I watched and read Edwards' recent speech in New Hampshire. It's still a killer speech, esp. the part refuting Bush's "ownership society":
George Bush likes to talk about an "Ownership Society." We already have one: Power companies that get their way even if the health of children and pregnant women suffer. Oil companies who write our energy policy. George Bush's so-called "Ownership Society" is a secret society that rewards the wealthiest and shuts out those who work hard every day.
But i was struck, when reading his proposals for a Democratic platform by what was missing:
We'll work on strengthening financial security so more families can put money into their own savings accounts and stop the poisonous hold of payday lenders. We'll work on raising the minimum wage and expanding the earned income tax credit so that families who work hard don't have to live in poverty. We'll work on extending health care so that nobody who works has to lose their insurance. We'll work on launching a new race to the top that brings good jobs to forgotten corners. And we'll work on providing a real education and a real chance for every child. Because what we believe--what I believe--is that great potential is in all of us if given the chance.
Lovely rhetoric. one big problem. where the heck are the words "ORGANIZED LABOR" or "UNIONS"??! Other than one line about trade agreements and labor standards, there is NOTHING about labor. nothing about the right to organize, nothing about the men and women who are responsible for us having a social safety net in the first place (what's left of it). nothing about the folks who DO make it possible for Americans to earn living wages, good pensions, decent retirement. nothing about the crisis in labor that has left only 12% of the workforce unionized. To me, this is THE fundamental reason for why the "Two Americas" is worsening, and the fact that the most eloquent voice on this issue can't even talk about the right to organize, the right to collectively bargain and make it a central platform in the fight against poverty shows me that for all Edwards' honeyed populist talks and attacks against HMOs, big oil, big insurance, he still does it within the DLC-paradigm that wants to avoid and sidestep the fundamental class struggle of labor vs. capital.