In 2004, John Edwards was perceived as a centrist Southern Democratic. He had voted to authorize war against Iraq and many saw him as representative of backward DLC Democrats. When Howard Dean announced he was from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," many assumed that put him on the other side of the ideological spectrum from his rival John Edwards. In fact, when Edwards appeared at the California Democratic Party Convention, liberal activists booed him when he defended his vote on Iraq.
But Edwards was never really a centrist, especially considering he was a Senator from North Carolina. He was always more of a populist, a former trial lawyer, who represented the little guy against big corporations. In America, however, perceptions of candidates tend to be based more on style than substance. Edwards was Southern, from a rural, small town, and still married to his college sweetheart. As Thomas Frank talks about in "What’s the Matter With Kansas," it’s really not about policy, it’s about "authenticity." Edwards’ progressive voting record notwithstanding, he was authentically not an East Coast Liberal which made many assume he was a conservative Democrat.
After that election, everyone assumed he would run again in 2008 and wondered how he would spend the intervening years. Edwards surprised many when he chose to focus on poverty and social inequality. He founded a center for the study not just of poverty but also of work and opportunity. He traveled the country supporting ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage. He reached out to the Labor Movement in a new way: speaking out against bad labor laws, walking picket lines, contacting employers involved in labor disputes and urging them to do the right thing.
With these efforts, he was not only endearing himself to much of the Democratic base, he was also deliberately choosing a path that would alienate him from Corporate America. Whether vowing to stop unfair trade policies, demanding products be labeled with country of origin, advocating for a healthcare system that includes a single-payer option, promoting real pension protection, or insisting that we raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to fund social spending, Edwards has made it clear what side he is on. He is advocating for everything that the union movement stands for.
In doing so, he is taking a risk no other serious candidate has taken. He is saying to Corporate America: I don’t need your support to win. He has even refused to take contributions from federal lobbyists. With these courageous positions, it is no wonder the corporate media keeps trying to marginalize him and no surprise that he trails the corporate-friendly candidates in fundraising.
In this race, no Labor endorsement in the primary simply paves the way for the frontrunner, Hilary Clinton. Clinton has been the weakest (of the top 3 candidates) in her opposition to the war, and has never renounced NAFTA, which was pushed through by her husband. Clinton, who refuses to fire the anti-union consultant running her campaign, recently graced the cover of Fortune magazine because much of corporate America is perfectly comfortable with her as the nominee. Clinton has the highest negatives of all the major candidates and, behind closed doors, many Democratic activists believe she cannot win in a general election. Yet without Labor’s intervention, Clinton will sail into the nomination, without ever having to take hard positions for Labor, without ever having to demonstrate electability, without ever challenging the power of corporate America.
In the face of John Edwards’ demonstrated commitment to stand with us, to advocate for organized labor in front of every audience, how will Labor respond? Thus far, the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Federation have declined to endorse. One major union looked poised to make a major endorsement of Edwards, but postponed the decision at the last minute. According to press reports, other candidates warned union leadership that Edwards did not have the money to compete.
But what did we expect for such a strong Labor candidate? Who do we think will fund such a candidacy? Certainly not corporate America, not the wealthy he plans to tax, not the employers he has criticized for mistreating workers. The support Edwards needs to win can only come from Labor. We can make – or break – this candidacy.
We all know Edwards has the best shot to win the general. It is not about policy, it is about likeability. It’s about who Americans will identify with, feel comfortable with, want to share a beer with...Edwards is the only leading Democratic candidate to grow up working-class, to have worked in a mill, to be the first in his family to attend college. He is a self-made man in the best tradition of America, a model of the American Dream that we all want to believe exists.
Edwards says in virtually every speech he gives that the key to this kind of upward mobility, the key to building a middle-class in which the kids of mill workers can succeed, is a strong labor movement. He wants to be the first president to truly represent the interests of workers and of the Labor Movement. He is the best spokesman for our cause that the Labor Movement could hope for.
Labor could turn this race. We could make the difference in the early states. We could put an end to the myth of inevitability. We could demonstrate that defending workers rights is a winning campaign strategy, not a liability, by showing that we will stand up for candidates who stand with us. In doing so, we could ensure that the Democratic Party has a nominee who can actually win in the general election, a candidate who will be competitive in every state, who will help candidates up and down the ticket, who will appeal to the white working-class voters (ie. "Reagan Democrats") that used to vote with us. Edwards will win in rural areas, in Southern states, by redefining what it means to be a Democrat.
Or Labor could sit this one out. We could show the nation that all we care about is which candidate raises the most money in the first few quarters, that we don’t value candidates willingness to take hard positions to support us, that we will back Corporate America’s candidate is we think that person is the frontrunner. In doing so, we will strengthen the myth of our own irrelevance. Even worse, we will allow the steamroller of the Clinton campaign to roll over a more electable candidate, to take the nomination, and to lose in the general. With that decision, we are dooming our members to at least four more years of continuing war, extreme inequality, and anti-labor decisions by the NLRB and the courts.
As has been the case in so many periods of our history, the future is in our hands...