He’s like the wind: Edwards breezes in, out of Valley quickly
Valley Democrats, John Edwards wants your vote in his bid to secure your party’s presidential nomination, and he is willing to do anything to get it. Anything, that is, except to perhaps spend any time in the Rio Grande Valley — one of Texas’ few Democratic strongholds — talking to ordinary voters to find out what issues are of main concern to them as the 2008 presidential election looms.
Edwards, the former U. S. senator from North Carolina who was John Kerry’s vice presidential running mate in 2004, breezed into the Valley on Tuesday. He breezed out just as quickly after making a blink-of-the-eye appearance in Edinburg at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, supposedly to get some local feedback on the healthcare plans he intends to push if elected president. We say “supposedly,” since the whirlwind visit was closed to the public and the press. In fact, what Edwards did or said at Doctors Hospital was so secret, it wasn’t even accompanied by the usually, seemingly obligatory press release one might expect from a candidate’s campaign staff.
This was Edwards’ second trip to the Valley in recent months. In May, he was a keynote speaker at the National Uninsured Latinos Conference held at UTPA.
During that visit, as in Tuesday’s hit-and-run trip, Edwards avoided any contact with people who might be considered average Valley voters. This impresses us as a bit odd for a candidate who likes to pass himself off as a non-elitist man of the people. Is it possible that he is a man of just “certain” people and chooses to take for granted certain other people?
Recent polls show Edwards is the favorite candidate among Texas Democrats. Could it be that Texas Democrats care more about Edwards than Edwards does about Texas Democrats? Or, is it that Valley Democrats appear to favor the party’s frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, and Edwards has decided not to make a fight of it among the area’s average Democratic voters?
Whatever the reason, area Democrats might want to think at least twice before voting for a candidate who cannot be bothered to appear before the ordinary voters of the Valley to find out what is on their minds, particularly when the Valley is a focal point of such hot issues as the immigration debate and the current administration’s insane border wall idea.
And let’s not forget the shooting war on terror, an issue of concern to all of us here, considering how many brave Valley sons have lost their lives fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
