Edwards Does — And Did — The Right Thing
John Edwards exits the race in the same noble posture with which he entered it. My view is here.
John Edwards exits the race in the same noble posture with which he entered it. My view is here.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:34 am
There goes the white guy.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
…I meant the Breck girl.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
The Democratic race has been, for better or for worse, a two candidate race since New Hampshire primarily because the voters so deemed it. -MCooper
Respectfully, I disagree. I think the media can’t handle anything more than a two candidate race, point one. And, Iowa+New Hampshire, doesn’t define a 50 state race, point two.
I was captured by this comment to your piece left at HuffPo:
A good deal of that comment resonates for me as well.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
If the right thing means caving to a media that favors lesser candidates, then I guess he did “the right thing.” ‘Tis yet another sad day in American politics.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
“But examining motivation in politics is usually a pretty worthless exercise.”
Certainly something you would never indulge in.
Fact is Marc, I’ve been kind of stunned at the way you cut Edwards so much slack in his transformation from moderate to populist. After all the bluster and vitriol, it turns out you’re a pretty soft touch.
Not that it’s bothered me, since I’ve come to like Edwards too. But then, I’m no hard-boiled post-partisan ex-Naderite.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Truly a class act – which is why a classless guy like Woody can only insult. Sick world you live in down there in Georgia Buddy!
Since Wall St provides the funds for both Hil and Barack I need to think this over for a bit.
OK Reg, hit me with your best shot! Why should I go over to your guy?
(And any Clinton supporters lurking here are welcome to do the same!)
January 30th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
rlc -
How about the fact that he has a better shot at beating McCain. Isn’t that good enough.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Not Bad!
January 30th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Basically, it’s a draw between Obama and Rodham-Cliinton at this point.
RASMUSSEN REPORTS:
McCain 48% Clinton 40%
McCain 47% Obama 41%
Video: Advisor Will Do All In His Power to Make Sure Edwards ‘Does Not Endorse Hillary’
“I just don’t think the Clintons have been a friend of my people out in rural America.”
January 30th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
From what I’ve seen, polls have consistently shown Obama slightly better than Clinton vs. McCain for awhile. The difference may be small but its consistency across polls suggests that it has some significance.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Looks like there’s little taste in the Democratic party for his brand of underdog vs overdog populism..In other news, Ralph Nader is exploring a possible run.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Also – Hillary’s whole experience argument evaporates against McCain. Obama’s ‘new politics’ theme doesn’t.
Not that I’ve been persuaded by Hillary’s experience argument. In fact, I’m not sure why her claim of ’35 years of service’ holds any water at all. I don’t think that occasional work for the Chilcdren’s Defense Fund and 1st lady responsibilities (in Arkansas and DC) count as full-time public service, somehow equivalent to office-holding experience. Obama, as full-time community organizer and elected official has certainly put in as much or more time. In fact, he’s served longer in elected office.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I started the season as an Edwards supporter. In 2004, I’d lamented that he would have had a much better shot at beating Bush than Kerry did. When he came out as a 2008 candidate in favor of a withdrawal from Iraq, I was sold.
I was nonetheless disappointed by his emphasis on the “two Americas” theme. Pitching liberalism this way has been a disaster politically (one rather artfully avoided by Bill Clinton, it seems timely to note). Eventually, I strayed toward Obama.
America has been one of the world’s wealthiest countries for a very long time and most people who actually vote see themselves as on the road to prosperity, even if they haven’t arrived and/or are taking the scenic route. And many of those who know they aren’t on that road may get a sense they’re being denigrated, or at least patronized, as being part of a failed class when told that their low income is a kind of failure, even if the message is wrapped up in blaming it on the rich guy.
Worse, “two Americas” is an invitation to binary thinking: if you’re not for the poor, you’re against them; if you’re for the rich, you’re against the poor. We get more than enough of this kind of simpletonism from the chauvinist right on geopolitics. We don’t need it on the left anywhere.
I don’t think that’s the way Edwards really approached politics and his centrist voting record shows he was hardly an anti-corporate ideologue. Politically, though, he worked out that playing into working class resentments would be his best bet, given the profiles of his rivals. I guess I’m pleased that it didn’t work, but really, I’m disappointed that he didn’t try another approach and that he failed to get labor to unify behind him. He was a telegenic Southerner dead set against the war and would have crushed the GOP in the fall.
As many others have pointed out, the Democrats have an embarrassment of riches this year. So I can be very enthusiastic about supporting Obama and, even, would hope that Hillary would be his VP, though I do recognize what a longshot that is.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
This has become the best blog on the web – bar none – to witness class anxiety first hand.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I’m low-rent and angst-free.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
You sound like an Advil commercial Bob!
January 30th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
BB
It’s possible he adopted the populism as a campaign ploy, filling the niche that was left. But it’s also possible that as the country and its economy changed, he became sincerely concerned. With the wealth gap increasing dramatically, the two America stuff which resonated decades ago may resonate once again. There’s a reason Hillary and Barak started sounding some of Edwards’ themes.
And of course there’s also the possibility that Edward’s one-time moderate stance was adopted out of political convenience.
January 30th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
“I’m low-rent and angst-free.”
If you’re not quaking in your boots in morbid fear of the coming Islamic takeover of America you obviously haven’t spent enough time absorbing the television advertising of GOP candidates other than Mike Huckabee.
I do like his, and your, outre sanity, though.
Wasn’t it the Huckster who said:
“I’m a conservative, I’m just not mad at anybody.”
January 30th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
BB, excellent call on John Edward’s brand of populism and why it fails in Dem circles.
