Liveblogging the John Edwards townhall session at YearlyKos
|
Posted by Jennifer L Pozner August 4th, 2007 |
Quick hit: Edwards, while calling on people to ask him questions, paused for a minute while looking around the room, and said, “I’m looking for a woman.”
Bravo to the candidate for actively taking an extra three seconds to make sure that there is proportionate, gender equity in the dialouge between himself and the room full of potential voters interested in hearing whether he may or may not deserve our votes.
The last three questions in a row, actually, have been asked by women. Edwards is doing a really good job of making sure women have a voice in this discussion, which is more than most candidates do. I’m quite surprised. But, then, he does have a number of active young feminists on his campaign staff, so this may be a concerted strategy? Not sure… but it works well in this room, at least.
Additionally, Edwards just promised to answer — personally — every Daily Kos member’s question if they attended this break-out session and there was no time for our questions to be answered.
Edwards also spoke out against Murdoch’s merger and made a vague comment about media consolidation, but that wasn’t the subject of the question so it was a passing comment.
Then another comment, in closing:
“I spoke earlier about media consolidation, about Rupert Murdoch.. they want to silence us. That’s what this is about. Maybe they can silence one person. (They can’t silence me.) But they cannot silence all of us…. It cannot work… we need you to stay involved. We need you to be part of this movement for change…”
AFTER THE SESSION was over, Edwards gave me five minute of his time away from the YearlyKos throng — I walked with him in the back hallway, and asked him to answer a detailed question about media consolidation. I will tell you more about this in another post shortly, but the crux of it is that I thanked Edwards for coming out with a media reform statement after I asked Elizabeth Edwards for that statement from his campaign last weekend at BlogHer. But I asked him to clarify for the American public that this is not just a problem with Rupert Murdoch, that this is not simply a problem of one rich, right wing media mogul - that this is about the anti-democratic effects of the Telecom Act of 1996. I asked him to start talking about this in a non-partisan/omni-partisan way, and to come out with a specific platform for what he will do to reverse the Telecom Act of 1996 — assuming he has a plan to do so. He thanked me for the question, said it was an important question, said “you’re right” in response to my comment that this is larger than Murdoch, and said he will come back to me with a broader statement on consolidation soon.
I’ll write more about this in a separate post soon.
August 4th, 2007 17:35
You walked with him? I really hate you.
August 5th, 2007 01:06
Yep, Roni - and he was extremely gracious about it. I asked if I could ask him a question, and he told me to walk with him. When I patiently waited for him to finish shaking all the hands, he walked over to the exit door and one of his beefier staffers tried to block me from going out the door with him, he told the staffer that I should be let through because he had said he would talk with me. It would have been exceptionally easy for him to duck the question and duck potential accountability, but he welcomed it. I respect that.
And then he took a few minutes of focused time to talk with me about the state of our media landscape, and he promised to clarify his statement about the need for structural reform beyond simply Murdoch. I’m hopeful that he will come out with a clarification statement within a decent amount of time.
August 5th, 2007 07:21
[…] Jenn, who focuses mostly on Edwards stance on media consolidation, in his break-out session; […]
August 6th, 2007 12:27
[…] Still on the road with spotty email access, so haven’t been able to write up the full, detailed post I promised the other day about my conversation about media consolidation with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards at the YearlyKos convention. During this walk-and-talk (how “West Wing” is this photo, by the way?), I asked him to discuss media consolidation as a non-partisan issue, to broaden out his discussion beyond simply talking about Rupert Murdoch, and instead to come out with a plan to reverse the Telecommunications Act of 1996. (This was a fluke that I was even able to get time with him — it wasn’t a pre-planned interview.) I’ll have more on this when I have more reliable email access, but for now, here’s a photo I didn’t know was taken — I hadn’t even realized there was a photographer present. […]