8 Reasons to Choose John Edwards as the 2008 Democratic Nominee

Time for change

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Jan-25-08 12:05 AM
Original message

8 Reasons to Choose John Edwards as the 2008 Democratic Nominee

Ever since the first days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt�s presidency the Democratic Party has been the Party of the American people, arrayed against what FDR referred to as the �Economic Royalists�, about whom he had this to say:

Out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations� the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service. There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants�. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer�

The privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property�. The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor � these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship.

Prior to FDR great income disparity existed in our country. FDR initiated a wide range of policies � collectively referred to as the New Deal � which substantially reversed income inequality for the first time in U.S. history. These policies included: Progressive taxation; labor protection laws; and several policies to provide a social safety net for Americans and otherwise reduce income inequality, including the Social Security Act of 1935, the GI Bill of Rights, and the development of several policies to facilitate job creation. The New Deal was so successful that it lasted for several decades, despite tremendous opposition from the right wing elites whose wealth and power had been reduced. Then, beginning in the 1980s, right wing conservatives led by Ronald Reagan began to have success in dismantling the New Deal, such that today we have income inequality in our country that equals that seen in the pre-New Deal days.

Before I get into my reasons for voting for John Edwards, I want to say a few brief words about his two main competitors for the Democratic nomination. Although I have a lot of problems with Senators Clinton and Obama, I still believe that they are far preferable to any current Republican candidate for President. In a nutshell, my problems with them relate to how far they have strayed from the legacy of FDR � farther in my opinion than any Democratic Presidential nominee we have had since FDR was nominated in 1932. Yet they remain much closer to that legacy than any current prominent Republican � which is why John Edwards was absolutely right to say last night on Countdown that he would give his full support to the Democratic nominee no matter who it is.

I also want to say that I believe there are other Democrats who would make excellent Presidents, especially Dennis Kucinich, who apparently will announce the end of his candidacy tomorrow. That being said, here are reasons why I think it is very important that Democrats choose John Edwards to be their nominee for President this year:

1. John Edwards� plan to eliminate poverty from our country

It is disgraceful that so many people live in poverty in the wealthiest nation in the world. As of 2004 there were 37 million Americans living in poverty, which was 12.7% of the U.S. population.

This is a matter of justice. Children who are born into poverty have relatively limited access to a good education, as demonstrated by a study that showed that parental income predicts 80% of the variance in college entry exam scores. This facilitates a vicious cycle of poverty, whereby deficient educational attainment leads to low wage jobs and subsistence living. A related issue is the strong correlation between race and poverty. According to the 1999 U.S. census, 33% of black children lived in poverty, compared to 13.5% of white children. This is what FDR had to say about this subject:

An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living � a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for. For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor � other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Yet, poverty has not been a popular issue in American politics. In fact, it�s almost been a taboo subject. That is because the poor, and those who consider themselves susceptible to poverty, have relatively little political clout in our country. In contrast, the wealthy fuel the campaigns of Presidential (and other) candidates, with the result that most politicians feel dependent upon their campaign contributions. The end result is that it is widely considered bad political strategy for a U.S. presidential candidate to talk about poverty.

Yet, John Edwards has strongly emphasized this issue in his two presidential campaigns at least since 2004. And in doing so, he has given new life to this issue in our country.

In a previous post I discussed the fact that John Edwards� plans to address this issue are far superior to those of any of the other candidates, with Kucinich being the only one close to him. And a recent editorial in The Nation, titled �Time to Act on Inequality�, dealt with this issue, recognizing Edwards� leadership:

Might we hear the candidates address this national scandal and say concretely what they intend to do about it? Republicans, we know, will duck and dodge. But Democratic hopefuls are not exactly speaking out on inequality either. John Edwards is an admirable exception; he has declared unilaterally that income inequality is no longer a taboo subject.

2. Edwards� plan for universal health care

Despite the fact that the U.S. spends 53% more per capita than the next most costly developed country, the U.S. health care system is rated by the World Health Organization as only the 37th best in the world. We are the only developed country that doesn�t offer its citizens universal health care, with the consequence that 15% of Americans are currently uninsured, representing about 47 million U.S. citizens. A 2000 World Health Organization report showed the United States to rank 24th in world life expectancy, and a 2006 report showed our world ranking dropping to 27th. A 2006 report on infant mortality rate ranked the U.S. as having the 2nd highest infant mortality rate among the developed nations of the world. The bottom line is that, compared to other developed countries, the U.S. spends far more on health care and yet has a comparatively inferior health care system.

