to be more credible than others – “Royal Air Force personnel, civil aviation pilots and air traffic controllers have also reported sightings and radar tracks that remain unexplained despite high-level investigation” – including two occurring near the U.S. airbase in Rendlesham Forest in 1980. However, by 1985 the Ministry of Defense had concluded that checking out UFO sightings was a waste of its time and resources.
Comments