Here's the thing: I didn't just support John Edwards for President the last time around. I basically loved John Edwards.
Not as much as I loved his smart, feisty wife Elizabeth, but I loved him nonetheless, and I loved him even more for being married to her.
One of my most cherished beliefs has always been that the best and most revealing way to truly understand a man is to know his wife. I've seen this borne out over and over in life. So even though I supported Howard Dean in 2004, when I started paying attention to John Edwards, I decided that even if I didn't always agree with him, I really approved of his taste in women, and by extension, his core personal values. When 2008 rolled around, like a lot of other progressives, especially here in Oregon where I live, I liked the way he sounded and decided to support him, partly for his own sake (including what I then believed to be his relative electability HAHAHAHAHAHAHA), and partly for the thrill of making Elizabeth Edwards the First Lady. Who could resist that narrative?
It seemed to me all through the 2003-2008 period that if you scratched the surface of a John Edwards admirer or supporter you were more than likely to find someone who liked John but loved Elizabeth, or loved them both but loved her more. I would certainly put myself into that latter category.
I went back last night and reread my old diary Elizabeth Edwards is my hero, and especially all the comments. It killed me.
I still believe, as I wrote then, that Elizabeth Edwards -- whatever else she may be -- is an authentic human being. By this I mean that she acknowledges her weaknesses along with her strengths, and her faults along with her virtues. It is human nature to put one's best foot forward, to want to make a good impression, God knows especially if you are, or your spouse is, running for President. No one in that situation can afford to be 100% transparent. But it seems to me that she never wore the kind of mask that John did. John seems to have elevated that standard-issue political artifice to the level of fraud.
John Edwards sold me (and countless others) a bill of goods named "John Edwards" that bore only the remotest (mostly visual) resemblance to the real article. He convinced me that he was a good man because he had the good taste to have an excellent wife. He convinced me that he respected her (and by extension other women), that he cherished his family life, that he understood what was important in life. He spoke of the outrage of economic injustice in America in a way that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama never seemed to do. After he dropped out, I struggled for months to figure out who I would support in his place. He had made me believe that he truly shared my values. Maybe he did, some of them. But of course now I can never know for sure.
I earn a good living and enjoy being able to contribute to candidates and causes I believe in. During the 2007-2008 primary campaign cycle I gave John Edwards somewhere between one and two thousand dollars in a series of smaller contributions (I looked myself up on newsmeat.com and opensecrets.org but I can't tell for sure what the total was). I gave him that money because I wanted him to be nominated; because I believed that if he were nominated, he could be elected; and that if elected, he would govern effectively and in a way that would make me proud. He concealed from all of his supporters a reckless and unprincipled private life that, if he had won the nomination, would have almost certainly been revealed and handed the Republicans the keys to the White House for another four years, and if somehow not revealed during the campaign, would have brought dishonor and disgrace to his Presidency and rendered him completely ineffectual as a leader.
So if he were standing in front of me I'd say this:
I don't hate you now, John. You aren't worth it. I feel an icy cold contempt for you that will never bother heating up to the level of hatred. I'm deeply angry, though. I'm angry because you cheated on your excellent wife while she was undergoing cancer treatments and you were both living in the fishbowl of a Presidential campaign, and then you were callous and venal enough to deny paternity of your child for political reasons, and pressure a loyal friend and staff member to take the fall for you. I'm angry because you toyed with the hopes and dreams that so many millions of your supporters held in their hearts for you. I'm angry because all the wingnuts who called you a "Breck girl" are now crowing that they were right about you all along. (Apologies to all actual Breck girls everywhere.) And I'm angry because you were actually so much worse than even the wingnuts ever suggested.
I'm glad you didn't get much past South Carolina in the early primaries. I'm glad you weren't nominated and I'm glad you weren't elected. But I'm angry and frustrated at having been so shamelessly lied to. I know I'm not the only supporter who feels defrauded, but I've decided to do something about it. I'm saying it in public: I want my money back. I'd like to give that money to Ron Wyden's 2010 campaign or President Obama's 2012 campaign or the campaign of some other decent and progressive Democrat who lives the values that Democrats talk about. I don't wish you ill, John. I just hope I never have to hear about you again.
So go into your campaign records, figure out how much I gave you, and send me a check. I'm not quibbling about a hundred bucks here or there. It's the principle of the thing.
I have given money to a lot of candidates over the years. Since they were all Democrats, many of them have lost. Some of them (hello, Bob Kerrey!) have turned out to be shockingly inept or just plain bad candidates, but I've never even considered asking for my money back before. Losing isn't shameful. Ineptitude isn't shameful. What is shameful is living a reckless, disrespectful lie.