The Fight against Poverty Was a Lie, Too
I was never an Edwards supporter. Not because I didn’t like what he said, but because, since he could never speak in more depth on an issue than your average talking point, I suspected all those nice things he was saying about helping the poor were false, just convenient lines around which an old DLCer could build a presidential run. The revelation that Edwards believed he could run for President even while hiding an affair only made me more suspicious that the whole campaign was one convenient lie.
Now, Ken Silverstein makes that case even stronger.
Once upon a time John Edwards wanted to be president and he vowed, back then, that poverty would be his signature issue. “Poverty is the great moral issue of our century,” he told a group of students at Berkeley in 2005. “People living in poverty need you. And another thing: America needs you.”
To show his own dedication, Edwards “created a tax-exempt nonprofit dedicated to fighting poverty”, the New York Times reported.
[snip]
In other words, the Center may have done some good but its primary purpose was to serve as a vehicle for Edwards’ political career. Indeed, it appears to be very similar to the bogus “Reform Institute” that John McCain set up after his defeat to George W. Bush in 2000, and which was designed to keep alive his presidential ambitions and reward his cronies.
Anyway, Edwards of course lost his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, and guess what happened to his big anti-poverty initiative? That’s right—it appears he pulled the plug on it.
About a week before Edwards acknowledged having an affair with Rielle Hunter, Edwards quietly shut down a “scholarship program he started at an Eastern North Carolina high school — a program he once promised would be a model for the nation under an Edwards presidency,” reports the Raleigh News & Observer:
I suppose there are charitable interpretations for why he dismantled his scholarship program. Perhaps he didn’t want it to be associated with what he knew was going to be his soon-to-be-sullied reputation. Perhaps he couldn’t fund the charity anymore because he has been spending so much money keeping Rielle Hunter in her big house in California that he couldn’t afford to fund the charity, either. Perhaps he just wants to spend time with his family(s).
But the whole thing just stinks.
I guess I’m the only one who still likes him and would vote for him. It’s getting lonely out here.
I just wish people would get their noses out of other people’s beds. Humans being the horndogs they are (by which I mean animals evolved over millions of years to procreate with various strategies that are frequently in conflict with modern social strictures but perfectly consistent with biology), there will always be a story like this. What it has to do with how we manage ourselves is a mystery to me.
I agree. I’m seldom aghast at what people do sexually. Also, I’ve known two people whose previously faithful (as far as I know) spouses cheated on them after they had serious health problems diagnosed. I was told by one that it’s not unusual at all for someone to respond to the situation in that manner. I’m no shrink, so I don’t know what that dynamic might be. I don’t even know if what I was told is true. But it’s something that came back to me when hearing about the Edwards affair last week.
True enough. BUt it’s going to take a number of people standing up and saying, “I had an affair, I regret it, but not that’s between my spouse and I, and not relevant to this damned election.”
Because until someone can get elected after being honest about an affair, it’ll still be something people lie about and still be something that risks undoing a candidacy.
That’s the whole point. Forget all the morality arguments, any candidate in the beginning is asking a whole lot of people to “invest” in his or her candidacy as a vehicle to certain ends. Having a recent affair rap hanging over your head while asking for people to invest in you is simply fraud, because in this culture cheating on your wife in the present tense is a no-win proposition.
By the way, I also blame some of the lead and highly paid staff for this. They knew the rumors (at least) and should have had enough sense to ask a few questions. I am wondering if perhaps Edwards rather sudden withdrawal before Super Tuesday just might have happened because some of his major financial people got wind of things, and pulled the plug. They are much more likely to see candidacies as “investments” than the rest of us.
Can that happen if we don’t start it?
I mean, a single candidate can’t do that on his/her own.
Agreed, it’s kind of a chicken/egg thing. In Europe, it’s not as likely to cause a ruckus, but as long as we have a vocal minority who believes their morals prevail, and as long as the Broder/Gregory MSM’ers chime in (forget Rush and O’falafel), there won’t be much chance.
Nitpik alert. I think you mean to say NOW that’s between…
This a good statement, and holds up better when put well.
I think several people have had affairs and then they were elected, for example McCain (although his affair was before he ran for office) and Newt Gingrich. Guiliani and Schwarzenegger had affairs too. It seems as if only Democrats are not allowed to have affairs and run for office.
