John Edwards and Barack Obama and Travis Childers, Together At Last

Events move too quickly. I was prepared to write this morning only about the GOP's increasingly sticky wicket and what it portends when John Edwards, with daring belatedness, up and endorsed his party's surefire nominee last night and thereby became the political centerpiece du jour. I wish he had checked with me first; but that's OK, I'll fit him in.

Actually, unlike the hordes of talking heads that crawled before a camera to wax profoundly on the Edwards endorsement, I question how much of real worth there is to say about it, other than renoting the obvious: the Obama campaign outsmarted the Clinton campaign once again, and but good.

I almost felt sorry for Hillary. There she was, all primed and pumped to exploit her little victory in West Virginia on network television, when boom, out popped the news of Edwards' new adventure. It was a tactical stroke of Obama's genius that had all the pundits wondering if the timing was intentional. Well, gee, I don't know. Was the timing of Eisenhower's final assault on Europe intentional?

Other than that, there was speculation aplenty about Edwards' move as an application of further pressure on undeclared superdelegates -- who, let's face it, seem lastingly impervious to that sort of thing -- and of course lots of meditation on whether the endorsement would help Obama in Kentucky and beyond. The fact that no endorsement in the history of the Republic has ever really done the recipient any perceivable good dissuaded the pundits not from this latter speculation, but it was jolly good fun to ponder anyway.

No, Edwards' endorsement, along with NARAL's, was that of an exquisitely timed and well-executed pincer movement on an already dead campaign: "The reason I am here tonight is that Democratic voters in America have made their choice and so have I," said Edwards with retrospective finality.

In short, aside from grabbing the evening's headlines away from Hillary and keeping the proper focus on Obama, Edwards' endorsement was an exhortation to party unity, nothing more.

Which could, of course, help tremendously downticket, which leads us to what I had wanted to write about in the first place: Mississippi's 1st Congressional District election. It was the third, explosive confirmation of late that things, to put it mildly, are looking rather good for Democrats.

I knew they were looking explosively bad for the GOP when I saw former Miss. senator Trent Lott in an interview the other day discussing the upcoming election. He sniffed and snorted with that air of otherworldly unconcern he always demonstrates when he's in full panic mode -- Special election? Well, uh, yeah, I've heard there's one around the corner. As I recall, however, that's solid, traditional Democratic territory. It was only a fluke we ever held it. Nevertheless our prospects are looking good.

His remarks really did suck all the suspense out of it for me. I knew, at that very moment, that Republican Southaven Mayor Greg Davis was absolute toast.

But what a marvelous breakfast he made by Wednesday morning. The GOP had thrown its own special version of Hillary's "kitchen sink" into defeating Travis Childers, especially deploying the nightmarish bogeyman of Jeremiah Wright. Woe to our nation should the antiAmerican Grand Conspiracy of Obama, Wright, Childers & Co. ever come to fruition, charged the GOP, to which Northern Mississippians responded en masse: Up yours. You shall spook us no more. "Boo!" is so 2004.

And, as the New York Times reported, the GOP invested in the race those whose reputations now represent the party's very soul, "sending Vice President Dick Cheney to campaign for Mr. Davis, along with Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas; President Bush and Senator John McCain recorded telephone messages that were sent to voters throughout the district."

All -- each and every one -- were soundly repudiated by voters. The tactics of fright-wigged fearmongers were dispatched by a comfortable margin of electoral sanity. Nothing could bode better for the GOP's autumnal devastation and doom.

Which -- and this is why I was eager to write about the 1st District thing -- opens the reasonable plausibility of Barack Obama, as we approach the fall, proposing some version of FDR's "100 Days."

The similarities between 1932 and 2008, in the electorate's mind, at least, are increasingly striking, and so may be voters' receptivity to a general-election campaign conducted on a platform of immediate and frenetic but thoughtful action once in office, backed by a solid and unbreakable Democratic majority in Congress.

From busting the plutocratic hold on tax policy to imperial retraction to moving healthcare reform to the forefront, such a thematic campaign could add the much-demanded substance to Obama's rather vague promise of revolutionary "change."

It would lend a sense of focused purpose again -- of definite objectives, (perhaps) achievable goals and spirited national unity. Pleasant indeed would be the feeling that we're all part of one country again -- a fair, humane and honorable country, again.

It worked for Roosevelt and launched a 75-year coalition that, Lord knows, could use some rejuvenation.