 The inability of John Edwards to gain traction in his bid for the U.S. Democratic presidential nomination indicates that fighting poverty in America has limited appeal for voters.
| Either that, or Edwards has limited appeal, despite the impeccable hair. |
Edwards told audiences it was "the issue of my life." But he dropped out of the race on Wednesday because too few responded to his anger at inequality, his heart-rending stories of suffering and his passion about combating corporate greed.
| Some of us responded unfavorably to his bitchiness, his overblown rhetoric, and the hypocrisy of a man with a better than half acre house accusing somebody else of "greed." And there's always the fact that some of us prefer to define greed ourselves, rather than having Hair Boy do it for us. |
| Johnnie thought he could appeal to us the same way he appealed to a jury in a med-mal case: it was just a matter of emoting enough to move us over 'poverty'. The Breck Boy never did figure out that talking to regular people on the campaign trail was a different proposition than talking to twelve people who didn't especially want to be at a trial, which is why he's a one-term ex-senator who'll never get elected to anything ever again. |
"These are not issues that generate a lot of votes or poll particularly well," said Mari Culver, wife of Iowa's Democratic Gov. Chet Culver and a tireless campaigner for Edwards in her home state.
Critics called the former senator a hypocrite last summer for getting a $400 haircut and building a large house, but by the end of his campaign many advocates for the poor praised his dedication to the issue.
| And lots of the rest of us forgot his existence, only to be reminded of it, albeit briefly, when he dropped out of the race. |
Edwards came second in Iowa's caucuses but saw his rivals Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama use some of his best lines, eat into his voting base and weave his issues into larger themes more attractive to Democrats, analysts said.
| Thought nobody was responding to his themes? Maybe they only respond if somebody else is pushing them. Maybe the voters don't like him personally. |
Nowhere was that clearer than in post-hurricane New Orleans where Edwards launched and ended his campaign, said Louisiana pollster Bernie Pinsonat. The city, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was a perfect example of the case that Washington fails to provide economic justice. But even in New Orleans, poverty was not a vote winner because the celebrity of Obama and Clinton made Edwards a third choice even for storm sufferers and voters elsewhere in Louisiana were suspicious of how the city's government used its resources. "His whole campaign was based on a strategy of helping the poor. When Obama got in it was a flawed strategy because in South Carolina and in New Orleans (black) voters were not going to vote for him," said Pinsonat of Southern Media and Opinion.
"His whole campaign was based on a strategy of helping the poor."
So was Mother Theresa's. Guess which one did it better? |
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