After reading a diary yesterday about John Edwards’ voting record, many of us are are unhappy that Senator John Edwards voted back in 2001(?) in favor of limitations on the ability of poor and working-class families to file for bankruptcy. As a guest blogger at Think Progress on October 14, 2006, John Edwards wrote:
It’s well past time to install leaders who care about issues like predatory lending, rising mortgage foreclosure rates, increasing the minimum wage, and helping middle and low-income families. Americans deserve leaders that have the backbone to stand up and do something about their concerns. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again until it’s a reality — we need a government that works for all of its people, especially the most vulnerable among us. http://thinkprogress.org/...
In a Thursday, March 15, 2001 Marketplace report NPR agreed with Edwards’ assessment:
Dimsdale: "This bill is strongly supported by banks, credit card companies and retail lenders, who claim under current law that it's too easy to write off debts and start over with a clean slate. Personal bankruptcies have jumped 300 percent in the last twenty years, to over a million a year.
Bankruptcy reform's opponents charge Congress is capitulating to a well-financed lobbying campaign by the lending industry. Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone warns that the sliding economy could put many workers in unemployment lines."
Wellstone: "They will find themselves in difficult economic circumstances. No fault of their own. They will go to file for bankruptcy and they will find it impossible to rebuild their economic lives and they will hold us accountable. They will say why were you on the side of the financial services industry and all these big banks and all these big lenders?"
+++
Many advocates for women and children are worried about how provisions of any new bankruptcy laws will impact their constituencies. DK Comments Referenced Marketplace Report
So, why did John Edwards (and some other Democrats as well) vote with a unanimous Republican blockto limit access to the bankruptcy courts? Edwards explained his vote when he was a guest-blogger at TPM Café by saying the following:
This morning Elizabeth Warren and her students invited me to say a few words about the bankruptcy reform bill. I'm grateful for the opportunity.
I'm now spending a lot of my time tackling the challenges of poverty, but I learned a lot about bankruptcy on the campaign trail last year. I saw how many good families end up broke and poor, and how they need the safety net of a fair bankruptcy law if they're going to get back on their feet.
Like a lot of Democrats, I voted for a bankruptcy reform bill before. I can't say it more simply than this: I was wrong.
But, there’s something unsatisfactory about that explanation. It says at JohnEdwards.Com that:
Like her husband, Elizabeth has an impressive legal background. Following law school, she clerked with U.S. District Court Judge Calvitt Clarke, Jr. in Norfolk, Virginia. Later, she worked for the North Carolina Attorney General's office and then was a bankruptcy lawyer in Raleigh, North Carolina. http://johnedwards.com/...
Effectively, John Edwards qualifications to be Senator and President is his career success as a renowned lawyer, and his wife is a bankruptcy lawyer, yet he says he still lacked the information about bankruptcy or the understanding about poverty to understand how limiting access to the bankruptcy courts would hurt poor people. "About Elizabeth"
The animating reason for Edwards’ presidential candidacy is to address the "two America’s" one rich, one poor, in which working class people are struggling under mounds of debt and unable to achieve the American dream.
There are a lot of defenses for John Edwards on why he might have voted in favor of limitations on bankruptcy back in 2001(?) and those are coming out in the comments to the the diary.
For example,
- It doesn’t matter because it’s "kind of irrelevant to things like getting out of Iraq and universal health care".
- John Edwards was elected by a conservative state and needed to vote conservatively to remain viable for his 2004 reelection campaign.
- Hillary Clinton is "polarizing".
- "Data this long in a diary is bad form".
- He is a "good man".
- He has "evolved" since this vote.
- "This sure came out just as Clinton announced."
Those reasons hardly seem satisfactory. But, with respect to a different bankruptcy bill in 2005, Kos wrote a story entitled, "Why did Dems support bankruptcy bill?" In Kos' story, he cited a "House Democratic Staffer" who said,
Why did we lose so many votes on cloture on such an awful, venal piece of legislation?
It's really a structural matter in terms of who Democrats end up soliciting for campaign donations. Most Dems have a pretty solid labor-environmental-trial lawyer base that they then try to build out from to amass a large enough war chest to scare off challengers.
Groups that lack steady conflict with the labor-enviro-lawyer triumvirate offer the most attractive targets. That's why Dems end up cozied up to the technology and financial services industry--few labor issues since they're mostly not unionized/union organizer's targets, few environmental issues b/c they don't pump soot into the air, and relatively less contact with the trial lobby.
Since campaign contributions play a significant role and Dems have demonstrably fewer targets, especially on K Street, many Dems end up VERY close to the industries that pushed hardest for the bill--namely the American Banker's Association and the credit card companies, although the credit card companies lean further right in their allocation of PAC dollars.
This becomes amplified for vulnerable Democrats who often flock to groups like the New Democrats or Blue Dogs in order to establish their bona fides with the business community in order to secure their seats. Some of these so-called conservative, pro-business Dems are honestly out of step with the party but many are just struggling to field a credible re-elect effort in difficult districts. House Democratic Staffer Cited by Kos
Does that explanation explain the difference that was the focus of the DemocraticLuntz diary, between Senator Clinton’s vote and Edwards’ votes? Was Senator Clinton so sure of being re-elected or of her fundraising ability that she could safely vote against banking interests on the bankruptcy bill while Edwards could not?
Anyway, the diarist only compared one years of these candidates’ votes, maybe taking important issues out of context. Hopefully, things will be clearer when he compares successive years’ votes.
There's another question here that might be more important than Edwards' votes: Was the diaristtrying to hurt John Edwards or help Hillary Clinton (or another candidate) by bringing these votes to our attention?