Reply #171

divide and - unlike in the past, many people, who spent their lives comfortably in the middle class, saw that they could not sustain that and new college graduates saw that they, or many of their friends, were unemployed or underemployed. This was enough to spark action - just as the draft in the 1960s led to more action against the war than there would have been otherwise. The issue was personal.

Edwards was not the first to speak of "two Americas" - if you want I could amuse you with a list of Democrats who spoke of just that. The fact is that two of the three top tier candidates in 2008 had spent time working for the bottom America when they graduated from Yale and Harvard - instead of getting a corporate law degree - Edwards was the one who went to a corporate firm. (It was NOT that Clinton and Obama were wealthier - they weren't.) Similarly in 2004, Edwards' strongest opponents had far deeper roots in helping the bottom - Dean, by extending health care in VT, Kerry by sponsoring, Youthbuild, which helped at risk for dropping out underpriviledged kids get hs degrees while also learning a trade. He also was a sponsor with Kennedy of the precrsor bill to SCHIP, which gave health insurance to poor kids. (Not to mention - in the Senate record, Kerry spoke of the two Americas so long ago that he referred to them as the America of the Yuppies on LA Law and the America of Rosanne Barr. (1993) He spoke then of how the latter was in a threadmill world where they were working harder and longer to just stay where they were. He had the statistics of how the top gained, while the bottom lost - and he was speaking of the 1980s.) Not to mention, in 2004, Edwards attacked both Dean and Kerry as wanting to spend too much on healthcare.

I am personally sick of hearing that only Edwards spoke of this - google Mario Cuomo or even the 1968 Kerner report.

If you want someone current, check out Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown or look at Elizabeth Warren, running in Massachusetts - all better than Edwards in what they are asking for - and their record matches their rhetoric.