Remember this during 2009: Daily Kossacks ALL backed John Edwards, long before they went Obama

Looking back on the 2007-2008 endless Democratic primaries:

The 2002 video below is a great find. It makes a complete mockery of the Kossacks’ endless cruelty and rude, revolting revilement of anyone who supported Hillary Clinton.

Larry Johnson, NewHampster, and I were among the many diarists at Daily Kos who tried to advocate for Hillary Clinton.

Yes. It is true. Larry Johnson and I (as SusanHu), as well as NewHampster and many others, were regular contributors to Daily Kos. Our posts (posts are called “diaries” at Daily Kos) were regularly lauded by the Kossack community, and often made it to the “Recommended List.”

Then, something happened at Daily Kos. Seemingly overnight, we all became, collectively, ENEMY No. ONE.

Our sin was solely that we supported Senator Hillary Clinton. At that time, we openly and frequently stated we were willing to support other potential party nominees, with the exception of Barack Obama because we felt he was not yet qualified solely because of his lack of experience or any proof that he had taken his job as U.S. Senator seriously (which he did not). We emphasized often that he was Chair of the subcommittee on European Affairs for the Foreign Relations committee, but that he had never conducted a single hearing, let alone ever visited any European nations or met their leaders. Then there was that his chairmanship also covered NATO, of vital importance because of NATO forces’ involvement in Afghanistan. But Sen. Obama never once visited NATO leaders or generals.

That meant that we also supported the potential nomination of Sen. John Edwards who at that time was the intense FAVORITE of Kossacks, who raised massive amounts of money — and I do mean MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY — for his campaign.

The Kossacks’ overwhelming opposition to Hillary Clinton was based, they said, on her vote for the war in Iraq. Yet, they overlooked, or forgave, John Edwards’ identical vote on Iraq solely because — in order to win their support and to carry away their cash by the wheelbarrow-full — John Edwards said he was sorry for his vote.

The Kossacks also overlooked Barack Obama’s statements in 2004 that BACKED the votes of John Kerry and John Edwards for the Iraq War. They hung on solely to his inconsequential anti-war speech to a bunch of ragtag leftists in the safely ensconced far-left environs near the University of Chicago. It was a speech that was so unimportant that the Chicago media made no mention of it, and did not record or videotape it. (You all do know, don’t you, that in order to demonstrate that he gave that speech, Barack Obama had to go into a recording studio and reenact the speech? And, by the way, this back-story was revealed not by Fox News but by National Public Radio. And, since we have no actual recording with which to compare the speech, we can only take Obama’s word that that was indeed the speech he delivered that day.)

Last night, having had the opportunity to watch The West Wing for the first time (Bravo has been rerunning the entire series as a run-up to the “historic” occasion on January 20, 2009), I was looking around for old interviews about The West Wing at PBS’s CharlieRose.com.

Before actor Martin Sheen appears, in this 2002 video, to discuss his role as President Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing, Charlie Rose interviews John Edwards on the pending vote on the U.S. Senate authorizing President Bush to potentially use force against Iraq.

Edwards comes across like a TOTAL HAWK on the Iraq War.

There’s also that he was on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which means that — like Hillary Clinton — he saw the “cooked up” intelligence on the war.

Of course, I’ve never quite forgiven anyone for voting for the authorization since it was plain as day to me that President Bush was hell-bent on invading Iraq, and that the intelligence was very likely “touched up” to force Congress to vote for the resolution.

However, I was not in the U.S. Senate. I did not have the responsibility to consider the intelligence before me, nor was I under the intense pressure at the times from all sides to support President Bush’s resolution.

John Edwards somewhat got himself off the hook because he did say that he regretted his vote, whereas Hillary Clinton was not as outspoken in expressing regrets. (Since I am always willing to entertain any possibility — at least in passing — it is possible that, 50 years from now, that invasion will have been seen as the right thing to do because it gave us a permanent, immense foothold in the region. I do not know. I won’t be alive 50 years from now. I hope, for the sakes of the Americans alive at that time, that it does not turn out to have been a disaster in ways we cannot begin to predict.)

With that, I give you this video. (The audio isn’t the greatest, but you can hear the speakers if you listen closely.) And, in case this video doesn’t work here, go to the page at Charlie Rose’s site from which I obtained the code.

HERE are some more comments about this video that I shared in an e-mail with a friend:

And those sexist knuckleheads at Daily Kos bashed HILLARY while they raised vast sums of money for this guy?

I swear to god that he had plastic surgery to AGE himself. What do you want to bet?

Whatever.

And, by the way, kudos to Charlie Rose and PBS for finally making these interviews available, free of charge, to all of us. Thank you, Charlie Rose. Thank you, PBS.

(Now if we could just get the commercial networks to do the same thing. High on my wish list: 1) Tom Snyder’s great interviews, 2) Dick Cavett’s fascinating interviews, 3) William F. Buckley’s programs, and more.)

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One never knows. Perhaps we’ll post a story at Daily Kos again someday. I doubt Larry will since they were intent on imposing a humiliating, unnecessary punishment on him, which he rightfully refused to comply with. And I’m not sure at this moment in time, but perhaps I’ll enter the lion’s den one of these days if I feel it sufficiently important to do so. There are dozens and dozens of my stories still up at Daily Kos. I’m glad to have that history of my writing, and I appreciate Kos not obliterating my past contributions.