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The Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton today, which seems potentially important. My sense is that it's less so for the actual vote implications -- the high-profile endorsement of a well-known frontrunner is less meaningful than the high profile endorsement of an overlooked also-ran -- than that it gives her a bit of momentum back after a tough week against Obama. But I was interested in The Register's shot at Edwards:
Edwards was our pick for the 2004 nomination. But this is a different race, with different candidates. We too seldom saw the "positive, optimistic" campaign we found appealing in 2004. His harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change.On some level, that's actually a fair critique. Edwards has offered strident demands for change without articulating a theory of how you create change. "Taking back power" from corporate interests and greed sounds really great, but it's not clear how he means to do it. The intent is there, but the mechanism, the strategy, the leverage, isn't. After all, as Edwards himself says, they're not going to give it up willingly. And while strengthening unions and creating social democracy would be great, you still need Congressional assent -- and that's where corporate interests concentrate their political power. So it's all a bit vague.But it is real, or so it seems. His comments on Stephanopoulos today were true populism, and, I think, deeply felt. Which seems to be important to people. I hear a lot of folks arguing that this "new" Edwards is somehow inauthentic, that his moderate record in the Senate represented the "real" him while all of this is simple pandering. I think it's quite the opposite. Which is why I want to link back to the profile I did of Edwards back in February, which explores the roots of his populism and, I'd argue, turned out to be fairly prescient in predicting the trajectory of his campaign. You can read the whole thing here, but the relevant excerpt of Edwards and corporate power is below the fold. What I took away from our talks, and tried to argue in the piece, is that whatever else Edwards is -- a panderer, a political neophyte, a smooth-talking lawyer, someone with nice hair -- his life path has amounted to an intensive course in anti-corporate populism, and that this rhetoric and approach actually fits much better with his history than does his record from the couple of years he spent in the Senate. Anyway, read on:
