Wednesday, January 02, 2008

What Is John Edwards' Problem?


Any astute reader of the Curmudgeon will have realized a good while ago that we're not all that fond of John Edwards this go 'round (we liked him in '04), but we thought we'd make it official. The guy has gone nuts.


In the past, we've mostly been critical of Edwards for his hypocrisy. All that talk about growing up poor in a mill town, yada, yada, while building a 25,000 square foot mansion and getting $400 haircuts makes us pretty cynical about the guy. You can have a lot of money and still live a modest lifestyle, but that doesn't appear to be Edwards.


In any event, Edwards has increasingly turned to an angry brand of populism in a desperate effort to jump start his campaign. Is Edwards really that angry, or is he just doing what he thinks will work? We think the latter. If this were 1960, and he was in the South, he'd instead be trying to out N-word the next guy, like Strom Thurmond or George Wallace, just to win.


Angry populism will always get a decent draw, especially in primaries where you can focus on a smaller segment of the population. But Edwards' current stump speech in Iowa, however successful it may be, is a sure-fire loser for the general election, so he's basically throwing it all away in the hope of just somehow getting the nomination.


Right now, Edwards blames "corporate greed" for all of America's ills. That's a bit simple-minded, to put it mildly. To begin with, a lot of our problems are simply due to seven years of George W. Bush in office. After all, before Bush, we were in pretty good shape.


Corporations make nice fall guys, but Edwards won't solve any problems with his corporate bashing. Yes, corporate CEO's are overpaid, but so what--that's not why richer Americans are getting richer. Further, when it comes to complex legislation (is there any other kind?) corporations should be heard, through their lobbyists, about how the bills will affect them and what they will do to jobs, profits, etc. The key, of course, is to listen, but not to kowtow. Edwards, however, says he wouldn't even listen.


Edwards is acting like a child. It might even work in Iowa--he could pull off a narrow victory. But it won't work past that, fortunately. Any Democrat who wants to win in '08 would be wise to take a pass on Mr. Edwards' brand of pop populism.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Somebody please punch that foo-foo in the neck!

Anonymous said...

Corporate greed may not be responsible for all of our problems, but you can't deny that - even during the Clinton years - corporate greed and influence played a huge part in the steady dismantling of the welfare state. Which you know, hasn't been that great for most people.

Citizen Tom said...

The people who have insisted upon dismantling the welfare state are the poor saps paying the bill. Those saps are not and have never been corporate America.

What corporate America does is buy off politicians like Edwards. Thus the middle class pays for all the welfare programs.

Take a good close look at Social Security, for example. The rich do not pay payroll taxes.