After watching John and Elizabeth Edwards today, I am proud to be both an American and a Democrat!

Although it's awfully hard for me not to be enamored anyway by his confident presidential looks combined with his guy-next-door humility, John Edwards's sad announcement relating to his wife's breast cancer brought home with great power the distinction between Democrats (and other progressives) and ... the Republican neocons who have darkened our Capitol with a secret presidency, a confused (but deadly nonetheless) and unnecessary war in Iraq, trillions of lost dollars in their lust for both oil and contract dollars, and, most recently the arrogance of political power run amok in the unprecedented replacement of several US Attorneys without Congressional ratification.

John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, put a human face on politics.

But lest we forget, the others running for the 2008 Democratic nomination are also attempting to humanize the issues that we, as a nation, are all facing.

Hillary was battling the insurance and pharmaceutical companies' attorneys on live television way back when it was politically unacceptable to even discuss Universal Health Care. That was early in Bill Clinton's term as president and I was absolutely amazed by her incisive questions and willingness to sacrifice her popularity for what was, at the time, a losing cause.

Barack Obama was standing--and voting--against the invasion of Iraq before most Democrats were able at the time to see beyond the lies that Bush, Rummy and Cheney (and others) had blinded us with in order to justify "the worst blunder in American foreign policy ever."

And, of course, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich have been devoting an enormous amount of time in small communities all over the world. John Edwards has done both humanitarian work in Africa and started after-school programs for low-income kids in North Carolina.

And Al Gore has endured a great deal of abuse for a very long time in his attempt to bring the facts surrounding Global Warming and other environmental issues to the attention of a largely unsympathetic audience.

All of the Democratic candidates have talked with a lot of regular, hard-working people for a very long time.

Hopefully, they will start talking with one another with the same vigor that they are spending on the campaign trail.

I know that the pictures below have appeared in numerous postings on this blog before, but with the sadness of today's announcement by John Edwards and Elizabeth, it is good to remember that they are in good company.









Wouldn't it be great if they could all be President simultaneously?

But I'll settle for Obama as President, Hillary as Vice President (or vice versa) and Edwards and Gore as our Secretaries of State and Defense (or vice versa) ... or randomly in all of those posts with Bill Clinton as the next Attorney General. And oh yes, Dennis Kucinich would be just fine as the new HUD Secretary.

Migod! I almost had a euphoric heart attack as I typed that paragraph.

And one more ... to be the first US Secretary of Smiles and Happy Personal Affairs ...