Why Everybody Should Love John Edwards

He just had Ezra over for dinner! I had no idea that Ezra was doing that, but it's unbelievably cool. This is a brilliant move by Edwards -- not only does it bring him closer to very smart people in the blogosphere, but it enables me to post about how awesome he is and how everybody should vote for him in 2008.

Furthermore, I'm going to do it without talking about any of Edwards' substantial electability advantages. This post is entirely going to be on why an Edwards presidency would be great for America, not on why he's more likely to win the general election after winning the primary. Now, a lot of this is going to depend on the same things that Edwards' electability advantages depend on -- namely, the wonderful media profile he's built for himself and his skill as a campaigner. These things raise my hopes for passing good health care reform under Edwards, and for changing the way Americans think about morality and poverty.

I'm convinced that Edwards is the most likely person to succeed in starting to fix the health care system. I see no reason to worry about his level of policy knowledge. His current job -- setting up the Center on Work, Poverty, and Opportunity at UNC -- suggests an impressive level of seriousness about policy. Can you even imagine Bush going back to school to set up an academic center on something? As I argued here, what you need is a smart person who picks out good advisors, respects what they tell him, and has the motivation to do this stuff right.

What sets Edwards apart on this issue will be his ability to win the political battles involved in selling health care reform to America. It's no wonder that the Republicans focused so heavily on Hillary -- almost more so than Bill -- in attacking the Clinton health care plan. Hillary had the kind of background and persona that could be more effectively associated with the "socialized medicine" and "control from Washington" attacks they wanted to launch. Middle America wouldn't accept that Bubba was a socialist, but his big-city lawyer wife? That could work. To properly sell a health-care plan, we'll need someone whom most Americans regard as one of them, and who can't be easily redefined by the right-wing noise machine. It's a lot harder for me to see the "socialized medicine" criticism sticking to Edwards than to Hillary or John Kerry -- Edwards is just too similar to the target audience of that criticism. His common-man media profile and his skill as a speaker and campaigner will be essential in selling a health care reform package to America.

The things I've written above on health care could be applied more generally to effective governance overall. As evidenced by his poll numbers -- he had the highest favorables and the lowest unfavorables of all four top-ticket candidates, beginning to end -- people generally like Edwards and think he cares about them. This isn't just something you use to win elections, it's something you use to drive the Democratic agenda forward.

Now for the second topic. There's been a lot of talk -- much of it connected to the Tom Frank book -- about how people in red states are putting moral values above their economic self-interest. Appeals to voter self-interest aren't likely to solve this problem. Remember, there are a large number of Upper East Side liberals who vote against their narrow short-term economic self-interest too in being Democrats. The real solution is to make people see poverty as the moral issue that it really is.

These same considerations could be raised in an electability argument, but that's not the conclusion I aim for. I'm talking about a transformation that political discourse in America sorely needs -- one that will make people see poverty as a full-fledged moral issue. This transformation, if it's successful, will drain power away from the theocratic Right, not just in the next election, but in many elections to come. When poverty and economic adversity get identified as moral issues, as injustices worth being angry about just as the opposing position on abortion or gay rights is, people who need moral reasons in order to vote (but who may not be so excited about our social agenda) end up casting their ballots with our just crusade instead of our opponents' vicious one.

I think that John Edwards is the person to catalyze this transformation. I like how he positions the Democratic economic agenda as something that grows directly out of the most fundamental American values, values that any patriotic American ought to uphold and defend:

Do we believe in an America where the family you're born into controls your destiny? Our ancestors left a place of princes and paupers and masters and servants. This is not our America. What we believe [is that] wherever you live and whoever your family is, and whatever the color of your skin is, if you're willing to work hard, if you're willing to take responsibility, you ought to be able to go as far as your God-given talents and hard work will take you.

Making people see our economic agenda as an agenda of justice and fairness -- not just in 2008, but for a long time after -- is something that Edwards is uniquely positioned to do. It's why I see him as the best potential president in the Democratic field.

--Neil the Ethical Werewolf