Column: Edwards is the most democratic candidate of allBy Stephen Dick
THE HERALD BULLETIN (ANDERSON, Ind.)
ANDERSON, Ind. —
John Edwards is the only Democratic presidential candidate who is talking like a Democrat. He talks about labor, health care and poverty, issues that have fallen well below the political radar for the last 30 years.
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In 2005, however, poverty was once again front and center in the wake of Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. As it was in the 1960s, Americans were aghast at seeing two Americas, the rich and everyone else as Edwards likes to say.
Now he’s talking about it again. He’s seeing a nation where the rich are amassing great wealth while everyone struggles, where skyrocketing health care costs bankrupt families, where the have nots are out of the media glare that concentrates on the travails of rich young actresses and where labor unions are marginalized by a global economy slashing and burning its way to profit.
This latter issue is important to Edwards. He’s been addressing the major unions. In an article in the August In These Times, he said, “If we want to strengthen and grow the middle class in this country, if we want to grow America economically, if we want to see millions of people lifted out of poverty, the organized labor movement is a critical component of that. That’s the reason that wherever I am, I talk about making it easier to organize in the work place....”
Unions are declining at a fast rate. Many states are passing right-to-work laws that will further weaken unions. The latest to test that water is Michigan, home of the United Auto Workers, the last bastion, one would think, of union strength. Only 12 percent of America’s work force is unionized compared to 35 percent a generation ago. Without that organizational capacity, workers are left to fend for themselves in a predatory economic environment that will chew them up and spit them out.
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It remains to be seen whether Americans can stir themselves out of their materialistic stupor and embrace the serious moral and political issues that arise from severe economic inequality.
So far Edwards is saying the right stuff. I hope he stays on message and doesn’t cave into campaign pressure, which will surely be there, to take a hard right turn to keep up with Clinton and Obama.
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