A wonderful write up of John Edwards has been posted on Huffington Post by Peter Dreier. The focus of the article concerns Edwards' approach to health care reform. And points out the many reasons why so many of us support him.
He knows the importance of grassroots organization.
Much of Wednesday's Democratic presidential debate at Dartmouth College focused on health care reform, which Americans consider the top domestic policy issue, according to polls. Moderator Tim Russert asked each of the eight candidates about their proposals to guarantee every American affordable health care, and each responded with their well-practiced sound-bites.
But only John Edwards identified the most important ingredient for pushing a universal health care plan through Congress - mobilizing public opinion, and changing the nation's political balance-of-power, through grassroots organizing.
But doesn't think of us as a group that "must be dealt with" like an annoying insect. Which, let's face it, some candidates do.
Winning health care reform is part of Edwards' moral crusade against poverty and widening inequality in the world's wealthiest nation. While each of the Democratic candidates has put forward a health reform plan, Edwards seems most eager to forge alliances with unions, community groups, religious congregations, public interest and public health organizations, women's groups, and others to wage a campaign that is both bottom-up and top-down, one that combines an "inside" strategy and an "outside" strategy.
Edwards doesn't view these groups as "special interests," but as the key elements of an emerging movement to renew American democracy by empowering ordinary people.
He also knows that there's only one way to beat the money and lobbyists in DC and that's with people. Organized people. There's power in numbers and there are a LOT more of us than there are of them.
Edwards scored the biggest audience response at the Dartmouth debate when he promised to cut off health insurance coverage for members of Congress if they don't pass universal health care reform by July 2009. But his real insight last night was when he talked about the importance of mobilizing Americans to fight for health care reform. Although Hillary wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley about organizing guru Saul Alinsky, and Obama spent several years as a community organizer in Chicago, it seems that only Edwards has absorbed the cardinal rule of organizing: it requires organized people to beat organized money.
This is an excellent article and it captures everything I want say about John Edwards, but don't have the vocabulary to do it with. Edwards 2008!!