I never had any illusions that Edwards was anything but another politician. The reason I’m a little surprised by the strength of the desire to reject and denounce now is that Edwards was the candidate who saw the opportunity presented by the upsurge of progressive politics inside the Democratic Party, and went out to be the candidate of our wing.
There are lots of small examples, and some bigger ones: He was the first to say he wouldn’t take part in the Nevada debate that was going to be on Fox. He was a gadfly to the Senatorial candidates on FISA; in fact, without his needling on the issue, I wonder if Obama would have made the promise he clearly had no intention of keeping. His health plan, put out early, forced Clinton and Obama to do the same.
Sure, he was a DLC Dem when he started out, and he correctly saw that there was an alternative horse to ride in this year’s campaign. I never believed it came from the heart, but the way our system is structurally set up now, no one for whom it comes from the heart would get near the nomination. So creating a progressive tendency to which the fakers need to appeal is progress, however minimal.
I’d also expect less huffiness from many Obama backers (not talking about EW here), give the role Edwards played in making his nomination possible — his Iowa finish pushing Clinton to third, seriously derailing the inevitability trail; his strength in S. Carolina giving Obama a big margin over Clinton there; his pulling out before Super Tuesday that cleared the way for Obama to rack up big delegate totals.
He was never close to being nominated; I’d argue he was out of the race in anything but a stop-Hillary role from the moment the haircuts and his house became big stories in 2007. His recklessness and deceit has deprived the party of two skilled campaigners who could have been great surrogates in the fall campaign, but that’s pretty much the extent of the damage. So I’d hope the beating of dead horses could come to an end here soon.
Obama’s a sincere centrist. He’s sold out most of the positions he’s ever held to the left of DLC-ism. I’m not expecting to be pleased by much that happens in the next four years. But at least we’re not being set up for severe disappointment. Wish I could say the same of his many starry-eyed advocates.
I’m with you every step of the way, Nell, except I would add that I think Obama has the potential to set back the progressive agenda by at least a generation. In fact, I expect it. And I believe as you do that great disappointment lies ahead for those who have invested so much hope in him.
You can repeat this next election and ad infinitum. It’s especially true when people won’t accept that a politician is Progressive or Liberal unless they’ve behaved that way in the past in positions won at the state level. Therefore we won’t have many Progressives or Liberals EVER become president. There aren’t enough states where they can win state-wide positions to build their cred.
Thanks for having the guts to make this post.
I liked him as well. He had a populist, anti-corporate message that resonated with me. I say liked because it is stunning that he ran for president with an affair hanging over his head. His arrogance and betrayal of his wife is too much. I am glad he cannot have much influence on the Dem party.
He’s a politician. Politicians lie, cheat & steal. He’s still better than most of the politicians out there. Obama is a politician, too. If you forget that, he’ll eventually break your heart.
Boxturtle (Would trade all the politicians in Washington for one statesman)
Right, but on most accounts, Obama’s record reinforces the things he says. Hillary’s too (I’d except trade on both counts, though). Edwards served as a moderate Senator with close ties to big money. So his claim to be mr. anti-poverty was made with no legislative backing.
He picked an issue he thought would get him traction enough to have a shot and ran with it. When his shot was over, he folded.
Obama folded on FISA. It was a political calculation and likely got him the last bits of support he needed to get Hillary to fold. Hillary made a political calculation there, as well.
In Ohio, we had Gov. Rhodes. Gov Rhodes did what was best for Gov Rhodes. Always. The legislature here simply made sure that what was good for Gov. Rhodes was also good for Ohio and we did reasonably well.
Obama came up through the Chicago system, where the cemetary vote has always been solidly Democrat. The Dem party would send a bus down to the bad areas loaded with juice and sandwiches, pick up the homeless and take ‘em to the polls to vote for the democrat of their choice. Read “Boss” by Mike Royko for some wonderful insight into how the system works. Then try to imagine ANYONE coming up through that system clean.
Obama is clearly the best choice, but we must not forget his orgins. Ever.
