Much has been made of John Edwards' "I Was Wrong" editorial in this weekend's Washington Post. Since you've no doubt seen the man's mea culpa, I'll constrain my comments to the obvious: this was the right move, both morally and politically.
More interesting, at least to me, is this profile on Edwards from The Nation. Remember, Edwards didn't start out a populist liberal, he was Burce Reed's guy, the second coming of the DLC Democrat. It was only midway through the campaign, and particularly after it, that Edwards found his footing in poverty and domestic policy. As someone in the piece put it, the closest analogy is RFK, who began as an unfocused striver and evolved into a man consumed with econmic despair:
Edwards steadfastly declines to revisit the last campaign. "If you don'tmind," he says, "I'd rather talk about the future." But as he touts hisantipoverty crusade and dissects the morass Democrats find themselvesmired in, it is clear that Edwards has done some hard thinking about thelessons of 2004--and about the political opportunity that presenteditself in the terrible wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Lesson One: Stop thinking small. "I think in our effort to be elected,we've become minimalists, tinkering around the edges--Our tax cut isbetter than yours, or, We'll give you smaller class sizes," he says."That's not what the country wants. We've got to give the Americanpeople something big and important to be unified by. Republicans use bigthings to divide America. I think we can use big things to uniteAmerica."
The test, of course, will be how big Edwards really does think. I've not seen much that's paradigm changing on the policy front, but that doesn't mean it's not in the pipeline. And god knows the Democrats need to try running another unabashed populist again. I don't know that the strategy works, but it certainly deserves a shot. RFK won both Blacks and Wallace voters, boldfaced populism can create powerful and unexpected coalitions. Speaking of which:
Edwards has a leg up in a survey that may mean more. According to a PewCenter poll released in late October, his favorability rating amongDemocrats not only bests Hillary's, 68 to 59 percent, but even that ofthe original Clinton, Bill, who stands at 64. And while John Kerry'sunfavorable rating is a sad 48 percent among the Democrats who just lastyear nominated him for President, Edwards's "unfavorable" is easily thelowest, at 32--and the survey showed he's the best liked, and leastloathed, among Republicans and independents, too.
That is, I think, a double-edged sword. Edwards is broadly liked but not, I think, much-loved. Like in 2004, he runs the risk of being everybody's second or third choice, a good strategy if the country used Instant Runoff Voting, but not necessarily a winner as is. If he becomes the Big Think Democrat, though, the only one to propose major new social programs and take the party's philosophy to its logical extension, that may rapidly change. Now that he's dispensed with Iraq, he can use the credibility of being last year's VP nominee to mainstream an agenda that's been out of fashion since Clinton. That, at the least, would make me love him.
