Mother Jones reporter Jonathan Stein took a look at whether the opinion voiced by the Des Moines Register about the "harsh anti-corporate rhetoric" from Edwards was shared by the Iowa voters.
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/12/edwards-fights-corporations-in-iowa.htmlThis opinion summed up the conflicting views:
"We need to be all united together," said Schultz's wife, Kim, an educator. "It reminds me a little of the George Bush 'my way or the highway' attitude." She added, "I understand his passion, though. Sometimes I feel the same way, too."
I think many Democrats do want to get away from the divisive politics of the last decade or so, but they're also tired of getting pushed around by Bush and Co. And Edwards' rhetoric about fighting back is tailor-made to appeal to those frustrations.
So while I don't think it will turn off Democratic primary voters, I do think it might turn off people concerned about his electability in a general election.
The point that really stuck out to me was the one about how corporations will be throwing everything at him if he gets nominated.
His campaign, no surprise, dismisses the argument that Edwards' anti-corporate rhetoric makes him less electable in the general. (Corporations, though, will have all the money they need to fund attack ads against him, and millions of Americans happily go to work for corporations every day.)
And Edwards won't be able to respond because he accepted public financing. All he'll have is the Democratic Party's weak responses.
This is what really bothers me about Edwards. I like the fact that he's talking about taking on the corporations, but the fact is that he's going to lose that fight. And lose bad. You can talk about what the current CNN poll shows, but after the onslaught by corporate America, those numbers are going to change in a big way. Right now, most Americans still view him as they did in 2004: a moderate and nice Southerner. After the corporations paint him as a phony Socialist flip-flopper who'll ruin our economy, is there any chance the numbers will stay where they are? I realize that similar attacks will form against other candidates, but they won't have the same amount of corporate money behind them and those candidates (at least those who haven't accepted public financing) will be able to effectively respond on their own terms.
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