I mentioned the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” in reference to Anderson’s mayor’s refusal to step down. Plate o’ shrimp – that street fighting imagery came up again today in Dan Balz’s Washington Post blog entry about John Edwards.
Nice clothes aside, Edwards has turned street-fighter for the final stretch run. His message can be boiled down to a single word — “Fight!” — which he repeats over and over and over and over again: Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight.
Edwards has rolled out anecdotes he never used in the past to make it all the more personal. They conjure up images that hardly square with his slight frame and good looks. He was, as he now explains, a brawler as a kid, taking on bullies the way he later took on corporations and insurance companies as a trail lawyer.
“Like many of you, I had to fight to survive,” he told an audience of nearly a thousand people on Saturday night. “I mean really. Literally.”
He describes the southern mill town where he grew up as a tough little place and tells the story of getting into a fight one day with an older boy. “Got my butt kicked,” he says. When he got home, his father offered a stern lesson in life.
“I don’t ever want to hear, son, about you starting a fight,” he says his father told him. “But you listen to me and listen to me clearly. I don’t want to ever hear that you walked away from one. Because if you’re not willing to stand up for yourself and if you’re not willing to fight, no one will stand up for you.”
The enemy he sees is corporate America and corporate greed. His message seeks not to unite America but to finish what he describes as “an epic struggle” against forces that are, literally, killing America — destroying jobs, holding down wages, putting ordinary Americans out of work or denying them medical care.
I really enjoy the advice from Edwards’ dad — don’t ever start a fight, but make sure you finish them. That was the problem in Iraq – we started that one which makes it impossible to finish. If your goal is just to beat the hell out of the guy who picked a fight with you, that’s pretty easy if you’re strong enough. In Iraq, our goals were never very well defined — depose Hussein, get rid of WMDs – fine. Mission Accomplished. And yet, we’re still there. Create democracy in the Middle East — um, no thanks.
Does the greed of a few constitute an assault on the majority of citizens? I don’t know. It’s probably worth at least talking about. Certainly things seem to be getting harder for the middle class over the past few decades. Most families need two incomes to get by, it seems. I don’t think that was always the case.
Oh, but Edwards is rich and has nice hair. Clearly he shouldn’t be talking about these things.
Lincoln faced a crisis that threatened the very existence of the republic. Franklin Roosevelt faced a situation which threatened the essential nature of our society. The achievements of these men has its dark side though in that some people have come to attribute messianic attributes to office of the presidency, and to the men who have held the office. I have reservations about individuals who seem to want to grab those levers with so much relish.
I didn’t like Bush’s adoption of Wilsonian rhetoric about it being the mission of the United States to make the middle east safe for democracy as an excuse for launching wars, and I am (darkly) suspicious of what I take to be Edward’s suggestion that the private greed of some corporate managers equates to the opening shot of a domestic class war. From what I see in voting patterns I’m not sure that high income individuals in this country are all that friendly to the Republicans as it is.
Sorry Doug, but I’ll take Obama or Clinton over Edwards any day of the week.
Unions have been eviscerated. Wages have been stagnant for decades. Manufacturing has been monetized and shipped overseas. Pensions, where they aren’t being reneged upon, are having the risks shifted from company to employee. Taxes on upper incomes have been slashed. Wealth of the top .1% has increased dramatically while that of the rest of the country has remained much flatter. Elimination of the estate tax has been made a much higher priority than eliminating or significantly eliminating or mitigating taxes that affect regular people. Regressive social security taxes are being used to fund general expenditures.
That’s off of the top of my head. Seems like the class war has been simmering for awhile now.
Isn’t it just common sense that a strong labor union movement should be a part of any (free) market system? Shouldn’t everyone who contributes to creating wealth have a say in what happens to it? Who speaks for those who work on salary? I spend lots of weeks each year in the Lehigh Valley,PA amongst the miles and miles of rusted out steel mills,and live among people who are retired steel workers. Many present a very sad retirement life following a magnificient working life( to hear them tell it).They all are still so proud of what they created for this country and for the world.And then there are many who say if it weren’t for those greedy unions,we’d still have a viable national steel industry.It’s mind boggling who people consider are greedy,and who aren’t.
John Edwards has all the right insights and he delivers them with passion and conviction and it’s hard to script that.He’s the only idealist I recognize among the crowd.(But we all already know the story of Don Quijote.)
“Does the greed of a few constitute an assault on the majority of citizens?â€
… Not to mention the shameful piling-on of the Bankruptcy Reform Act. While John Edwards now regrets (like that matters now) his YEA vote and Sen. Clinton refrained (Geez-Oh-Pete) from casting a vote on the 05 version, it is nonetheless an understatement to say that that piece of legislation was the smelliest pile of poop dumped on the lower and middle class folk in recent history.
I think the banks kind of screwed their own pooch with the bankruptcy bill. Probably a lot of people who might have been able to reorganize, instead just tossed their house keys in the river and moved on. I’m thinking some of these $34 billion write-downs these banks are doing are due to their own short-sighted overreaching.
It’s the broken health care system and the unexpected loss of a job that cause most bankruptcy filings. http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2005/02/03_bankruptcy.php The Bankruptcy Reform Act was brought and written by the credit card industry. (Sen. Dodd is saying he will introduce new legislation intended to reform the ~BRA) Despite the diminishing possibility, I would have voted JE for his universal health care plan alone.