Paul Krugman is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and he is a winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, the most prized award given to American economists. He espouses the liberal/progressive values that most DUers do. For example, in �The Great Unraveling�, which is mostly a reprint of Krugman�s editorials, he tears apart Bush economic policies (and Alan Greenspan�s too) long before Bush or his policies became unpopular. One of Krugman�s most fervent political desires at this time is that our nation enact a universal national health care plan that ensures that all Americans receive quality health care when they need it.

Space doesn�t permit me to go into the details of John Edwards� universal health care plan, so I�ll just refer to this post and summarize what Krugman had to say about it. When John Edwards came out with his plan in February of 2007, Krugman reviewed the plan and then concluded in an op-ed titled �Edwards Get it Right�:

So this is a smart, serious proposal. It addresses both the problem of the uninsured and the waste and inefficiency of our fragmented insurance system. And every candidate should be pressed to come up with something comparable. Yes, that includes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Several months then passed during which Krugman chided Clinton and Obama to match the Edwards plan. They finally did, and Krugman consequently gave Clinton credit for coming up with a plan comparable to Edwards� (He considered Obama�s plan to be somewhat inferior). He recently responded to Obama�s attacks on the Edwards plan by saying:

My main concern right now is with Mr. Obama�s rhetoric: by echoing the talking points of those who oppose any form of universal health care, he�s making the task of any future president who tries to deliver universal care considerably more difficult. I�d add, however, a further concern: the debate over mandates has reinforced the uncomfortable sense among some health reformers that Mr. Obama just isn�t that serious about achieving universal care � that he introduced a plan because he had to, but that every time there�s a hard choice to be made he comes down on the side of doing less.

3. Edwards� commitment to ending the Iraq war

John Edwards is committed to ending the Iraq War. He has consistently repeated in debates and elsewhere what he says about it on his website:

We don't need debate; we don't need non-binding resolutions; we need to end this war. The 2002 authorization did not give President Bush the power to use U.S. troops to police a civil war. Edwards believes that Congress should make it clear that President Bush exceeded his authority long ago. The president now needs to end the war and ask Congress for new authority to manage the withdrawal of the U.S. military presence and to help Iraq achieve stability�

Edwards believes we should completely withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within nine to ten months and prohibit permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. After withdrawal, we should retain sufficient forces in Quick Reaction Forces located outside Iraq, in friendly countries like Kuwait, to prevent an Al Qaeda safe haven, a genocide, or regional spillover of a civil war.

This differs from Clinton�s and Obama�s views on the war in two very important respects: Clinton and Obama do not say anything about removing our military bases there, and their stated plans include retaining combat troops in Iraq to carry out �targeted strikes� against al Qaeda if necessary. I describe in this post the details of numerous Clinton, Obama, and Edwards statements that highlight these differences.

Our country has done tremendous damage to the Iraqi people. In a country with a population of perhaps 25 million, their infrastructure has been devastated, more than a million have died as a result of the war, and more than 4 million have become refugees. Of the remainder, according to a World Opinion poll of Iraqis, 91% want us to leave, and 61% actually approve of violence directed against U.S. troops.

The bottom line is that our very presence in Iraq is the cause of much of the violence there. Consequently, it seems dubious that the war will ever end as long as we retain military bases and combat troops in Iraq to �carry out targeted strikes against al Qaeda�. Al Qaeda was the excuse that George Bush used to justify his criminal invasion of Iraq, and it is now his main excuse for justifying our continuing occupation, when we all know what the real reason is. Thus, the �need to fight al Qaeda in Iraq� is just another Bush administration talking point to justify the continued plundering of that country. It has been well established that our continued presence in Iraq hinders rather than helps in our struggle against al Qaeda, by fueling anti-American hatred and therefore continued recruitment into the ranks of anti-American terrorist groups. It doesn�t help the cause of ending the war for prominent Democrats to give credence to Bush administration talking points on the subject.

