Reason #1,365,982 I'm Sad John Edwards Dropped Out of the Race

And Reason #1 why I have not endorsed either of the two remaining candidates: Because corporations are not people, and legislation that is "good for corporations" is rarely good for people—aside from, perhaps, the people who own them.

John Edwards seemed to know that.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Clinton or Obama, whose corporatey corporaticiousness is not even in the same galaxy as the GOP's, but nonetheless leaves me little hope that a Clinton or Obama presidency would begin to meaningfully reverse the trend of corporations being more important to our government than the people they employ.

(What success Edwards would have had is also dubious, I grant, given the disgusting state of our bought-and-sold Congress, whose members ought to just wear NASCAR-esque uniforms bearing the logos of their sponsors and get it over with already. But at least Edwards would have made it a priority; at least he was willing to try, instead of rolling over dead while our country's sold out from under us to global conglomerates who are the real unpatriotic swine in this country.)

But I digress.

A lot of bloggers are complaining today about Obama's decision to take to the Fox News airwaves this weekend, while a lot are saying it was brilliant strategy, and I'll leave that to them to fight out. I don't really give a crap.

What I'm interested in was the segment in which Obama was asked about being "a uniter, who will reach across the aisle and create a new kind of politics," prompting him to launch into a discussion of some of the areas in which he thought the Republicans had better ideas than his own party (ugh), the first of which was corporate regulation.

WALLACE: And we are back now with Senator Barack Obama. Senator, one of the central themes of your campaign is that you are a uniter, who will reach across the aisle and create a new kind of politics. Some of your detractors say that you are a paint by the numbers liberal and I'd like to explore this with you.

Over the years, John McCain has broken with his party and risked his career on a number of issues, campaign finance, immigration reform, banning torture. As a president, can you name a hot button issue where you would be willing to cross (ph) Democratic party line and say you know what, Republicans have a better idea here.

OBAMA: Well, I think there are a whole host of areas where Republicans in some cases may have a better idea.

WALLACE: Such as.

OBAMA: Well, on issues of regulation, I think that back in the '60s and '70s, a lot of the way we regulated industry was top down command and control. We're going to tell businesses exactly how to do things.

And I think that the Republican party and people who thought about the margins (ph) came with the notion that you know what, if you simply set some guidelines, some rules and incentives for businesses, let them figure out how they're going to for example reduce pollution. And a cap and trade system, for example, is a smarter way of doing it, controlling pollution, than dictating every single rule that a company has to abide by, which creates a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and oftentimes is less efficient.

This is just brutally wrong. I mean, it's correct in the sense that a cap and trade system is great for businesses, but it's terrible for the populations in any area with a big polluter that, instead of being forced to clean up, is given the opportunity to buy credit allowing them to pollute. I happen to live in an area where, once upon a time, coroners couldn't tell who had been a smoker and who hadn't, because everyone's lungs were equally black.

It's only because of the "excesses" of the '60s and '70s that there are children who will grow up in the same town I did without developing black lung or many of the weird allergies and asthma that lots of people my age and slightly older have developed as adults. Now aren't we the people for whom Democrats are supposed to be fighting, as opposed to the people who would have pumped that shit into our air and water until there was no one left to risk life and limb at the mills anymore because they were all dead?

If not, then who is fighting for us?