See John, See John Run

See John shoot himself in the foot, repeatedly.

First, he pisses of a whole bunch of progressives with his hawkish talk about Iran.

Then today:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards on Sunday said that he would raise taxes, chiefly on the wealthy, to pay for expanded healthcare coverage under a plan costing $90 billion to $120 billion a year to be unveiled on Monday.

"We'll have to raise taxes. The only way you can pay for a healthcare plan that cost anywhere from $90 to $120 billion is there has to be a revenue source," Edwards said on NBC's Meet the Press news program.

...Offering a preview of his plan, Edwards said it aims to bring healthcare coverage to 47 million uninsured Americans, lower costs for the middle class and foster competition.

It would expand Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance plan for the needy, and offer subsidies for the uninsured. He said, "We ask employers to play a bigger role, which means they either have to have coverage or they have to buy into what we're calling health markets."

Without providing details, Edwards said his plan would create "health markets" nationwide. One choice available in the markets would be "the government plan, so people who like the idea of a single-payer health insurance plan, that is actually one of the alternatives," he said.

Which manages to piss off everyone. The Right yell "John Edwards wants to raise your taxes!" (it doesn't matter why) while the Left will see this as plain pandering to the health insurance industry with a plan that basically provides a way for them to snuffle up some more profits from the public trough.

Uh, John? If you'd just stop licking corporate butt, you could have universal healthcare with no tax rise.

John Edwards talked the progressive talk while it didn't matter any but now that he's definitely running and has to come up with some actual policies, he suddenly sounds like just another corporatist Dinocrat.

I fully expect to be told that any Democrat, even a corporatist hawk, is better than getting a Republican again by not voting for the eventual Dem presidential candidate. If you want to see what happens when a left-of-center party elects a rightwinger-in-lefty-clothing to leadership of the nation, look no further than the debacle of civil liberty attacks and warmongering (at the expense of social policy) that the UK has become over the last decade and a half. If we just ostritch on the hard questions and support "my party right or wrong" then we deserve what we get.