Message #60310

[April Kincaid]

JOHN EDWARDS:




"Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the

organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans

against middle class and working families, ... we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change

for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party."

Edwards has it all wrong, Barack Obama wasn't holding Reagan up as an example of what the Democrats should be, what he said was actually:

"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what is different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

It's a perfect example of how politicians tend to twist what people's words for political gain.