With an Eye on Politics, Edwards Makes Poverty His Cause

[cal04]

As he sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2004 and later as John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards talked about poverty more than any other candidate. But when he spoke on the campaign trail about what he referred to as the "two Americas," he told a conference on poverty here this week, "people called it a downer."

Now Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina and a presumed contender for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, has made curbing poverty the centerpiece of his work and his political approach. This is his true passion, he said in an interview, and he thinks that voters may be more responsive in the coming years, both because the middle class is becoming less secure and because of a shared sense of fairness.

"I think there is political traction in helping people help themselves," he said, emphasizing that he also believed that "if you can work, you should work, and parents should be responsible for their children." "I think that for most Americans, what they saw on TV from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans was just not right," he said, referring to the severe poverty revealed there after Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Edwards was the organizer and the most assiduous note-taker at the poverty conference, sponsored by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, an organization that he founded and directs.

The meeting drew more than 200 scholars and leaders of private antipoverty agencies to discuss issues like the problems of the working poor and the effects globalization has on labor. The challenge, Mr. Edwards and other speakers said, is not just to devise better ways to fight poverty but to find strategies with broad appeal. Some of the scholars offered, if not cheerful data, themes that they said might grab the attention of middle-income Americans. Many of the same economic trends that hurt the poor, the experts said, are also creating "a harsh new world of economic insecurity for middle-class families," in the words of Jacob S. Hacker, a political scientist at Yale.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/politics/26poverty.html

[blue cat]

1. I will never get over those STUPID ASS AMERICANS

who voted for Cheney over Edwards. YUK! Edwards would make a great president.

[spooky3]

2. k&r

[AtomicKitten]

3. a powerful platform for Edwards