America is a Poorer Land Today

  From this small voice comes a cry of gratitude to John and Elizabeth Edwards and their wonderful and passionate staff and supporters.  The hue and cry of the oft cacophonous discourse that thrusts its way into our public square and the marketplace of ideas will swirl on and a powerful voice ever struggling to be heard will drift back into receding eddies.  The loss of that voice and vision leaves us all poorer - one and all.

  So let me now take a moment to celebrate our fleeting, quixotic chase of something truly great and sound this word of caution - we are all left poorer - not just economically, but morally and intellectually as well.  

  I can never know what would animate a man to step out of a life of ease with the chimerical goal of giving a voice to the poor.  For half a decade that voice has dared call attention to the shadows of our gleaming cities and the backalleys of our bucolic towns.  I have walked amongst the magnificent towers of glass and steel with their art treasures and coveted corner offices and the babble of each days small wars.  I have also stepped onto the streets of these big cities and seen the one-legged veteran hobbling along the alleys - no longer visible to the rush around him.   Yet the incontrovertible facts remain - that his numbers grow.  John Edwards dare call us to dream that in America we could do something real and meaningful.  

 I can never know what would animate so many strong and stirring voices - so many of them here on DKos - to join in this notion - that America was a better place than to allow itself to become two nations.  Surely it must have been easier to support those who are connected or who bask in the sunlight of celebrity and do not hold events in the 9th Ward of NOLA.

 I can never know what would animate, after a quarter century of politics dedicated to slick marketing and careful calculation and gossamer, high-sounding tones, so many to seize upon the Edwards candidacy as a moment to seek redemption and renewal and restoration of true, centuries tested values bequeathed us by our forebearers.  Yet, there they were - and for a moment our winter's discontent held promise of a new and glorious spring.

 It has now slipped away.  The poorest among us are now most definitely poorer.  The voice that so proudly and clearly called out for them has been allowed to go silent - and by those to whom lip service for the poor comes so easily - another broken promise so easily substituted for political expediency.  Our national discourse teeters now toward bankruptcy - the Chris Matthews of the world will still be heard - while detailed substantive policy considerations will be swept away.  

 But mostly our national pride shall join our fiscal condition - deeply, irretrievably, irrevocably in debt and in tatters.  We once thought of America as a beacon - calling our to the poor huddled masses and providing beckoning opportunity.  On this day that light shines no more.  Today America celebrates her poverty and holds it up as its testament to the future.  Today America tells its children that they will enter the world poorer than we entered it.  Today America gives in to a politics and a national dialogue that is more comfortable concentrating on the frivolous and the silly than on meeting head on the challenges wrought by our own extravagance.

 For all those who worked so hard and spoke so eloquently on behalf of the Edwards you have my undying admiration and gratitude.