4. Edwards� plan to combat global warming

Jared Diamond explains the grave importance of addressing global warming and other environmental problems in �Collapse � How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed�:

Because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world�s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another within the lifetime of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.

The Council of Foreign Relations recently published an article titled �The Candidates on Climate Change�, in which they detailed the positions of all declared presidential candidates on this issue. They discuss a May 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), which said �The rise in global carbon emissions would need to cease by 2015 to stabilize global temperatures�.

They especially singled out for praise three of the Democratic candidates� positions (though they were positive towards all of the Democratic candidates plus McCain), including Edwards, Kucinich and Biden.

This is what the League of Conservation Voters had to say about Edwards� plan:

The League of Conservation Voters applauds Sen. John Edwards for taking the lead in announcing aggressive plans to combat global warming. Senator Edwards' key policy is to enact a cap that will achieve 80 percent reductions in emissions by mid-century� Senator Edwards also calls for an aggressive energy efficiency plan that will meet all of America's growing energy needs, while requiring that a quarter of our nation's electricity is produced from renewables by 2025.

Senator Edwards' plan demonstrates that he understands the magnitude of the challenge before us and the need for bold leadership to meet it�. Forward-looking approaches will restore America's credibility abroad and make us leaders in the fight to combat global warming.

Senator Edwards has outlined the most comprehensive global warming plan of any presidential candidate to date. We look forward to other 2008 presidential candidates outlining their plans to address this pressing issue."

5. Edwards� progressive economic policies

In economic policies Edwards has also been out in front. I�ll just sum up what Paul Krugman has to say about this:

Instead of trying to divine the candidates� characters by scrutinizing their tone of voice and facial expressions, why not pay attention to what they say about economic policy?

On the Democratic side, John Edwards, although never the front-runner, has been driving his party�s policy agenda. He�s done it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, public investment in alternative energy, and other measures.

Last week Hillary Clinton offered a broadly similar but somewhat larger proposal. (It also includes aid to families having trouble paying heating bills, which seems like a clever way to put cash in the hands of people likely to spend it.) The Edwards and Clinton proposals both contain provisions for bigger stimulus if the economy worsens. And you have to say that Mrs. Clinton seems comfortable with and knowledgeable about economic policy.

The Obama campaign�s initial response to the latest wave of bad economic news was, I�m sorry to say, disreputable: Mr. Obama�s top economic adviser claimed that the long-term tax-cut plan the candidate announced months ago is just what we need to keep the slump from �morphing into a drastic decline in consumer spending.� Hmm: claiming that the candidate is all-seeing, and that a tax cut originally proposed for other reasons is also a recession-fighting measure � doesn�t that sound familiar?

Anyway, on Sunday Mr. Obama came out with a real stimulus plan. As was the case with his health care plan, which fell short of universal coverage, his stimulus proposal is similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the right� I know that Mr. Obama�s supporters hate to hear this, but he really is less progressive than his rivals on matters of domestic policy.

And this is what William Greider, writing in The Nation, had to say recently about Edwards� economic proposals:

John Edwards was out front with aggressive anti-recession proposals in early December. Act now, he said, don't wait for the official announcement. First, Congress should put up at least $25 billion to stimulate job creation and be ready to spend another $75 billion as things get worse. Spend the money on "clean energy" infrastructure, the housing crisis, reform of unemployment insurance, aid programs to help families get through hard times and other wounds� Nothing fancy in the Edwards package, just the old-fashioned, meat-and-potato politics that used to make Democrats the party of working people.

6. Electability

Needless to say, with all the damage that�s been done to our country over the past 7 years, we are in dire need of having a Democrat in the White House.

