Glad to know that you're concerned.

Unfortunately, I think that you are missing a very key distinction between Obama and Edwards.

Obama is Clinton '92, Edwards harkens back to FDR and Truman.

The key distinction is this:

Does the market exist to serve people, or do people exist to serve the market?  

What comes first people or profits?

Obama is excessively friendly to Robert Rubin and his merry band of neoliberals promoting policies that steal from the poor and give to the rich.

A recent report in the Hill that Obama's campaign is running back channel funding from lobbyist's wives at the same time as he's publicly refusing funds from K Street is at least unethical, and potentially illegal if the wives are compensated by their lobbyist husbands for their contribution.

In a fundraising e-mail distributed yesterday, Obama emphasized his stance against taking money from lobbyists and PACs.
Two lobbyists who are supporting another candidate and spoke to The Hill on condition of anonymity said that Obama's campaign contacted them asking to be put in touch with their networks of business clients and acquaintances.

One of the lobbyists, who supports Clinton, said that Shomik Dutta, a fundraiser for Obama's campaign, called to ask if the lobbyist's wife would be interested in making a political contribution.

"I was quite taken aback," he said. "He was very direct in saying that you're a lobbyist and we don't want contributions from lobbyists. But your wife can contribute and we like your network."

Obama's getting the payback for his support of Rubin's efforts to maintain the neo-liberal understanding in Washington.  Instead of making the market work for people, the story is that workers are lazy are falling into poverty because they are morally suspect.  If only they had the right education, they would have good jobs...  Or so is the story coming from Obama and the Rubinites.

John Edwards is a flawed human being like the rest of us, but he understands that markets exist to serve people, not the other way around.

It's about ideas, Stoller. Ideas are weapons.

The neoliberals know that a financial crisis is on the horizon, and they know that they were able to create the current market fetishism in American poltics by captializing on the perceived failure of the post war social state.  

By portraying economic malaise as the result of organized labor, and state intervention in the economy, they were able to use thinktanks and foundations to create the idea that it's big goverments fault that you're suffering.  You can thank the Saudis for creating the neccesary conditions for this break with the past.

I don't know how much you read but Mark Blythe's Great Tranformations is a very good read on this.  The basic concept is this:

A nation's economic life is predicated on understandings of the way economies work.  In the postwar period, the state had to tame capitalism to make it work.  This understanding came out of the Great Depression.  After these understandings become set, they are stable until there's a large shock, like the Energy Crisis of the 70's.  Once the economic ideas that form the public understaning of the way the economy works are shaken, new ideas have to be creatd to stablize the economy.  These ideas are the antecedents to insitutions, which serve to perpetuate the new understanding until a new shock disturbs the existing order.

This is why the neo-liberals are panicked, and this I believe is the reason the media aren't covering John Edwards.  Networks have to make money to survive, and so long as they believe the presenting news that favors their advertisers doesn't cost them viewers, they will favor the people who pay the bills.  

So it's all Obama/Clinton, because both of these candidates aren't threatening to offer new ideas that can serve to transform the way the nation conceives of the economy.  Edwards talks about Two Americas, and at the very least he seems to understand that people come before profits.  The market exists to serve people not the other way around.

We need new ideas, the phrase "tranformational change" comes to mind, even though it's use and misuse has made it almost as annoying as "meme".  One of the truly great lines from early on in this campaign, was when Edwards made a point of saying "It doesn't have to be this way."  Change is possible, we are capable as a nation of far great things than the media and the people who benefit from the current economic understanding would have us believe.

Political economy will be the issue of 2008.

There is a difference between the (large) number of followers and the (small) number of leaders.

My contention is that the leaders are a small, self-interested, wealthy group. They buy the next level down, the pundits and politicians, who then spread the creed to the compliant public.

Psychologist Robert Altemeyer, whose work was the basis of John Dean's recent book "Conservatives without Conscience" has just written his own book. It is available free, online:

The Authoritarians

He explains by means of his 40+ years of research just how the association of those who believe in a strong leader in a hierarchical society and those with a right wing political/social outlook tend to coincide.

If you want to understand how to deal with the conservative movement it is useful to understand what makes them tick. Have a look at the book.

I like the phrase.  Some day when you have time, it would be interesting to see you expand on that phrase, and the thinking behind it, in a front page diary.  An interesting thought.

Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean they are related. Is the housing crunch related to the Iraq war? There was a whole package of economic neo-connism in Mexico over the past few years under Fox, so problems may be related to those guys, not just NAFTA, which is one small part.

Mexican consumers get cheap American corn, but Mexican farmers don't get subsidies. That would cause problems.

I read your link.  

Seldom have I seen such a collection of straw men and red herrings.