Yesterday both of Oregon's leading Democratic US Senate candidates, Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley, endorsed Barack Obama. Both had formerly supported John Edwards, as I did and as many kossacks did (and some of us still do). Merkley, in fact, was a cochair of Edwards' campaign in Oregon.
The words they chose are revealing of the two men who want to be my next Senator. While Novick acknowledged Edwards and the issues he championed, Merkley simply wiped the slate clean and wrote on it anew, as if John Edwards had never existed.
Novick provided a reasoned analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Clinton and Obama, and spoke openly about the importance of the issues John Edwards brought to the fore in his campaign, but Merkley took a different approach. Merkley simply pretended that he was tabula rasa, as if had never endorsed John Edwards, or anyone for that matter, and released a statement that spoke only about how much he and Obama seemed to have in common, just as he and John Edwards presumably had so much in common a few weeks ago.
I understand that it is important to look forward, not backward, in politics, and I am not now disputing the sincerity of Merkley's former endorsement of Edwards. (Although he did say a couple of months ago that he would never have endorsed Edwards if he'd known he was going to be in a tough Senate race.) Call me old-fashioned, but that bothered me then and it bothers me now. But let's be charitable and accept his explanation that he was talking about the heroic time commitment required back in November, December, and January to be one of several cochairs of a campaign in a state that doesn't vote until May 20.
Here's my bottom line: if John Edwards' issues were important to you a few weeks ago, are they not still important to you today? If he was the best candidate a few weeks ago, and it is a matter of public record that you were a co-chair of his campaign in your state, why would you not acknowledge your own journey, your own transition, in your subsequent endorsement of a longer-surviving candidate? Was it your haste to leap onto the Obama bandwagon before it left the station? Was it your rush to get your Obama endorsement out in the same news cycle as your opponent's?
I'm proud of Steve Novick for recognizing John Edwards and his issues even in the difficult context of choosing a different candidate to endorse. I'm proud of him for speaking kindly of Hillary Clinton, instead of engaging in some of the mindless HRC-bashing that goes on around here. And it does greater honor to Barack Obama to lay out a reasoned analysis of the factors, plus and minus, that led you to endorse him.
To pretend that John Edwards never existed, well, that's just sad.