In his bid for the Democratic nomination, John Edwards is campaigning to the left of front-runners Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on general domestic issues. By this, I mean that his most important theme is more than just the necessity for a popular movement for change. Edwards talks about the need to confront large corporations and their influence in society on key issues like health care, the environment and labor’s rights, before the US can become the society that it can and should be. So is Edwards a real anti-monopoly candidate?
When one hears Edwards’ Southern accent and his stories of being the son of a textile mill worker, the history of the influence of Southern politics on national elections comes to mind. Beginning in the late 1960’s, the Republicans attempted to regain power in Congress and the presidency by adopting a “Southern strategy.” Associated most closely with Richard Nixon, this strategy entailed winning over Southern segregationist white supremacist voters who had traditionally operated through the Democratic Party. Anti-civil rights and pro-segregationist Democrats like Strom Thurmond were welcomed into the Republican Party in leading positions. Republican leaders promised to put Southerners on the Supreme Court in a clear albeit coded message against integration, school busing to achieve integration and affirmative action policies to open opportunities for people of color and women.
After George McGovern’s defeat in 1972, the Democrats pursued a “Southern strategy” of their own. The Party scaled back the extent of representation by people of color and women at its national convention and expanded its focus on early primaries in Southern states to strengthen centrist and particularly post-segregation Southern Democrats like Jimmy Carter. These candidates had accepted integration and often provided significant patronage positions for African Americans in Democratic Party organizations in which African Americans were now major constituents, but had little relationship with organized labor (coming from “right to work” states) and held generally more conservative views on domestic policies than their Northern counterparts.
The administrations of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, were the result of the Democratic Party’s shift to the center as a direct response to the Republican Party’s Southern strategy. Arguably, the political failures of the Carter and Clinton administrations resulting from the Democratic Party’s own version of the Southern strategy played important roles in Ronald Reagan’s ascent the presidency in 1980 and George W. Bush’s ability to steal the 2000 election, respectively.
Despite his racial, gender and Southern credentials, no election analysts really expect Edwards to make a dent in what has become over the last 25 years the right-wing Republican “solid South.” Does Edwards’ left-leaning campaign tie him to the Democratic Party’s failed Southern strategy or does he have stronger ideological ties to a more progressive era of the Party? These are not easy questions to answer, so let’s look at Edwards’s record.
Edwards comes from a working-class family. His father was a textile mill worker and his mother a small business woman and then a postal worker. He distinguished himself as a student at North Carolina State and then at the University of North Carolina Law School at Chapel Hill (two public universities) where he received his law degree in 1974. At first, Edwards was on his way to a conventional establishment career, serving as a law clerk for a federal judge and then joining a prestigious law firm in Raleigh where he represented local banks and corporations. But in 1984, he took on and won a major medical malpractice suit for a client who had suffered nerve and brain damage because of drugs that had been improperly prescribed for him.
This began a remarkable 14-year career of winning important medical malpractice suits against doctors and institutions like the American Red Cross for selling tainted blood, trucking companies, manufacturers of defective pool drainers, and other businesses whose malfeasance led to permanent injury for his clients or death for family members. His victories were so substantial that the conservative dominated North Carolina State legislature enacted laws to restrict monetary settlements of the kind that he had won under the conditions which he had won them.
Edwards was narrowly elected to the Senate in 1998, defeating Jesse Helms protégée Lauch Faircloth, one of the Senate’s most reactionary members. As a Senator, Edwards failed to distinguish himself on foreign policy issues, supporting the Bush administration’s preparation for war with Iraq by stating his agreement with it that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was allied to terrorists (contentions that were known by many to be completely false at the time and have subsequently been completely discredited).
Edwards voted for the PATRIOT Act (as did the overwhelming majority of his colleagues) and the Bush invasion of Iraq, but has subsequently apologized for that vote as have other Democratic candidates.
As a Senator, Edwards did take progressive positions, supporting repeal of the Bush tax cuts, reforming the criminal justice system to end minimum federal prison sentences, defending abortion rights and affirmative action policies, which deserve very positive mention, given the influence of the ultra-right in North Carolina politics. He was a major opponent of Bush administration attempts at “tort reform” to reduce business product and other liabilities in the kind of law suits for which he had became famous. On the negative side, Edwards is on record as supporting the death penalty.
