John Edwards, you better have a strong stomach and a steel rod in your spine. You're going to need it because it's going to get ugly, and you're going to be the target of the ugliness. You hung tough, didn't fade in the polls as some expected and hoped, and now you are poised to make a big showing in Iowa. Now that that's the case, they're going to come after you with all barrels blazing.
The 'they' is not just the gaggle of ultra-conservative slam artists, the Fox network crowd, talk shock jocks, the Wall Street Journal neo-con columnists, and The New York Times neo-neo-liberal bunch. The 'they' is also Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party shot callers. They will slander, slur, and outright frontally assail you. As long as you were a bare afterthought, warm up act to Clinton and Obama, nobody cared.
These two mediagenic darlings have hogged the glare of the media and the public, and with Clinton, it's loathing and vitriol and with Obama, it's curiosity and fake adoration. But John, you quietly, patiently did your homework. You courted the Democratic Party chairs and leaders in Iowa, hammered away on the need for universal health care, a revamped farm policy, labor protections, against corporate pillaging, and most importantly, the disgrace of endemic poverty in a nation of plenty.
Your populist message didn't mark you as a threat -- it's the fact that you can win and would be in a position to deliver on it makes you a threat. The seeds of the attack were there from the start. You had barely stepped out of the barber salon months ago when the guffaws started. You were the butt of laughs and late night TV talk show gags for committing the unpardonable sin of blowing $400 on a haircut. Normally that wouldn't have raised an eyebrow since you are a wealthy guy who made millions as a corporate lawyer. But John, you did one more thing that none of your rich pals would think of doing. In fact, you did one thing that your Democratic presidential rivals were slow to do. You made poverty no longer a dirty word out of a presidential candidate's mouth.
This was not just a cheap campaign ploy to give you an edge over the other candidates. Your passion for the poverty fight appears to be as much personal as political. You've had plenty of ammunition to make the case that nearly 40 million poor people in the world's richest country is an abomination that nobody seemed to want to talk about it, let alone do anything about it. It was irksome enough that the GOP presidents and presidential candidates would stay silent on the plight of the poor. It was downright infuriating that your Democratic opponents would also stay mute on the issue.
John, you said something else that raised eyebrows. You noted that poverty invariably comes with a disproportionate number of black and Latino faces. One out of four blacks lives below the poverty line and a significant percentage of Latinos reside there, too. Race and poverty then were two ugly sides of the same coin. It didn't take Katrina and the horrific sight of thousands of poor blacks fleeing for their lives for you to know there are a lot of poor blacks and Latinos in America.
You shrugged off the haircut barbs and taunts and toured through eight poor regions of the South in July 2007 with your modern day version of an anti-poverty fact finding campaign. You kicked off your three-day campaign in New Orleans 9th Ward. The nearly all-black area suffered the worst Katrina flood devastation and had become the universal symbol of poverty and neglect. Worse, it stood as tragic testament to the failed and broken promises of recovery made by corporations and the federal government.
Your poverty crusade stirred a mild flutter for a couple of months among Obama and Clinton. As the weeks passed and you outflanked Obama on the issue of poverty, he became increasingly agitated. He publicly voiced frustration and resentment at what he called your attempt to paint yourself as the anti-poverty candidate. Obama's claim to be the true anti-poverty crusader fooled no one, and got no political traction.
In going where no Democratic presidential candidate has gone in four decades, you are bucking history, negative public and political attitudes on poverty, and populist causes. Your message is an albatross around the Democratic Party's neck. But you are for real, and always have been, and that's why Obama and Clinton try to pluck off and repackage parts of your message, while of course giving you no credit for it. Now with the real possibility that you can win Iowa outright, or at the very least make a big showing there, get ready, they will come at you with all barrels blazing.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press)
hutchinsonreport@aol.com