A Diary for fans of John Edwards and fighting Dems

I saw John Edwards speak today for the second time in the past month. He's working out his new stump speech, and by the time he's through I bet it'll be as good as his legendary "two Americas" speech during the 2004 primaries.

Edwards didn't serve in the military, but his speech is very much in the "fighting Dem" mode. More details on the speech below.

As many of you know, Edwards is spending most of his time running a center on poverty research at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). Probably you've heard versions of his speech talking about poverty in America as "the great moral issue of our time."

Today he was speaking at a fundraiser for Staci Appel, a great Democratic candidate for the Iowa Senate, by the way. The speech was shorter than the one Edwards gave at the recent fundraiser for Ankeny-area Democrats, which I diaried here. But it touched on the same themes. I was holding my baby, so couldn't take notes, but here are some paraphrases of important points Edwards made.

Throughout the speech, a recurring theme was Bush's failure of leadership. The response to Katrina was not a bureaucratic failure, it was not a FEMA failure, it was a failure of presidential leadership, which continues to this day (Edwards talks about a recent visit to New Orleans and how bad things still are there).

Bush's budget gives billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and oil companies while cutting Medicaid, nutrition programs for children and the elderly, etc. A failure of moral leadership.

The fact that more Americans live in poverty now than at the beginning of the Bush presidency, more lack health care, represents a failure of leadership.

Bush thinks he is above the law and the constitution. He can break any law, and the Republican Congress does nothing. We need a Democratic Congress to hold this lawless administration accountable. (Edwards did not say anything about impeachment or Feingold's proposal to censure the president.)

At one point in the speech, Edwards gives some statistics about poverty and talks about ideas for solving the problem of poverty in the U.S. First is raising our national embarrassment of a minimum wage. Second is expanding the earned income tax credit.

Next is making it easier for workers to organize in this country. When I heard him speak at the Ankeny-area Democrats event, Edwards' material on labor was new to me. For people who didn't read my last diary, he points out how 50 million Americans work in the service sector, how their ranks will grow by about 10 million in the next decade, and that the difference between a union and non-union job is the difference between $20 an hour with benefits and $6 an hour with no benefits and your family stuck in poverty.

Then Edwards talks about how people are always lamenting the loss of the great manufacturing jobs in our country, and how we need to save those great manufacturing jobs to help our economy and keep the middle class strong. But what they tend to forget is that those manufacturing jobs weren't great before the union.

Edwards added a new line today to this part of the speech. When he said we need to make it easier for workers to organize, he added, "If a person can sign a piece of paper and become a Republican, a worker ought to be able to sign a piece of paper and join a union."

Near the end of the speech Edwards said we don't need "Democratic incrementalism," such as "Bush has a tax cut, but we have a better tax cut." We can propose big, bold ideas--the people will support this. They are craving leadership. He quotes a deceased labor organizer as saying that the leaders we're waiting for are us.

I like a lot of things about Edwards' stump speech. He doesn't talk about what the Democrats need to do to communicate better with people, he just does it.

He doesn't give any Obama-style compliments such as, "I know Bush is a nice guy" or "I know Republicans love their country too." He hammers the opposition.

He speaks naturally to the audience--although it was roughly the same speech I heard a few weeks ago, it isn't something he memorized and gives verbatim. You can see why he was so good in front of juries as a trial lawyer--he just sounds normal, not stilted, even though I'm sure he has worked hard to develop his speaking style.

As I wrote in my previous diary, Edwards embraces labor unions as a key factor in lifting workers out of poverty. I absolutely love that he is not embarrassed to talk about how unions have helped our society. Too many Democrats have bought into Republican propaganda about unions being a selfish "interest group."

I was a precinct captain for Kerry before the Iowa caucuses, and I have not yet decided on a candidate for 2008. But Edwards has my very serious consideration (unlike several of the other likely candidates).

And I'm not just saying that because he kissed my baby today!