Informed Speculation

Can a new version of Lyndon Johnson’s War On Poverty catapault a hopeful into the Oval Office? I think it’s doubtful…it’s admirable that this is the issue John Edwards has chosen as his signature, and it’s definitely a good thing that he has put aside the loathsome ‘two Americas’ soundbyte that did nothing so much as suggest class warfare, but I see four problems with this strategy:

It’s friday night in iowa and an old politician is trying some new tricks. John Edwards is back—back, with the familiar deep drawl, dark tan and honeyed hair. Gone, though, are the old catchphrases—”two Americas” and “hope is on the way.” In their place: a long meditation on America’s moral obligation to confront the plight of its poor. “Thirty-seven million of our people, worried about feeding and clothing their children,” he said to his audience. “Aren’t we better than that?” It’s not the stuff of great sound bites, but it’s part of Edwards’s new political plan: a presidential campaign with fighting poverty as a central plank. It’s a risky strategy in today’s Democratic Party—Edwards may be the most viable national candidate since Bobby Kennedy to tie his destiny to a fight for the destitute. “Yeah, I heard all that stuff: ‘Who cares?’ or ‘It’s a dead end’,” Edwards tells NEWSWEEK. “Well, it’s what I want to do.”

The problems:

(1) The poor don’t vote. It’s easy to lapse into stereotypes, and there are a number of reasons why this is so, but one of the biggest is that many poor feel disenfranchised and out of the system already (and people like Edwards, though I’m quite sure their intentions are the best, feed into this feeling that the poor are a nation apart).

(2) Edwards has the wrong prescription. Many Americans (though, it is true, mostly Republicans who wouldn’t vote for Edwards anyway) think the best way to help the poor is to get them working, and if they are already working, to provide them with a growing economy with better opportunities for mobility, and on top of all of that, to lower taxes so that (a) there are more jobs, and (b) you get to keep more of your money. This is a hard sell, though, to people who traditionally (and rightly so) take more money from Washington than they give.

(3) It’s the wrong issue for the times. Poverty is indeed a heartbreaking problem, but Edwards faces a tough challenge convincing voters that it’s a more pressing concern right now than the War in Iraq (after all, many of the poor have sons and daughters fighting overseas, and poverty is, unfortunately, with us always).

(4) It’s a strategy that has a built-in counterattack. The Bush economy has been, if not quite as spectacular as the Clinton years, quite solid. Sure, the jobs haven’t followed the steep arc of some of the other indicators, but by almost any measure, we are in the middle of a nice expansion, and though there are signs that the economy is cooling, at the moment, the Republican challengers will have plenty of economic data they can choose from as ammunition against the charge of economic neglect.

Add to all this the fact that Edwards has shown himself to be, let’s face it, a fairly terrible campaigner, and you have a recipe for a failed candidacy…