For the first six months of this year, the media has been more than a little unkind to John Edwards -- to put it mildly. This week, coinciding with his 3-day Road to One America tour, I've noticed a welcome trend -- some reporters are beginning to look at the issues.
In the online Wall Street Journal (hardly a bastion of liberalism or progressive politics) on Friday, Christopher Cooper writes in Edwards, Trailing Rivals, Holds Sway Over Party's Agenda:
John Edwards may be stuck in third place in the polls and fund raising in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the populist seems to be playing an outsized role in driving the terms of the party's debate -- generally to the left -- on everything from Iraq to health care.
Which is fine with me, btw. I say it's about time Democrats started talking about what differentiates the Democratic Party and why it is so important for our children, our country to vote the Republicans out of power. I may believe in healthy debate but that's hardly what we've seen for the past six and a half years, actually longer than that when you take into account the way the Repubs behaved when they took control of the House back in 1994 during the Clinton era.
It is the essence of Mr. Edwards's strategy for winning the nomination: to come from the left, and win over the party activists who tend to dominate the early primaries and caucuses. snip Mr. Edwards seems to feel freer to address issues that might alienate the party and business establishment. Just as former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean pushed the Democrats toward more staunch opposition of the Iraq war four years ago, Mr. Edwards seems to be having a big impact on forcing the pack to follow his agenda.
The article looks at where Edwards has lead, from the recent issue of equalizing the tax treatment of hedge-fund and private investment managers' incomes with that of ordinary income to his first-out-of-the-gate and still only truly universal health care plan among the top candidates. And Cooper doesn't soft peddle the uphill road Edwards is traveling on in this campaign:
It is an open question whether pushing poverty will have the same political resonance as, say, opposing the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. Poor people don't vote as frequently as wealthier citizens. And Mr. Edwards's main rivals are likely to get a large slice of the lower-income voters who do show up at the polls.
I don't dispute that poor people don't vote as frequently as wealthier citizens, because it's true. But maybe, just maybe, more of them will see in John Edwards someone to vote FOR, someone who will both stand with them in the fight for equality of opportunity and speak for them against those who would marginalize their right to be free from fear, from hunger, from being treated as invisible or worse.
Over at msnbc's First Read: THE DAY IN POLITICS, the lead Friday morning was OH-EIGHT (D): NICE PRESS FOR EDWARDS. Well, that was a nice pick-me-up, almost nice enough to skip my first cup of coffee!
First Read gives a condensed version of stories appearing that day, and for the end of the week they covered, among others, Time's Eric Pooley who started his story with:
"After three days on the road with John Edwards in some of the poorest places in America, it's not only the depth of human need that hits you, but the layered and interlocking complexity of it — the way a complete lack of health care, for instance, can all by itself consign someone to ignorance and joblessness. But you're also struck by how so many of the people who have been dealt these difficult hands manage to play them with grace and fortitude."
John Edwards understands the complexity of poverty -- he's spent his adult life focusing on issues surrounding poverty, from volunteering with Urban Ministries to establishing a computer lab for low-income high school kids, from traveling the world meeting with leaders like Tony Blair and children in war-torn Uganda to working with 700 college students in devastated New Orleans to clean up and rebuild damaged homes, from walking the picket line with workers to fighting for minimum wage increases as a Senator and a private citizen. It is the very interwoven aspects of poverty that makes the many plans he has put forth so valuable. Like threads in a brilliant tapestry, each one is important to the whole; in this case, the whole being the elimination of poverty in our lifetime.
Pooley uses the story of a 51-year-old coal miner Edwards met at the Wise, VA stop on the third and last day of the roadtrip as the focus of his article on Edwards. After meeting this gentleman and learning his personal story of 50 years of suffering and virtual silence for lack of a simple medical procedure, Edwards said:
"How can we allow this to happen, that James had to live 50 years without treatment? Are you listening? This is America's problem. And let me tell you, as long as I am alive and breathing I'm going to do something about it!"
