By Neil the Ethical Werewolf
When I first became an Edwards supporter, I didn't think things would turn out this way. It was January 2004, around the Iowa primary, and I was looking for something to hit Bush with. I looked at every poll I could find, worked out my electability theories, saw that his voting record was surprisingly good for a North Carolina senator, and decided that John Edwards was what I needed.
Since then, he's amazed me time after time. There's the things you might have heard about -- the groundbreaking antipoverty proposals, the intense support for unions, and his transformation from a war supporter to the antiwar leader among the primary field. But the thing that I keep hearing in his speeches when I actually listen to them, but which nobody ever remarks on, is the stuff about global poverty. There really aren't any major political points to be scored by reminding people of AIDS in Africa or the 3 billion people in the world who live on $2 or less a day. And yet he keeps bringing the issue up, as he did when I saw him in Texas, and most recently in his MLK day speech. It's the kind of problem that you only have to be made aware of to desperately want to fix, and it bodes very well that he's aware, and making others aware, of it.
