CE Week #2: “Clinton, Obama vie for Edwards supporters”
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Peter Wallsten
Los Angeles Times
January 31, 2008
WASHINGTON – He launched his campaign in the hurricane-ravaged quarters of New Orleans and traveled through Appalachia, talking about poverty and railing against corporate greed and financial disparities. But something strange happened as John Edwards built his campaign for president: He drew votes from an economically diverse bloc of voters, mostly white men, who were just as likely to be rich as they were to be poor.
Now that Edwards’ departure from the campaign has left a two-person race for the Democratic nomination, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are trying to figure out how to attract those voters. And because his support was hard to characterize – the one thing it was not was disproportionately poor – his political base is the subject of a scramble.
The latest surveys show Edwards supported by as much as 15 percent of the Democratic vote, enough to make the difference Tuesday when voting takes place in more than 20 states as part of a nationwide primary day. But where these voters’ sympathies will lie is a mystery.
The two senators moved quickly Wednesday to attract that base, adopting pieces of Edwards’ populist message.
Clinton, of New York, lauded Edwards for making poverty “a centerpiece of his candidacy” and said the issue should be “on the top of the list of American priorities.” Obama, from Illinois, called Edwards’ return to New Orleans a “gracious way to end” his campaign.
Edwards said Wednesday in New Orleans that he dropped out only after receiving assurances from Clinton and Obama that they would make poverty a central theme of their campaigns and, if elected, their presidency.
But the decision by the former North Carolina senator to leave the race, along with the surprising makeup of his supporters, suggests that the fiery populism he brought to the campaign was a doomed strategy from the beginning.
Poverty and income inequality “may not be the primary thing you want to hang your campaign on,” said Harry Holzer, an economist with Georgetown University and the Urban Institute in Washington. “Especially poverty – since it doesn’t directly affect most voters, you probably don’t want to make that your primary reason for running.”
Edwards made poverty a central, animating mission for his candidacy. He also talked often of the problems of working-class Americans, repeatedly reminding voters that his father had been a mill laborer.
Over time, his campaign took on a more emphatic and even angry tone, as he drew pictures of insurance companies denying health coverage that could save patients’ lives. He promised to kick corporate interests out of the room when negotiating public policy, saying his hardball tactics would work where his opponents’ would fail. “You can’t ‘nice’ these people to death,” he said.
But Edwards’ tone might have run too hot for the taste of some voters, even those feeling anxious about the economy.
Americans are generally reluctant to embrace anti-corporate messages, Holzer said. Similarly, he said, many people are uneasy with attempts to rein in free trade and place new constraints on the rich, as Edwards suggested.
It’s a sad story that Edwards dropped out in my opinion but we still got Obama. This article relates to a lot of the thing we have talked about and read in class when it comes to how votes in an election can be affected. Edwards is seeming to have the impact of most influential third party candidates that run and start to take away votes from viable candidates either to change the election results or to have their ideas adopted by the other candidates. Like Nader and Perot in the times before Edwards they helped shaped the election. Even though Edwards isn’t a third party candidate and he has already dropped out pretty early he has still impacted the race for the nomination and even the presidency. Now Clinton and Obama are racing to gain some of his voters in hopes of over tacking the other. They are doing this by adopting some of his populist issue and incorporating them into their own campaigns. Since during Edward’s campaign he gained between 15 and 20 percent of democratic voters its important that both democratic hopefuls try to gain some of the Edward’s supporters. This all turns into a life or death situation between the two remaining front runners. They are so close that the efforts they put in to sway Edward’s voter could in the end make them president or not.
The main thing I gathered from this article, is the reasoning for Edwards’ campaign’s unsuccessful outcome is really sad: “poverty and income inequality ‘may not be the primary thing you want to hang your campaign on,’ said Harry Holzer, an economist with Georgetown University and the Urban Institute in Washington. ‘Especially poverty – since it doesn’t directly affect most voters, you probably don’t want to make that your primary reason for running’.” It’s sad that a platform of eliminating poverty and income inequality in the U.S. would be a detrimental platform because it does not directly affect most voters. One would hope that regardless of whether or not a voter was impoverished they would hope to help those who were. I admire Edwards because he took a risk and decided against using a relatively unimportant issue to be his platform just because it would appeal to the largest number of voters; maybe a poverty platform was not a great political decision, but it’s an issue that needs to be dealt with regardless. I liked that Edwards was not willing to compromise for his beliefs, he seemed like a candidate who would not give in to a means triangulation and political maneuvering between parties and corporations. It sounds as if his campaign has brought attention to poverty problem in the U.S., what with Obama and Clinton supposedly agreeing to make it a high priority. Of course, you never really know if they are just saying that in order to gain the support of Edwards’ voters.