Boxturtle (Think he’ll chase BushCo if it risks implicating the Dem leadership? Me, neither)
Geez, I’ve got a B.S. and I spell like that?!? I need coffee.
Boxturtle (Please don’t make fun of the dyslexic who failed spelling)
Rielley? Edwards has Vitoed his charity work? Eh well, what’s a fossella to do?
Ithink it was Susan Estrich that said that she thought the Bush-Gore selection would come down to which of the two voices people didn’t want to hear on their TVs for the next 4 years. You’d hate to think that’s how we decide such things, but I can confess I often form an immediate “feeling” about a candidate when they first present themselves. This opinion is hard to shake off when the facts come in, and most of the time proves correct in the long run; I’ve learned to trust it. Edwards, you may notice, talks out of the side of his mouth. His stements as you mentioned tend to be crafted & bite-sized. I loved his two America pitch, but could see that this is probably a point of view that works well with juries against wealthy and powerful adversaries, and when successful, render large legal fees for his services. So I doubted whether this was his view of things as much as a populist view (jury tested) that cynically could be ridden into office. For what it’s worth.
I liked what he said….but was always a little uncomfortable watching him speak those words….seemed unctuous…
oh man. why do the funniest things ring true and hurt at the same time?
Closing down the raison d’etre does make him look less like he’s living a principled life of consequence.
Plenty of gays and lesbians thought all along Edwards was a total phony (and said as much, even if it wasn’t popular).
The red flag was Edwards’ late conversion to civil unions in December 2006 on the eve of his final Presidential run. No political-aware gay person could easily forget that John Edwards had been the only major Democratic candidate in 2004 to oppose both civil unions and gay marriage, maintaining that position even as the VP candidate. In November 2004 and again in November 2006, Edwards remained on the sidelines as state after state passed broad anti-gay constitutional amendments banning both gay marriage and civil unions. Back in 2004, in fact, Edwards said that it was a state’s right to pass such laws if it wished.
So I didn’t buy his quiet (but opportune) conversion to civil unions, in part because Edwards never explained the reasons behind his change-of-heart. (I often wondered, do the Edwards have any gay friends? What made him change his mind?) As Edwards told crowds he was “not there yet” on gay marriage, he sent his wife to the press to say she supported them. It all looked like a manipulative charade.
And needless to say, early on my gay skepticism kept me from believing his change-of-heart on Iraq, as well as his whole war-on-poverty platform. Quite frankly, the only thing that has surprised me in all this is his public confession of narcissism.
What percentage of Americans in power have committed adultery? What percentage of those have been maliciously surveilled? What percentage blackmailed? What percentage toe the line because they suspect they’ve been maliciously surveilled?
Personally, I’d sacrifice Democracy to preserve the polite fictional purity of our bodily fluids.
What a dissapointing post.
Why not just say what you are really thinking, “He’s a hypocrite, and I knew it all along.”
Perhaps you may have heard of the Rashomon Effect? You saw what you wanted to see, for whatever reasons or motivations that might be?
I think you note that there may be other “charitable reasons”, but then you treat those valid possible reasons seemingly with sarcasm. You make a sugestion that he’s paying off the woman in California, but, do you have some evidence of that?
How can we call ourselves progressives if we can’t see beyond puritan ethics? YOur post comes across like a chance to kick the man while he’s down rather than legitimate commentary on his candidacy.
I know people in New Orleans who can show you where his heart is. They know he (and his family) was there working in the muck while the media was long gone. He announced his candidacy from NOLA at a time when the Mainstream media was long gone. He wanted to bring the media back to the issues.
My dissapointment comes when the most progressive candidate who had legimate and unpopular programs on paper to deal with the issues and pay for them as well. No other candidate had such policy positions.
You may be 100% right in your judgment, but aren’t you just enabling those political operatives who would slime progressives with Labels and stereo- types?
I completely agree with you, Skilly.
With gratitude,
and very sad to be thinking this about Empty Wheel,
Heather
.
I couldn’t agree more. Monday morning quarterbacks are seldom wrong even though they knew the game was rigged.
I live in Raleigh and have watched John and Elizabeth Edwards give to the community in major ways over and over. The learning center across the street from Broughton HS in Raleigh continues to assist students who need a hand up and a push from behind to succeed. The scholarship program in Greene County for college aid was originally planned as a 3 year program. Seniors who graduated this spring will receive assistance as planned.
