Why Edwards Never Caught On (easy question)
Time magazine’s Jay Newton-Small has written an article entitled “Why Edwards Never Caught On”. In that ridiculous piece of journalism is this quote.
But even Edwards’ boundless optimism and energy has his limits…
Edwards? Boundless optimism? Are they kidding. So a guy that runs around screaming “America sucks” is considered optimistic? I’d hate to see how the author defines cynicism?
As for the title/question, the answer is simple. He never caught on because it isn’t the Great Depression.
Yes, his boundless optimism had it’s limits. Equal to or greater than his marital fidelity.
Just prop Cancer Lady up with a stick and have her mouth his attacks while he’s channeling a new baby through the vagina of the skank he met at the bar.
What a scumbag. Like his supporters. Pandering to the very end by going to that Habitat for Humanity thing. The only thing he’s ever practiced nailing are his paralegals.
Sounds like McCain’s daughter by the black prostitute, to me.
That’s the dispiriting thang, innit? Knowing a guy won’t fight back against a Connecticut-born faux-cowboy with daddy issues who was a cheerleader at an effete prep school? Yeah, he’s a choice pick to fight terrorism!
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Why Edwards never caught on?
I blame Ann Coulter…
Why Edwards never caught on? Because the growing divide between the haves and have-nots in this country, while very real, just isn’t a “sexy” enough story to gain significant media attention. And let’s face it, when you’re a rich person who’s arguing that we should do more for the poor, you’re a pretty easy target for those who want to cry hypocrisy. Given that it’s impossible to run a viable campaign for president unless you are a rich person, that pretty much sunk him.
The percentage of poor in this country has largely remained unchanged. Yet more people are rich. Basically, the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up, not down.
Yes. Edwards never caught on because of the growing divide between the haves (John Edwards) and the have-nots (Everyone else).
The rest of us couldn’t relate to $400 haircuts and charging tens of thousands of dollars to give speeches on poverty.
How unfair.
Somehow I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Farrah Integrity, Esq.
Brian:
Thanks for underscoring my point. (I wonder, what actions did Edward suggest for fixing poverty, from which he would have exempted himself? If you can point those out, maybe you’d have a point.)
glendean:
The percentage of poor families has indeed mostly been stagnant over the last couple of decades, but it actually went down by more than half between 1959 and 1973 (source). We’re going to disagree, of course, about why that is. Note, however, that the poverty rate generally trended downward during Democratic administrations, while either remaining unchanged or trending upward during Republican administrations.
But that’s not directly related to the gap between rich and poor, and it’s not evidence that “more people are moving up.” What has actually happened is that people in general have made modest gains — moving from abject poverty to the lower middle class — but at the same time, the rich have gotten a whole lot richer. That’s why you see disparities like in this report, where from 1969 to 1996 median household income increased by 6.3%, while average income increased by 51%. The big incomes at the far right are skewing the scale. In 2005, the latest year I can find, the top 1% of income earners have that they’ve had since the Great Depression.
As of 2006, the median household income was $37,771, meaning half of US households are below that figure. $37K ain’t poverty, but it ain’t well-to-do, either.
What does all this mean? It means that the vast majority of the economic growth that has happened over the last couple of decades has benefited those who were already in the top 5% of income earners, while the rest essentially treaded water. If you prefer to phrase it as a “share of the pie,” the typical person’s share has gotten much smaller. In sum, it’s not that the middle class is shrinking, it’s that the gap between the middle class and the upper class is growing (while the gap between the lower and middle classes remains essentially stagnant).
Uh oh. That’s the problem with research. I posted a well-researched comment with a lot of links, and your spam filter ate it. Hopefully it’s not gone forever…
I went and got it. Sorry it took so long for me to notice it.
I still don’t see it. Did the filter re-eat it?
I didn’t know you had two. My bad.