I previously posted an essay on DU showing that Edwards beat every Republican candidate in head-to-head polling and also did substantially better in polling against Republicans than any other Democratic candidate � even when he was a distant third in polling among Democrats. With the attention Obama has been getting for his recent primary showings, that has changed a little bit, and Obama is now almost even with Edwards on average against Republican opponents. However, I would argue that that would change quickly as Edwards begins to get some additional exposure. Anyhow, here are the latest numbers for head-to-head competition against Republicans and favorable-unfavorable ratings, according to the latest Rasmussen polls:

Edwards: favorability: +11; vs. McCain: +7; vs. Huckabee: +12; vs. Romney: +16; vs. Giuliani: Even; vs. Thompson: +9

Clinton: favorability: -1; vs. McCain: -11; vs. Huckabee: +8; vs. Romney: +6; vs. Giuliani: +3; vs. Thompson: +2

Obama: favorability: +4; vs. McCain: -3; vs. Huckabee: +16; vs. Romney: +12; vs. Giuliani: +6; Thompson: +7

7. Campaign finance � Comparing Edwards with Clinton

No aspect of democracy is more important than the principle of �one person, one vote�. Yet American politics today seems to be more about money than anything else. Indeed, long before the first votes were counted in any 2008 Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were declared the leaders in the Democratic field based solely upon the amount of money that they were raising. And given the vast wealth disparities among Americans, nothing except election fraud corrupts the principal of one person, one vote more than the influence of money in U.S. elections.

Our current system makes a mockery out of the fairy tale of �one person, one vote�. Candidates take donations from donors and convert their donations into votes by using them to pay for campaign expenses such as television advertisements. So, instead of one person, one vote, we have $$$$ for 1,000 votes. Those with more money control more votes, and in return they receive legislative favors.

One way that John Edwards has used to emphasize this issue is to promise not to accept money from lobbyists (Obama followed suit on that). He has also developed detailed plans for campaign finance reform. These plans include having the government match small donations at an 8:1 ratio, reducing the maximum individual contribution to $1,000, a constitutional line-item veto to eliminate earmarks from legislation, prohibition against lobbyists contributing money to federal campaigns (i.e. so that they will have to base their arguments on merit rather than on money), and banning money bundling, whereby corporations raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from their employees for contribution to political campaigns.

In contrast, I could find nothing on Senator Clinton�s website regarding campaign finance reform. What is worse is that she has publicly said things that suggest she doesn�t even think this issue is important. For example, refusing to accede to Edwards� challenge to refuse to take money from federal lobbyists, she said:

�I just ask you to look at my record." Never, she said, in her 35 years of public service, had she bowed to the will of a lobbyist. But she would not change her mind.

For the sake of argument, let�s assume that Hillary Clinton is one of the most honest persons in the world and her above noted statement is absolutely true. Even in that case I still believe that it was very wrong for her to say what she did, because it sends the message that the practice of combining corporate advocacy with large campaign donations poses no problems for our democracy.

8. Rhetoric is important � Comparing the rhetoric of Edwards vs. Obama

Campaign rhetoric is important because it can tell us a lot about what a candidate intends to do. A candidate can use rhetoric to tell the powerful that they have nothing to fear. Or a candidate can use rhetoric to signal the American people that he will give them a fair shake no matter how much the wealthy and the powerful complain.

For a Democratic candidate for President, Barack Obama sometimes goes very far to the right with his rhetoric. Here are some excerpts from him on the subject of Ronald Reagan.

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America� He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability�. I think he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism�

And here are some excerpts on a similar subject from his book, �The Audacity of Hope�:

We Democrats are just, well, confused. There are those who still champion the old-time religion, defending every New Deal and Great Society program from Republican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100 percent from the liberal interest groups �

Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action�.

I am aware that Obama and his supporters have claimed that his apparently favorable remarks about Reagan were not really favorable at all � that he simply meant to praise Reagan�s political and communication skills.

But I think that words such as these go beyond that. To me they disparage the Democratic Party, Democrats, and especially liberals. When he says �There are those who still champion the old-time religion, defending every New Deal and Great Society program from Republican encroachment�, what does that say about his respect for perhaps the proudest and most important achievement of the Democratic Party, which in fact has undergone tremendous Republican encroachment over the past 3-4 decades? I go into more detail on this issue in this post.

In contrast, Edwards� rhetoric causes corporate interests to fear him. Dan Balz explains the gist of Edwards� message:

The enemy he sees is corporate America and corporate greed. His message seeks not to unite America but to finish what he describes as "an epic struggle" against forces that are, literally, killing America � destroying jobs, holding down wages, putting ordinary Americans out of work or denying them medical care. "You need somebody in the arena who will never back down," he says.