I’ll take John at his word that he saw his own failings for the reason he committed adultery. I refuse to pile on as was evident here and in so many other reactions to his announcement last Friday.
Progressives in this nation are now further away from any action plan to help the middle and lower class. I knew corporations would rejoice at his failings. I just didn’t know it would be a virus and spread to very competent journalists. EW, you’re better than this.
The main reason I was an Edwards supporter is because I felt strongly (and still do) that his message of economic populism was what ANYONE who calls him/herself a Democrat should have been saying all along. It saddens me that Obama’s doing such a comparative duck-and-cover on these issues, although as an election tactic, it may prove to be the correct one. But it was terrific to have a candidate articulating positions I believe in so strongly, and while I’m seeing a large number of clairvoyants weighing in on how they “knew it all along” because of X or Y, the funny thing about a solid, articulated, spelled-out position of economic populism is that EVEN if it’s cynically derived at on some level, once the candidate is in office, he/she has become committed to deliver. (Here I’m using the term ‘economic populism’ as a rubric to connote solidly defending the non-wealth classes against further pillage, and putting the corporate state back in the place it occupied during, say, the pre-Reagan years–tall order, I know, but one could hope.) Obama’s wish-list of an economic platform SEEMS to be doing that to some extent, but ’seems’ is not what I’m looking for.
I’m not going to address Edwards’ staggering hubris and recklessness at risking the entire election over a little nookie, because it’s such a horrifying deal-breaker on so many levels. Holy crap, we coulda been SO screwed.
Any chance you have a missing link in your argument here? Like maybe that it was Edwards that did the enabling? And yes, the heads of his campaign have admitted paying her off; he is responsible for that, even in the less that fat chance that he wasn’t aware it was being done.
Maybe you are the one that “saw what you wanted to see, for whatever reasons or motivations that might be”. Rashomon my assomon.
“Rashomon my assomon”
How did you think of that?
Are people who actually supported Edwards to start with lining up to condemn him? I expected general mourning from those folks.
This whole affair may put more hope into those who want a strong populist message. The conclusion from the failure of the Edwards campaign might have been that such a message cannot win. But even before this, the media simply treated Edwards as if they were bored with him. A candidate who is not known to the national press as well may be able to break through with a message about inequality, especially a black or Hispanic one.
Yes one headline was it is a bad year to be a white man running for President. I think several points are to be taken from his candidacy. I don’t think the lesson is that it necessarily can’t win but that maybe there were not yet enough Americans who thought of themselves at the “have-nots”. American’s like to think of themselves as well off and all these years of Rethug rule and talking points have reinforced people’s aspirations. People think they are middle class but really they are working poor.
If this mighty recession we are beginning gets incredibly bad and all the “homeowners” become renters, the whole paradigm may change. If the election was in 2009 or 2010 it may have been a different election for Edwards and that type of message.
That said, I bet the TradMed knows this and they don’t want Edwards’ candidacy to rise from the dead in four or eight years. They are trying to put the final nails in his coffin for good now. Now he will be like Al Gore was at first after 2000. “That poor Al Gore he was so awful he lost the election and has no personality. So pitiful.” Hopefully that won’t last forever. Edwards had some good ideas that he was championing. Unfortunately lots of the things he championed were challenges to the moneyed interests.
Remember what happened to Huey Long and his populist message…I think he had more than 40 bullets in him. This is not the type of message the “people in power” of either party want to champion. The things that go with this type of message are very dangerous to the moneyed interests that fund our politicians. Things like worker rights, unions, health care for all, a real solution to unending poverty. These are not concerns of moneyed interests. Only people who have genuine feelings for their fellow man care about these issues. Some of the people who care have money, some of them don’t but all of the real people in power are happy with the status quo. If they weren’t something would have changed after the 2006 election. Witness GWB still in office. Witness massive bailouts of Wall Street that small fry you and I will have to pay for, our grand kids will have to pay for. Witness the constant shredding of the Constitution and our presumptive nominee in cahoots with some of it.