I suspect that he ran on the Two Americas theme because he got some ink on the original speech and thought he could ride that ticket home. But, t’wasn’t to be!
RLC, Bud, neither you nor I nor reg nor almost anyone else commenting on mark’s blog can afford to note the mote in someone else’s eye (your comment about Woody being insulting) and ignoring the log in your own. But I suspect that this paragraph will sail over your pointy lil head.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Thus exits the noble Tadpole, stage left. For Act Two, enter the Honour Student and The Shark, stage right.
I can’t help but think of ’04, and what if the ticket had been reversed?
Really.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
rlc – I’ll let evets, bb and…Hulk Hogan speak for me.
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/hulk_hogans_view.php
January 31st, 2008 at 12:28 am
Edwards is a decent guy. People evolve, even in politics. It is nice to see this even in an age that is not supposed to be ideological.
Now I am on the hope wagon be default. So good like Obama.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:06 am
“With the wealth gap increasing dramatically, the two America stuff which resonated decades ago may resonate once again.”
Let’s hope not. We should focus on ending poverty, not stirring up resentment about it.
One reason the gap is widening is that so many Americans are getting wealthy. The number of American millionaires exploded in the 2000s, and it’s truly a shame that people would try to spin that as bad news for the poor.
Perhaps the biggest reason the recession we’re heading for is unlikely to develop into a depression is that the size of America’s wealthy class has reached critical mass. The number of people who have enough money to be immune enough to downturns in the business cycle is now large enough to actually prevent downward spirals by taking a plunge in say, home prices, as an opportunity to spend more, rather than less.
Poverty is surely a growing problem in America and many other countries. Blaming the rich, though, is a shameless distraction and has never, ever worked out to help the poor.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:54 am
‘Let’s hope not. We should focus on ending poverty, not stirring up resentment about it.’
I don’t think Edwards’ goal was simply to stir up resentment about poverty or the fact that the middle-class had fallen behind. He wanted to raise awareness with the hope of improving things. However, I don’t think that he’d agree with you that because the’ve created wealth, the current economic arrangements should go unquestioned. He’d feel it’s fair to question the distribution of wealth and wouldn’t automatically assume that acting on such a concern (by changes to tax policy and/or regulation) would stifle all growth and immiserate everyone.
In fact, wealth is a relative thing. A widening gap between the rich and everyone else ups the ante for the middle-class and the poor, making it mush harder to keep pace. Too large a gap may be automatically unhealthy for a society, just as absolute equality would be.
If you want to call this blaming the rich, go ahead. That’s the kind simplistic demagoguery you’re accusing Edwards of.
BTW – Edwards didn’t appeal to my sense of grievance, but rather to a sense of communal responsibility. I have no revanchist desire to bring the rich down, but if their lot has to change a bit in order to improve everyone else’s I’m all for it.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:48 pm
“A widening gap between the rich and everyone else ups the ante for the middle-class and the poor.”
Edwards also spent a lot of time pointing out that he came from a middle class background himself. He is among the millions of Americans who directly, personally, helped widen the gap between rich and poor–and narrow the ranks of the middle class–by exiting the middle class in favor of being wealthy.
I’m pretty sure I lack the job skills to follow in Edwards’ footsteps, but I do like to at least dream that I too will personally widen the gap by increasing my income to a level that let’s me put worries about who’ll pay for my sons and daughter’s college tuition and my own health insurance, come what may, behind me.
Evets is right of course, that Edwards’ goal wasn’t simply to stir resentment. The problem is that whether or not he intended to, his rhetoric acheived exactly that.
And worse, most of the resentment would be coming from the rich themselves, who are encouraged to see the empowerment of poor people as a threat, rather than an opportunity. When will Democrats learn that the class war theme plays right into the hands of right-wing blame-the-poor Republicans?
One of the worst effects of a narrowing middle class is that it foments disunity and encourages wealthy people to think that empowering the poor must come at their expense.
We need leaders who can convey the reality that empowering poor people helps everyone, including the wealthy.
I’m not sure what you mean by this, but it is certainly true that the scary crime rates we have in the U.S. can be partly attributed to wide income inequalities. But let’s not pretend that simply raising taxes or regulating industry is going to change this.
By focusing on the gap, rather than simply on the problem of poverty, we do obscure the real causes of poverty in America. Note, again, that the gap is widening mostly because the rich are getting richer, not because the poor are getting poorer. Do the math.
I’m all for focusing on poverty. I hesitate to propose a war on poverty, but only because the whole “war on” rhetorical device reeks of
January 31st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Edwards wasn’t fomenting ‘class war’. The media reflexively call it ‘class war’ since Republicans have spent 40 years drilling it into their heads that any talk about poverty, income inequality etc. deserves that Pavlovian response. The Repubs can then go and foment true demagogic class warfare aimed at effete latte-drinkers. It’s worked for quite awhile, but that doesn’t justify it, or mean that it will work forever.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I apologize for stepping in mid-reek
January 31st, 2008 at 4:59 pm
“Republicans have spent 40 years drilling it into their heads that any talk about poverty, income inequality etc. deserves that Pavlovian response.”
Exactly. So do we want our candidates to just keep ringing the same old bell?
You may be right that it won’t work forever, but why wager everything that the GOPs 40-year propaganda project would collapse onto itself before next fall?
The winning poverty theme is easy: We can do better. We can do better than leaving co-workers without any health insurance. We can do better than letting the urban infant mortality rate slide so far below Cuba’s and so on. We really need to get away from anything that looks too much like finger pointing. It just doesn’t work politically. The “we can do better” theme, which worked so well for JFK, works because you can point to poverty while being much less vulnerable to the charge that you’re a gloom monger for gloom’s sake.