One of the greatest U.S. Senate races ever

This may seem slightly off subject to some, but it very much reminds me of our current situation. This story comes from �Feingold � A New Democratic Party�, by Sanford Horwitt. See if it doesn�t sound familiar:

When Russ Feingold first decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1992, he was a virtually unknown state senator with very little money and small prospects of raising much. By June he stood at 11% in the first poll, against two much better known Democratic primary opponents with much more money than him. They ran hundreds of TV ads before he ran his first one. With six weeks to go before the primaries he was virtually ignored by the news media. With only $185,000 in cash, his campaign manager told him that he was �going to get his ass kicked�. In response, Feingold laughed and said:

I�ve spent every free moment of my time on the phone trying to get money. I�ve done the best job I could. I wanted to see whether some regular guy who wasn�t rich or connected had a shot at doing this. I�ve done the best I can, and if that�s what it is, that�s what it is.

A little later, the Feingold campaign produced its first TV ad:

Hi, I�m Russ Feingold, the underdog who�s running for U.S. Senate. Underdog � that�s the story of my life� Now they say I won�t be your next U.S. Senator. That I don�t have a fortune to spend on expensive TV commercials like my opponents. But I don�t think that wild spending is what people want in a Senator anyway. I think people want a Senator who�s in touch with the problems of ordinary families� I live right here in Middleton, Wisconsin� My wife and I work hard to pay for this� But money isn�t what I need. What I need is your vote.

The two minute ad aired just once in every Wisconsin TV market, beginning August 20th. Then debates were held, where Feingold was able to point out distinctions between him and his opponents, such as his proposed tax increases on large corporations and wealthy Americans, though he opposed a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution.

The other two candidates were locked in an intense battle of negative campaigning and virtually ignored Feingold. In the last debate, one of his opponents said �If it can�t be me, I believe Russ Feingold would better represent the people of Wisconsin�. Feingold received a late unexpected endorsement from Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin�s highly regarded former Senator. He received a hearty late endorsement from the Wisconsin State Journal, which praised him for �boldly attempting to slaughter some of Washington�s sacred cows�.

Feingold won the Democratic primary with 70% of the vote, a remarkable turnaround of close to 100% in only a few weeks. He then went on to become one of two Democratic challengers to defeat a Republican incumbent for U.S. Senate in 1992 � despite being outspent 3:1 and getting attacked with a push poll that accused him of favoring legislation that would make mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer eligible for parole.

Can Edwards win? What is portended by a possible huge South Carolina SURGE?

Our current situation is that a candidate who espouses the best tradition of New Deal liberalism and populism finds himself far behind two candidates who are far to the right of him and who spell out their proposals in substantially less detail than he does. A recent editorial in The Nation summed it up like this:

Edwards has displayed a smart, necessary partisanship � denouncing corporate power and its crippling influence on government. He has argued with conviction that government does best when it does more for its citizens� His policy proposals are not always perfect, but they are uncommonly detailed and crafted in conjunction with progressive organizations. Most important, his programs were announced first, and they clearly pushed Clinton and Obama in a progressive direction.

So why then is Edwards so far behind? I think it is fairly obvious that a major reason is the corporate news media blackout of his campaign.

But the good news is that now, with only three serious candidates left in the race, the corporate news media will be forced to give him coverage, if only through the debates.

Monday�s Democratic debate in South Carolina is a case in point. With only three candidates debating, Edwards was able to shine a light on his differences with the two frontrunners in a way that he never could when he had to share the debating platform with seven other candidates.

The results have been potentially explosive, with Edwards moving from 11% shortly before the debates to 27% just two days after. Just think what he could do with a little more exposure of the sort he received in the recent debate.

Well, perhaps his surge has been partly the result of Edwards� endorsement by Martin Luther King III, who wrote in a letter to Edwards:

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father�s words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Or perhaps his recent surge is partly due to the fact that Obama miscalculated with his praise of Ronald Reagan, inspiring liberals to write articles with titles like �Obama and the Reagan Wing of the Democratic Party� in progressive journals like The Nation.

Anyhow, the South Carolina primary could be very interesting.

PS � If you agree with the ideas expressed in this post and think that it might help, please consider sending it around to any friends or family you might have in South Carolina.