John Edwards learns that Israel will not do the trick

1.

In one of those strange coincidences, I was sitting and listening to presidential hopeful John Edwards speaking before the Jewish Democratic National Council (NJDC) Washington conference when a friend sent me a link to this story from The Politico: "Does John Edwards include Jews in his prayers? Or Muslims? Or Hindus? Or any other non-Christians? He didn't the other day. The other day, in order to commemorate those killed at Virginia Tech, Edwards led a prayer 'in Christ's name' at Ryman Auditorium? if prayers are supposed to comfort, I wonder how comforted the loved ones of Liviu Librescu felt? Librescu was a Holocaust survivor, a Jew, and not addressed by Edwards' prayer."

2.

All the Democratic hopefuls made time for this conference, and Edwards was the first to speak. This gives him the benefit of meeting with the activists (and, let's be honest here, its mostly financial activism we're talking about here) attending this event when they are still fresh and curious. But it also gives some advantage to his adversaries: they can learn from his mistakes.

3.

First mistake: NJDC is not AIPAC and the fact that people here are of the Jewish faith doesn't require one to dedicate the better part of his time to Israel. Edwards opened his remarks by delving immediately into his I'm-such-a-great-supporter-of-Israel act, but the crowed was unconvinced. They know he supports Israel - to the extent that he does - like all other candidates. They want to hear something more special.

4.

So what was it that caught the crowd's attention? They cheered Edwards - who had a decent but not great speech - three times. Once when he called for withdrawal from Iraq, a second time when he started talking about Darfur, and a third time when he called to end poverty in America.

5.

I will not be the first writer to reveal the fact that Edwards is much better with the domestic stuff than he is with foreign policy. I didn't think his foreign policy remarks were impressive or convincing. The one issue he sounded familiar enough with was Iraq. On Iran he was quite vague - building on two unproven assumptions: that the President of Iran is on his way down, and that Iran has an interest in a stable Iraq (a folly that the Baker-Hamilton committee was also buying into). And what if he is wrong on both counts, as I suspect he is? Edwards wasn't very specific. Working with our European friends in order to present the Iranians with "sticks and carrots" was his best offer. One suspects that the days of gung-ho no-nuclear-weapons-for-Iran-no-matter-what are over for him.

6.

Darfur is a huge issue on which he said two basic things:

One, Bush isn't doing enough.

Two, we should establish a no-fly zone.

This all sounds great except for one thing: it is exactly what Bush suggested. To his credit, though, Edwards was making one more original suggestion: the U.S. should enforce the zone with NATO (meaning, sidestepping the UN Security Council the way Clinton did in Kosovo). This, to me, was the most interesting point Edwards made.



Stay tuned: Tomorrow I will be blogging right after the speeches of the other candidates (that is, if they still let me in after this item).

More about the Democrats and Israel: Is the Democratic-Israeli disagreement getting out of hand?