Alec MacGillis on the difficulty politicians have when speaking about the poorest Americans:
In the spring of 2007, I traveled to Allendale, South Carolina, a struggling town near the Georgia line, to interview John Edwards about his ideas on fighting poverty. I watched as, photographers in tow, he strolled the back alleys and shook hands across broken fences with some of the 40 percent of Allendale residents who live below the poverty line.
“We’ve got 37 million people who wake up every day in poverty,” he declared to a group of local Democrats gathered under a giant live oak. “This is not OK, not in the richest country on the planet.”