Perhaps more than anything else, this roadtrip has reignited the fire in John Edwards' belly -- eliminating poverty, making sure that everyone is treated equally and with dignity is the passion of this man's life. And he showed that he can translate that passion into political fire when, on Tuesday night in Pittsburgh,
he weaved stories from the past two days into his remarks and brought into sharp focus the themes of his poverty tour: That it is wrong for millions of Americans to have no medical care. That it is wrong for millions of Americans to work full time yet live in poverty.
snip
"I've been asked by some of the media, 'Senator, the two Americas you talk about, is it the rich and the poor?' No. It's not. The two Americas are the very rich and everybody else."
The
Des Moines Register is also included in the First Read round-up with the headline:
Knoxville Crowd Hails Edwards For Assailing Bush Over Poverty. Back on the campaign trail, Edwards headed back to Iowa on Thursday, for the Iowa AFSCME convention and a trip to the speedway in Knoxville. It was there he issued a direct challenge to Bush:
"I want George Bush to come to these places that I just visited with me and look in the eyes of the people that I saw and tell them why he's turned his back on them," Edwards said. "Tell them why he thinks it's OK for people to live like this. It's not OK. It's wrong. This president has not only turned his back on these people, he's actually made their lives worse."
Another fair article just out is from the Economist. I love this magazine, Europe's better-written, less-fluffy weekly news magazine. I have been noticing a number of articles out of places like Sweden, Ireland, and Germany lately that appeared to have a better grasp of the issues that need to be address in this election than our own press. This week, the Economist looks at Edwards: Man of the left in a wide ranging article following him on the Road to One America tour as the reporter looks back to contrast this year with 2004 and to examine the impact of his many and detailed policy prescriptions. Again, the article notes that the debate is being shaped by Edwards:
Mr Edwards is a man of big plans. No other presidential candidate, of either party, can match the sheer quantity, let alone the ambition, of his policy ideas. He has grand, progressive, goals—to end the war in Iraq (obviously), provide universal health care, address global warming, eliminate poverty in America within 30 years—and detailed blueprints of how to do it all.
As an internationalist at heart, what I most appreciate about this article is that it acknowledges something we rarely see in the US press: that John Edwards has a broad world view of the issues facing this country. And the author recognizes something else, that Edwards is a bit more difficult to pigeonhole that the quick takes on him may have tried to do. He is a populist without the often isolationist bent, he is more for helping to lift the poor out of poverty and reinvigorating the middle class more than 'soaking' the rich, and even his signature anti-poverty plans are "bold—to cut America's poverty rate of 12.6% by a third within a decade—but the means are mainstream." Again, another reporter ends an article with a fair assessment:
Surprisingly, perhaps, Mr Edwards's brand of populism seems to appeal to Republicans. When pitted against Republican candidates in polls, he scores better than the other Democratic front-runners. But it is the primaries that matter, and there Mr Edwards must hope for one of the others to stumble. ... But even if the man himself does not make it, the Democrats' presidential platform will be shaped by Mr Edwards's plans.
Going back to the Pooley article in Time, I was struck by the last paragraph -- for it sums up, for me, what John Edwards's candidacy is all about.
Do I want him to win the nomination and become the next President of the United States? Ab-so-frigging-lutely!! But what if he doesn't, what then? I'll keep caring about and fighting for the same issues I have for so long now: for human rights, for equality, of all people--in this country and around the world. And I will know, that for as long as he is alive and kicking, I will have a very articulate and passionate champion in that fight -- JOHN EDWARDS. And I'm not alone in believing this:
Whatever else happens to Edwards this year, whatever his candidacy becomes, it matters that he spent three days talking about the problems of people like James Lowe. Maybe Edwards succeeds in linking those problems to the concerns of the middle class and ignites his candidacy. And maybe he doesn't. Either way, he did some good this week and won at least one vote. "It means the world to me that he come down here," said James Lowe. "He's talking about helping working people? He's listening to people like me? To me, that means everything."
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TOMORROW BEGINS TODAY!