So Edwards was not so much proven to be wrong as he was ignored by TradMed and moneyed interests. I am positive that if he had been covered he would have gotten more traction. McSame is getting lots of free press from TradMed. If the election is close it will be partially due to TradMed free airplay of his every dispicable lying ad. Edwards couldn’t get coverage for the truth but McSame can get coverage for lie after lie.
Oh and as for the affair. I think it is none of our business. What percent of marriages end in divorce, and what percent cheat? Not defending it I am just saying it makes him human like the rest of us. I would rather have a cheater in the White House than a meglomaniacal alcoholic who can’t put two coherent sentences together.
Just saying….
Or a white woman *g*
I was an Edwards supporter for two reasons: the populist message and Elizabeth. I don’t care WHY JRE promoted the working-class message, any more than I care WHY FDR did (a lot of well-respected historians/PolSci analysts think FDR was responding more to fears of full-blown anarchy than to principles of equality). I only care (then and now) that he did it.
The article EW cited also says:
So if the third year (this school year) runs about the same as the first two, that would be about 285 kids who got a free year of college, at a cost of almost a million dollars. I don’t think that qualifies as “a lie”.
Another snip from the same article:
Sounds to me like the program was a template, designed to prove the value and cost-effectiveness of helping kids who don’t have a lot of options.
Whatever else is said about JRE, this program doesn’t sound like a lie to me.
Edwards was my guy, so I’m certainly disappointed – especially the stuff I’m reading about her being a fake documentarian for the campaign. Ugh, teh stupid.
here’s the thing – the coverage is just WAY over the top. It’s like “they” want to kill him dead, dead, dead, to prevent any comebacks down the road.
remember, IOKIYAR.
Wow, this post sounds like the ones I see at the Huffington Post and that’s not a compliment.
I was an Edwards’ supporter because of the policies that he campaigned on in the Primary and even though the media barely covered his campaign he still managed to lead both Clinton & Obama in a more progressive direction (although Obama has since gone in another direction).
When Edwards confirmed the Enquirer charges my first thought was – How stupid can he be? I was angry with him for letting his libido end his career and I was sad too because I think he could have been a strong voice in challenging the lobbyist arrangement in Washington.
Yes, what Edwards did was stupid and I’m angry and sad about it but not half as angry or sad as I was when Obama voted for FISA or when Hillary failed to lead on the FISA vote.
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I liked John Edwards. Still do. After Gore and Dodd, he was probably the next in line in my order of preference for the Democratic nominee. But man, am going to have to break out the fainting couch for some of the folks terminally aghast over the tenor of this post. And of the ones fainting the hardest, I haven’t seen a single one substantively address the central point that Edwards truly does seem to have gone into deep hibernation on the poverty eradication front. Or the corollary that a former solid DLCer acquired his progressive bent as quickly as he seems to be dissipating it. I agree it is a little uncomfortable, and hard to swallow, but I find these points fairly hard to argue with. I understand the fact that different folks will view these facts differently, but the vapors being exercised over the post cracks me up; especially in light of the failure to take on the premise.
bmaz, maybe those of us who were strong Edwards’ supporters are a little touchy right now after watching the MSM go into their “full scandal mode reporting” where they are giving Edwards affair more attention than they ever gave his policies during the primaries. While I don’t have the “vapors” I admit that I was pretty irritated with the snark in the post(I still love ya emptywheel). But what caused me to post a comment had more to do with the anti-Edwards comments that others were posting.
Did Edwards go into hibernation on the poverty issue or was it just not reported by the media? I don’t know the answer to that question and I’m not sure if anyone else knows the answer either. If true then I will join with others in criticizing him if he used the poverty issue merely as a prop for his campaign and dropped it when his campaign ended.
With regard to the scholarship program another MSM outlet quotes the director of the program as saying that the program was originally set up to only run for 3 years. If that’s true then the accusation that Edwards did something wrong when the program was ended after 3 years is questionable.
I for one would like to see more factual reporting about the scholarship program instead of all the gory details about his affair. I’d also like to see some stories about what Edwards has done on the poverty issue since his campaign ended. Until we see more facts I think the snark may be premature. Let’s have some good solid reporting so that all of us can judge for ourselves instead of relying on speculation by people who never liked Edwards in the first place.