Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Edwards the Populist
Ezra Klein has an insightful look in this month's American Prospect at John Edwards and his campaign to become the most viable populist candidate of a major party in decades. Klein manages to breakdown what gives Edwards his authenticity and fire on issues of class and poverty and it has more to do than just his blue-collar upbringing in a North Carolina mill town. A union leader quoted by Klein sums up it succinctly:
Edwards career before he entered politics was all about standing up for consumers in the face of corporate maleficence and indifference. And as Klein recounts, for many working people in the right to work south, their first and last line of defense against corporate power is not a union; it's a trial lawyer. Klein quotes Edwards's wife, Elizabeth:
""American have politicians who come from two places," says Bruce Raynor, general President of UNITE HERE, 450,000 member apparel and hotel union. "Either they are professional politicians-which is nothing bad-or they are rich people who were successful in the corporate world. John Edwards made his money suing corporations. That's very different.""
Edwards career before he entered politics was all about standing up for consumers in the face of corporate maleficence and indifference. And as Klein recounts, for many working people in the right to work south, their first and last line of defense against corporate power is not a union; it's a trial lawyer. Klein quotes Edwards's wife, Elizabeth:
"Every single day what he saw were good people, in great need, who were being mistreated by big corporations-corporations that knew that they had done wrong...If you took that person, a person who chose that as his life, you would end up with the politics that he's talking about today."
I think was most interesting thing here is the continuity Edwards draws between his domestic agenda and foreign policy.
"Speaking at the Brussels Forum on Transatlantic Challenges last April, Edwards said, "Spreading democracy is not about knocking regimes down; it's about building-building democratic institutions and communities that will protect basic freedom. Just as poverty and disillusionment isolate and drain hope from our people in our cities, it does exactly the same thing for every person around the world who feels like they have no chance.""
This kind of language has not been heard in a real way in Democratic foreign policy circles since the Alliance for Progress and the Marshall Plan. It's liberal interventionism at its best, rejecting un-critical market worship common to both the Democratics and Republicans in addition to the militarist unilateralism of the neo-conservatives. But it is also a break with the isolationism of some sections of the left that rejects the idea that the U.S can and should play a positive role in world affairs.
Labels: John Edwards, Populism
# posted by Gang of One @ 2:59 PM 
