The Salon Interview: Elizabeth Edwards (barf alert!)

Salon.com ^ | July 17, 2007 | Joan Walsh

[ConservativeStatement]

July 17, 2007 | Elizabeth Edwards is not wasting time. She cut through the fog of sympathy and second-guessing about her decision to continue campaigning for her husband, John Edwards, despite learning in March she had incurable breast cancer, simply by hitting the campaign trail hard. By most accounts she has always been the campaign's leading strategist and still is. But lately she has emerged as its leading risk taker, too. At the end of June she won the nation's attention -- and the gratitude of many -- for confronting right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter live on MSNBC's "Hardball," after Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot" at a conservative conference in January, and joked in June about wishing he'd be assassinated.

[Miss Didi]

On Mrs. Clinton:

EE: On the issues that are important to women, she has not ... well, healthcare, that's enormously important to women, all the polls say, and what she says now is, we're going to have a national conversation about healthcare. And then she describes some cost-saving things, which John also supports, but she acts like that's going to make healthcare affordable to everyone. And she knows it won't. She's not really talking about poverty, when the face of poverty is a woman's face, often a single mother. She gave that speech on abortion a few years ago [saying abortion should be "safe, legal and rare"].

Look, I'm sympathetic, because when I worked as a lawyer, I was the only woman in these rooms, too, and you want to reassure them you're as good as a man. And sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women's issues. I'm sympathetic -- she wants to be commander in chief. But she's just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is. And then she says, or maybe her supporters say, "Support me because I'm a woman," and I want to say to her, "Well, then support me because I'm a woman." The question is not so much how she campaigns -- that's theater. The question is, what does her campaign tell you about how she'll govern? And I'm not convinced she'd be as good an advocate for women. She needs a rationale greater for her campaign than I've heard. When she announced her candidacy she said, "I'm in it to win it." What is that? That's not a rationale. Same with Senator Obama -- I've yet to hear a rationale. John is extremely clear about what he can accomplish and why he's the one to do it.

[GraceCoolidge]

I also noticed no questions about the "political discourse" from Mrs. Edwards' own bloggers, either. Did you notice this:

He wants to triple the earned-income tax credit (not a sexy issue but very important) and raise the minimum wage -- if you raise it by a dollar, 900,000 people are raised out of poverty.

Why don't we raise it by five dollars an hour, then? That would raise a lot more people out of poverty. Heck, let's just make minimum wage $50 per hour-- now everyone is rich! Solving poverty turned out to be easier than we thought. So how come her husband needs to tour the country and give speeches about it? His wife has the answer right there...

[Niteranger68]

Tereza? Is that you in there?

[Cobra64]

And shares his wifes

[Burkean]

I hope the media treats this as Elizabeth Edwards’s faggot moment. She didn’t use the schoolyard terminology that Ann Coulter did when referring to Edwards, but Mrs. Edwards is basically calling Hillary a dyke in so many words.

[Miss Didi]

Rush on this as I type...

[wastedyears]

***after Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot" at a conservative conference in January, and joked in June about wishing he'd be assassinated.*** She didn't call him that, she insinuated it.

[Miss Didi]

You have to laugh when Elizabeth Edwards calls out Hillary for acting like a man...Rush wonders if she’s out there acting on her own...odds are it’s all scripted, he says.

[redstates4ever]

"...the vile kind of way Ann Coulter thinks and talks, that was not ever part of the public discourse until recently."

You can thank rage-filled liberal Democrats for starting it, Lizzy.

How like a leftist to ignore that THEIR side has been doing it forever, but how dare OUR side ever get fed up and give them a taste of their won medicine. She is living in Bizarro world, where she's got it all backwards.

[redstates4ever]

"...in some ways I'd like to continue what I started, just hammer home the unacceptability of Ann Coulter and what she's doing to the dialogue. I'd like to follow her around and harass her. Maybe Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh too."

Do it, Elizabeth. Do it, and let's hear those 'vile' people bulldoze you with a nice heaping helpung of truth. :-)

[ozzymandus]

I question the point of this article. It’s full of lies about Ann Coulter, makes jonn edwards look like a total wimp being run by his loudmouthed wife, and practically calls hillary a dyke. This whole piece may be a plant by the clinton camp to sabotage edwards.

[Joe Boucher]

“Hillary a dyke”
And a murderer
And a thief
And an enabler
And a liar
And a commie
And just plain ugly.

[Badeye]

‘EE: We did. It was hard to get to our Web site for a few days. And you know, in some ways I’d like to continue what I started, just hammer home the unacceptability of Ann Coulter and what she’s doing to the dialogue. I’d like to follow her around and harass her. Maybe Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh too. But then I become what I’m trying to fight — I think it’s counterproductive.’

I’d like to see her do just that - without Chrissy Mathews running interference for her, without it being a set up Coulter wasn’t aware of when she showed up.

Liberals always ‘talk a good game’ when in the stands. But once they get on the ‘field’ they collapse.

[007girl]

hahahahaa!

[Miss Didi]

Rush playing this now..."you know these pantyhose are a drag..."

The Breck Girl Sings I am Woman

[Badeye]

I don’t laugh at that one as much as I do Barack the Magic Negro...for the simple reason I could see Johnny Breck Edwards primping and singing that parody.

We better be careful, his wife Tubby might register here at FR to set the two of us straight about her metrosexual....

[MockTurtle]

Does John Edwards really think his wife is doing him any favors?

Elizabeth is this campaign season's Teresa Heinz-Kerry. She's a gift to the Republicans!

[puroresu]

The Silky Pony was going to do this interview himself, until he found out Salon.com wasn’t a hairdressing site.

How shameful it is to have a guy running for commander-in-chief who has to send his wife out to defend him from political barbs.

[exile]

How does Mrs. Edwards know how a man behaves?

[MockTurtle]

How does Mrs. Edwards know how a man behaves?

Ding! Ding! Ding!... We have a winner.