Overall, however, his record, for any postsegregation Southern Democratic Senator is, in my opinion, good, although only fair in comparison to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Edwards ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, and did fairly well in caucuses and primaries before withdrawing. He accepted the vice presidential nomination. His career as a hugely successful personal injury attorney against corporations led to active opposition from the US Chamber of Commerce in the 2004 election and, it is said, increased business support for the Bush re-election (although, given the degree of corporate support for Bush, this claim might be a stretch).
Since the 2004 election, Edwards has actively courted and cultivated labor support in preparing for his present campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He has advocated an increase in the capital gains tax, whereas Bush seeks its virtual elimination and leading Democrats are silent on the issue. He has called for expanding residential integration into middle-income neighborhoods by providing housing vouchers for qualified individuals and families of color. He called for a jobs and reconstruction program for the Gulf Coast modeled largely on the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in response to Hurricane Katrina. He has also championed an innovative work study program, “College for Everyone,” which would provide free tuition for students for their first year in exchange for ten hours of work a week.
In an interesting sidelight, Edwards, who has championed restrictions against the loan sharks who have run wild in pushing credit(particularly for the homes) on the poor in recent decades, joined a Wall Street firm, Fortress Investments, as an advisor and consultant in 2005. Actions like this are common among establishment politicians and have been for generations, in effect making them part of interlocking directorates that connect banks and corporations with political leaders and the administrators of universities, charitable institutions, etc. When it was discovered recently that Fortress Investments owned a substantial interest in one of the predatory sub prime loan companies, Edwards ended his involvement with the firm, withdrew his own investment, and has worked with ACORN to establish a “Louisiana Home Rescue Fund,” for families who have had their mortgages foreclosed by the Fortress affiliate. Edwards, according to press reports, contributed $100,000 to the ACORN directed rescue fund and no one has suggested that he was aware of Fortress ownership of the predatory lender.
Edwards has emphasized an outlook of challenging big business directly. He often says, “There are two Americas. One that does the work, and one that reaps the rewards.” This is by far his strongest point, since it means that, unlike Carter and Clinton, who sought to compromise with corporate power from the beginning, he would start from a strong position and through the compromises that are built in to the political process in this country, have a much better chance to make significant gains. The fact that Edwards over the last three years has involved himself with trade unions, grassroots, progressive organizations like ACORN, and sought their support on issues rather than having them come to him is also very positive. This type of relationship means that he is more likely to represent the issues that these organizations struggle around rather than simply buying them off with patronage positions. Edwards can work effectively with both people’s movements and the core constituencies of the Democratic Party on policy questions, and this is very important.
Edwards’ foreign policy positions are another story. He argues that the US has a mission to promote democracy in the world, that Iran is a menace (recall he had said the same things about Saddam) and has come forward with few new directions in foreign policy matters. On foreign policy issues, which are issues of US imperialism’s role in the world, I would rank him at this moment alongside Senator Hillary Clinton, but below Senator Barack Obama as much as Senator Obama is below him on domestic issues, and vastly below Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is only candidate to come forward with an unequivocal anti-militarist foreign policy.
In conclusion, John Edwards is a different and much better Southern candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination breaking with the Southern strategy concept and identifying himself with the core constituencies of the Democratic Party, particularly with organized labor. For these reasons, mass media has tended to discount his campaign, even though he is a former vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. He has the ability to unite the anti-right-wing Republican majority and win a huge victory. If elected, assuming that he can adopt progressive positions on foreign policy issues (which is a big assumption), he can achieve great things in advancing a people’s agenda and healing the nation from the damage inflicted by right-wing Republican power since the election of Ronald Reagan.
If he fails to develop a progressive foreign policy program, however, Edwards would risk the fate of Lyndon Johnson, who sacrificed a progressive domestic program to his reactionary foreign policy as he lost popular support. The way to prevent that and also strengthen himself in the campaign for the nomination is to begin to stake out antimilitarist positions on foreign policy issues has he has staked out pro-labor progressive positions on domestic ones. Still, his campaign is a positive addition to the discussions and actions around the 2008 election. His candidacy strengthens progressives in the Democratic Party and, whether he wins the nomination or not, helps the party become stronger to defeat the Republican right.
