So, what happens to us John Edwards supporters? Who will get the votes?

John Edwards had the actual plans across the board. I hope the remaining candidates will make their own plans more progressive, but I doubt they will.

I can only speak for myself, and I haven’t completely decided – although at this point, I have to lean toward Hillary Clinton.

My reservations about Barack Obama are mostly about foreign policy. I didn’t like what he said about Iran, and I fear that he may be more conservative than people think. There are too many followers and not enough people asking informed questions. The other small thing that bothers me is that calling him black seems a little racist, like the infamous “one drop” rule. The fact that he’s multi-racial should be a good thing, taking some of the either/or quality off the race debate. Somehow it’s not working that way.

Hillary Clinton is strong, and caring, and flexible, and shrewd enough to do the job well. The main problem is that so many people really hate her. And why? Because she shows all the qualities of a good leader, but happens to be female? So “assertive” becomes “bitchy”? And at the same time, she has one second of choking up during a luncheon (if you blinked, you would have missed it) and that becomes a media circus in which she is portrayed over and over as “weepy”? It seems very misogynistic to me. Still, I would love to get Ted Kennedy alone in a room and get him to tell me why he has rejected Clinton for Obama. That really surprised me.

It’s not enough just to be non-white, or non-male. Those things really don’t matter so much at this point in our history, and I’m over my idealism (thank you Condi Rice).

We have big, big problems in this country, and a huge mess – involving a number of crucial issues – to be addressed.

Who is going to be able to come through most successfully for all Americans, for the country as a whole, and for this country’s relationships with other countries and the world?

That’s my question, and it hasn’t been answered yet.

It almost moves me to cussin’. Every candidate I have ever supported in the opening stages has dropped out of the race.

Why do we push out the best people?

WHY, John? Why did you quit?

I wonder who he will endorse. I can’t call it.

I’ve got some rethinking to do.

I sure would like to see him win the Presidency.

Download The Plan to Build One America (80 pp., pdf) to see some of the reasons why I am supporting John Edwards.

Here is Edwards’ response to the State of the Union Address last night:

The president tonight renewed his call for an economic recovery plan. But the plan he and Congress have offered leaves out tens of millions of Americans who need help the most. This plan would take months to have any impact, and the people I meet everyday on the campaign trail do not have months to wait. These people are hurting now and need this help now. Over the past seven years, typical workers’ paychecks have failed to keep up with inflation, millions of families are facing the loss of their homes to foreclosures, health insurance premiums have doubled, and families are spending $1,000 more a year on gasoline. The State of the Union may be interesting political theater, but until we find bold solutions to the challenges facing the country, we will be stuck with the same old small, Washington answers.

And in the chamber of the House of Representatives where the president speaks, even though this Congress stopped listening to him a while ago, they will still applaud and cheer him. The truth is that Washington is out of touch with what’s happening across the country. Between now and January of 2009, Democrats must stand up to this president, stand up for what’s right, so he does not continue to forget about the middle class in this country.

Read John’s blog to keep up with the latest on issues and doings.

Barack Obama gave a speech took the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta – the same church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped rev up the civil rights movement.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. “The divisions, the stereotypes, the scapegoating, the ease with which we blame the plight of ourselves on others, all of that distracts us from the common challenges we face: war and poverty; inequality and injustice,” Obama said.

But he added that “we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean,” citing homophobia, anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant bias in the black community

“I wasn’t born into money or great wealth, but I had hope!” he declared, bringing the congregation to its feet, cheering and clapping. “I needed some hope to get here. My daddy left me when I was little, but I had hope! I was raised by a single mother, but I had hope! I was given love, an education, and some hope!”

Very inspiring, but some are still wary of the rhetoric if it doesn’t deliver on substance.

blackagendareport.com – Give the Candidates the MLK Test

Dr. King said the “triple evils” of his day were militarism, racism, and economic exploitation. … In addition, Dr. King said he was “compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor” in the U.S. … Senators Obama and Clinton fail the Martin Luther King Test, miserably. Obama wants to add 100,000 troops to the U.S. Armed Forces, at a cost of over $100 billion – even as he proposes partial withdrawals from Iraq. Clinton seeks 80,000 new soldiers and Marines. As sure as the sun rises, a bigger U.S. military means more wars, and no money for domestic “change.”

The only candidate who would pass the Martin Luther King Test is Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose platform for peace, truly universal health care, a living wage, and an end to corporate domination of American life harkens back to that “shining moment” in the Sixties that King mentioned, when there were “hopes” and “new beginnings.”

While I agree that Obama and Clinton are not as good as Kucinich on some of the transcendent issues that concerned MLK, I see no mention here of John Edwards. Comments?