by Howie Klein, DownWithTyranny.blogspot.com

Ex-Senator John Edwards could do the transformative agenda he has espoused a great deal of good by making an endorsement. One candidate is a committed, grassroots progressive and the other is a pitiful Big Money corporate shill, in some ways only marginally better than the Republican incumbent. No, no, I’m not talking about Hillary; she may be a corporate shill but she’s certainly better than the Republican incumbent and she’s also much better than his sadly transformed doppelgangerish would-be replacement. You see, while everyone else is urging the Edwardses to do what Governor Easley just did and endorse in the presidential race– where I doubt he would have much impact– I would like him to do the right thing in the race for the U.S. Senate seat, currently held by pathetic rubber stamp Republican Elizabeth Dole.

In a race like this, where not many people are aware of the giant chasm between the two candidates, Edwards really could make a difference. One candidate, Kay Hagan, stands for everything he claims to detest. She is owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the same pernicious Big Money interests that own Dole– and whom Edwards just spent two years railing against. The other candidate– the one endorsed by Blue America– is Jim Neal and he has a long way to go in the next 7 days if he’s going to be able to beat back the Establishment and give North Carolina voters a real choice– other than a basically meaningless choice between generic party labels– in November.

Hagan rarely goes on the record saying anything. Her victory plan is to just be the establishment Democrat against the outsider in the primary and the generic Democrat against the hated Republican in November. And when she does go on record about something, she comes out against the basic values and principles that differentiate between the party of FDR and the party of George Bush. A corporate tool like Chuck Schumer may love her but she can’t be trusted on choice, is as clueless as Dole on Iraq, is basically a George Bush Republican when it comes to tax policy, weak on economic policy, weak on ethics, adamantly unwilling to be pinned down on Equal Rights, on the wrong side of the health care issue, untrustworthy and confused about torture, weak on privacy rights, absolutely plutocratic when it comes to campaign finance reform, etc. She sounds like one of them, not one of us– and certainly not the kind of progressive Democrat that Edwards has evolved into. In fact, you have to ask yourself, is Kay Hagan really a Democrat in anything but name? Hers is the party of corporate campaign contributions that are exchanged for favors at the expense of regular folks.

It isn’t likely that a Republican-light version of Elizabeth Dole is going to beat Elizabeth Dole, regardless of what Chuck Schumer’s lizard brain is telling him. A few days ago the weekly paper in North Carolina’s most Democratic area made passionate endorsements of the two candidates for real change– Barack Obama for president and Jim Neal for U.S. Senator.

Read the full post - and join the conversation - at Daily Kos