Edwards' populist America: Ignoring media indifference to drive Dem debate

[trayted]

...It's much easier for most to write about his haircuts or dismiss his populist themes as so much faux class warfare rhetoric destined to be buried in the winter snow when voters head to the polls early next year (clarification: we hope it's early next year and not an unwelcome holiday treat.) Talking about issues such as poverty, economic justice and educating children in Africa is just bad form that seems so retrograde, a war on poverty rerun from the 1960s.

With his stagnant poll numbers, fund-raising capabilities, and less-than-stellar debate performances, it's even easier to relegate prematurely the former U.S. senator from North Carolina and 2004 vice presidential candidate to certain also ran status when compared with the Clinton and Obama supernovas who suck up much of the media speculation and fawning.

But it's shortsighted to discount Edwards until the voters begin to speak. Despite all the media huffing and puffing about poll numbers, they are mostly meaningless cocktail party chatter material today...

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...With a theme of "Fighting for One America" (an evolution on his "Two Americas" platform from 2004), he's not holding back his quest to change the debate. When I saw Edwards in 2003 and 2004, I had only a vague clue of what he stood for and had no idea why he was running for president.

That's not the case for 2008. Bonier repeated an interesting Edwards' line that the entrenched special interests won't go down without a fight: "We need to take the power because they won't give it to us."

It's not quite storming the Bastille, but it separates him from the pack and especially from the Clinton-Obama orbit. More to the point, Edwards is writing a campaign narrative combining his interesting life story (of rags to riches and family tragedy) and his belief that the status quo must be smashed.

When he says "incremental steps" are the political equivalent of cowardice, he doesn't sound like an establishment politician — more like a serious and credible candidate tossing Molotov cocktails into the debate.

To be sure, Edwards will be up against it because while populist swings of sentiment make for good headlines, they are often easy fodder for the status quo that brand them as anti-individualistic and anti-American — or in the case of Pat Buchanan on the GOP side in 1996, simply too incendiary.

Edwards faces the stark electoral reality that voting Americans may not actually want "one America" because it violates sacred American myths of luck and pluck and merit as being the keys to the good way of life.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070819/OPINION/708190329/-1/NEWS

That second part was the "end" of the article.