This is my man

If the next presidential election were next week, I'd want to be voting for John Edwards. I know, big deal, right? No such "endorsement" matters a damn until 2008 when we know who else is involved and what's happened since. God knows, if you'd told me in 2001 that three years later I'd be having to hold my nose and vote for John Kerry...

But I digress. Why have I decided to "come out" so early for Edwards? Here's why. In my old blog, on January 30, 2004 at 4:13 PM, I said:

Senators like John Edwards and John Kerry flatly failed to do their jobs...And the next generation will judge them just as surely as mine did those who got the US into Vietnam, Republican or Democrat. Although, that's easy to say with 20/20 hindsight, and I'm not sure if, at the time, the futility of Vietnam was as evident as Iraq II was. And it was, from the very beginning. Dean's presumptive frontrunner status may have turned out to be greatly exaggerated, but he will always have this over every one of the candidates except Clark and, of course, Kucinich: He was right about Iraq, and they were wrong.

I would love to see which of them will be the first to say it (come on, John Edwards! Confession is good for the soul!).

In the Sunday, November 13, 2005 Washington Post:

The Right Way in Iraq

By John Edwards

I was wrong.

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price.

In AmericaBlog, John says

This is a very big deal.

Edwards is saying what far too few Democrats are willing to say. They got tricked into voting for the war in Iraq, and now they regret it. Edwards goes one step farther, taking personal responsibility in any case for his vote. He and Kerry should have done this last year, but it's still good he's doing it now, and it sounds very much to me like this is a man running for president in 2008.

I say this is a big deal because top Democrats are finally willing to say publicly that they screwed up, they should have never voted for this fiasco, while at the same acknowledging that Bush hardly played an insignificant role in tricking the Congress and the American people into supporting this war.

Until or unless someone better comes along, that's my man.