Edwards Breaks Free
by david mizner, Thu Jul 12, 2007 at 08:06:53 AM EDT
It will be difficult for John Edwards to win the nomination. No one should be deluded about that; I don't think anyone is. But Edwards supporters (I'll presume to speak for all of us) are more excited than ever. We like the positions he's taking, the rhetoric he's using, the way he's running. If he loses, it will be on his own terms. Last week, he hired the leaders of the "Wake Up, Wal-Mart"campaign. Next week he'll take a break from campaigning in early primary states to focus on poverty in the South and Midwest.
And if amid our excitement you discern confidence, that's because we know his message will resonate with voters as they compare the candidates. Also because we sense in Edwards a freedom that's rare for a top-tier presidential candidate. He's relatively free from the ties that normally bind candidates. Conventional wisdom, the approval of the Establishment, pressure from big donors: none of this is constraining him.
He's a liberated poltician, and a liberated politician is a beautiful and dangerous thing.
Be bold. That's the message of ninety percent of Daily Kos diaries. We want Democratic pols to do what's right, to dispense with conventional wisdom, to defy the MSM and the consultants. Easy for us to say. If it were easy to do, we'd see more bold politicians and campaigns. Boldness requires a combination of political circumstance and personal strength. You have to be both lucky and good.
Lucky might seem a strange word to describe a poltician who's received a barrage of unfair press for the mistake of a staffer; but Edwards is blessed with, among other things, a Southern accent and personality (and yes, looks, goshdarnit) that allow him to defy charges of extremism. Ezra Klein points out that he, "can talk of populism and class in terms that would get most any other candidate labeled a Leninist...John Edwards can speak truths about the country that the other Democratic candidates cannot." Put another way, he can run a proud progressive campaign without worrying (too much) about electability.
Edwards is also fortunate to be running for president right now, at this moment in history when all polls show that the country is taking a dramatic turn to the left. Longstanding economic inequality--plus Bush and the blogosphere--have made the country safe for a bold progressive presidential campaign. I knew John Edwards was the candidate for me when I heard him say that Iraq had forever changed the politics of national security--a basic truth that many politicians in Washington are still unable to grasp.
But sensing an opening is one thing, taking it is another. Even if a politician's path to victory clearly lies on the left, it takes courage to go that way. In another diary, I discussed the internal and external sources of Edwards's sharpened progressive populism. Edwards has largely rejected the consultant and corporate-approved caution that's prescribed in DC as readily as Xanax. He's thinking big.
There are different ways of talking about and thinking about Edwards's policies and positions; how you choose to do so depends on your point of view.
If you're Wall Street pimp Jim Cramer you try to scare people by claiming that Edwards is "Public Enemy Number One." If you're John Nichols of the Nation Magazine, you say his strong stands
challenge corporate power -- in ways that neither Clinton or Obama has so far done. He's talking about the need to change free-trade policies that have cost the U.S. jobs and security, and he does not hesitate to suggest that corporations and the wealthy should pay their fair share of the nation's tax burden.
If you're Stu Rotherberg, captain of conventional wisdom, you blast his "instatiable desire to run to the left." If you're Paul Street of Z Magazine you point out that Edwards
speaks insistently and repeatedly about and against the growing chasm between rich and poor within the United States. He has the most progressive and detailed health care proposal - the only truly universal plan - among the top-tier Democratic candidates. He advocates rolling back Bush's tax cuts for people who receive more than $200,000 a year to fund truly universal coverage.
If you're me, you say that he's offered a comprehensive program to address our most pressing problems, a program to help the poor, the working class, and the middle class, a Kenysian program of public investment that would stimulate the economy and create jobs. However you choose to describe his program, there's no question that we're not in Triangulationland anymore, Toto.
It's more than just policy; it's the assumptions that flow into, and from, policy. He says things that a respectable pol isn't supposed to say. That he cares more about social programs than a balanced budget. (And that you have to choose between the two.) And that the much praised 1996 Welfare Reform Bill was actually pretty bad. And that the concept of a Global War on Terror is full of doodie. An Edwards presidency would change the turf on which politics is played.
With his platform making it difficult for him to raise money from the rich donors, I was concerned that he might do what it takes to hang onto those he had. How wrong I was. He's received more cash from Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund, than from any other entity; yet he recently took a stand for economic justice and came out in support of new taxes on hedge fund managers and partners.
And here's something you probably didn't know. He's proposed to combat frivolous lawsuits--a move that has angered some trial lawyers and allowed other candidates to tap into a group of funders that had previously given overwhelming support to Edwards. While opposing GOP-style tort "reform," he would require lawyers to get medical lawsuits reviewed pre-trial by a board of experts.
He's running a bold campaign, and with his donor base expanding and his lead in Iowa holding despite a lot of bad press, he's poised to make it even bolder. Certainly, he has room to move. I'd love to see him more directly oppose the Secret Trade Deal. (Please!) And focus on our insane criminal justice policies, especially the War on Drugs. And widen his critique of the Global War on Terror into a more general denunciation of militarism. I also hope that he comes to recognize the importance of talking about the Arab-Israeli conflict (as Barack Obama has, to his credit). Silence on this issue shouldn't be an option.
The humorously premature obits of the Edwards campaign--bursting with wishful thinking--tell me that his opponents understand the threat he poses. And judging by the arguments used against him, critics don't quite know what to do with him. Sometimes they claim he's a phony, a smear that disintegrates in his passionate presence. Other times they contradictorily claim both that he's no more progressive than other top candidates and that his plans are too ambitious. Ambitiousness is essential to his progressivism, to any progressivism. A small-thinking progressive is an oxymoron.
With six months passed since he announced his run and six months to go until the first primary, Edwards has built the foundation for a campaign that will appeal to progressives who are fed up with incrementalism and ideological surrender, who hunger for the full loaf. Here's Jerome Armstrong:
It becomes clearer with each week that there is a large gap that is both partisan and new progressive, which Obama and Clinton fail to attract. It's also a division of those whom are basically catering to the corporate donor class for their large numbers raised, and a failure to not speak to Democrats who want to re-establish equality in the tax structure.Gore is whom many hope would fill the void of having a candidate whom is both partisan and progressive, but if we are in October and Gore's still not in the race, Edwards is going to be in position to rise with momentum going into the primary and caucus period.
All of which is not to say that Edwards supporters don't have concerns. We have eyes and ears. We're impressed by the skills of Senators Clinton and Obama. We worry about New Hampshire. We hope despite ourselves that the media will start to focus on substance.
But we like where Edwards is. Liberated, he'll force Clinton and Obama to take positions they wouldn't have otherwise (He already has.) And he'll take positions the other two won't dare take. He'll lose the right way, or win the right way. He'll do himself proud. He'll scare the hell out of the other candidates.
Progressives for Edwards - Progressives for Edwards - Progressives for Edwards
Tags: John Edwards, populism, progressvism, the whole loaf (all tags)
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