The only thing holding back the babarians at the gate: the filibuster.

[AP]

If we lose the election AND lose the five Demcoratic seats up for grabs in November, then I'll bet we lose the filibuster in 2006. Then we'll lose everything.

Which candidate is going to help us hold on to those five seats and turn back the barbarians?

(Hint: see picture below, to the left.)

[Padraig18]

1. We'll pick up one in IL.

Take that to the bank.

[Carolina]

2. neither

but I think Edwards may be better than Kerry.

Actually too it depends on who the candidates are. Here in SC, I think former Governor David Beasley (R) will win handily. Incumbent Fritz Hollings (D) screwed the SC by not stepping down when we had a Dem Governor who could appointed the best damn Dem candidate, Alex Sanders, rather than wasting him in the awful 2002 midterms. And thus he would be a strong encumbent and a safe seat for 2004. But no ....

Breaux of LA is a DINO anyway; LA may choose the real thing next time.

NC has Erskine Bowles, Mr Personality NOT, running again (he lost to Elizabeth Dole in his first bid), this time for Edwards' seat. It could go either way.

Bob Graham's seat in Florida, who knows?

And which one am I missing? Anyway, we're fucked.

[Skwmom]

3. Not this candidate

In 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named John Edwards stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.

"She speaks to you through me," the lawyer went on in his closing argument. "And I have to tell you right now — I didn't plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/31/politics/campaign/31EDWA.html?ex=1390885200&en=4fb97ac07a96f186&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND


There is no way this will sell in the general election.

[AP]

4. Do you know why this is an issue?

Becaue the judge was so pro-business he desperately looked for any reason to overturn the award and reduce it to something that would make Republicans happy.

He claimed that this was a manipulation of emotions.

Guess what? It wasn't. That was a legal argument right up there with Scalia's argument that the recount should stop because Bush could suffer great harm if it didn't.

Should we really be embracing stuff the Republicans do which we rage about in every other cicrumstance except when it serves the goal of character assassination of a candidate we don't like?

If Edwards weren't running, would you agree that Republican judge's opinon that this statement should cost the family of that poor girl a couple million dollars?

[DemDogs]

5. From "Four Trials"

That quotation is from Edwards' book "Four Trials" and Edwards was not "channeling" -- he was saying that the child, then six, who could not speak to the jury and was not in the courtroom. He DID speak for her. And Edwards was pretty successful in making her case. He is pretty good at making the case for the working men and women too.

Anyone who reads Four Trials will close the book and go out and work to make this man our next President. So thanks for bringing the subject up.