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Monday, Dec. 24, 2007
Edwards is FDR
with a Southern Accent
by Stephen Crockett, co-host of
Democratic Talk Radio
The Democratic Presidential candidate John
Edwards is potentially the person most likely to realign the two major
political parties for the next generation or two. Edwards is a
Democratic political leader who is not only closely mirroring FDR as a
historical figure but is doing so by following in the same political
and economic traditions as FDR. The main differences are personal
backgrounds and accents.
During the 1930’s, President Roosevelt
essentially ended the dominance of the “Bourbon Democrats” in national
Democratic politics and moved the Democratic Party solidly behind a
political program of economic populism. As a result, the nation saw a
couple generations of solid economic growth and mass prosperity. A
vibrant middle class emerged from the policies promoted by FDR. The
Democratic Party clearly replaced the Republicans as the stronger of
the two major parties as a result.
Beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan,
many Democrats in power drifted away from the core values of the
Democratic Party and started running as “Republican-lite” candidates.
They started trying to compete for corporate campaign money by
permitting awful trade agreements that undermined the health of the
American economy and weakened the American middle class while helping
the economic elite become even more powerful.
Some Democrats playing footsie with Republicans
and large corporations failed working Americans and the poor by
letting the obscenely wealthy start paying much lower percentages of
their incomes in federal taxes than the middle class majority. Many
Democrats started turning their backs on some common sense elements of
the Roosevelt tradition of having those able to pay higher taxes pay
them. We call this progressive taxation. The rich pay should be paying
higher tax rates since they have more influence on government policies
and benefit more from them.
They completely abandoned our federal government
commitment to preventing monopoly control by large corporations of
many important aspects of everyday life. Price-gouging has become
routine. Insider trading and excessive executive pay has become
routine in the corporate world. Wealthy foreign corporations are often
having more impact on government policies than the needs of average
Americans. Media consolidation has blocked out almost all
non-corporate voices in the discussion of public policy issues.
Edwards wants less corporate control over everyday life and has
specific programs in mind to move in that direction.
The wages of Americans have been suppressed. The
ability to unionize in order to achieve higher standards of living has
been attacked by federal legislation, right wing court rulings and
harassment by oppressive federal government regulation by the Bush
Administration. Edwards is the most labor-friendly Presidential
candidate of the top-tier candidates. With Edwards, we have a
candidate who both walks the walk and talks the talk. Edwards is
strongly opposed to outsourcing American jobs and is committed to
ending unfair international trade deals or tax policies that encourage
corporations to move jobs out of the nation.
Poverty in America has largely been ignored by
our political leadership since the 1980’s. We waste trillions of
dollars fighting unnecessary wars but seem unwilling to seriously
commit to eliminating institutionalize poverty. Edwards is the only
candidate really talking about poverty in America. Poverty is a
serious issue in many rural American communities and inner cities.
Most candidates ignore the poor because they do not write big campaign
donation checks. Edwards can give the poor hope and get them voting.
We remain the only nation out of the 75 most
economically advanced nations not to have government guaranteed
universal health insurance. We cripple our corporations in
international competition by forcing them to provide for healthcare.
As a nation we spend 17% of our economy on healthcare while our
competitors spend 8%. Our competitors cover all citizens while we have
47 million uninsured citizens and even more underinsured. If we had
not abandoned our FDR political traditions, this situation would have
been corrected long ago. Edwards is committed to universal
healthcare.
John Edwards is uniquely focused on returning
Democrats to their FDR roots of economic populism. The Bush
Republicans are committed to short-term “Greed Capitalism” that is as
self-destructive as the Republican policies of the 1920’s. FDR saved
American capitalism by reforming it with the New Deal. Edwards can do
the same.
Edwards can restore the FDR coalition by running
as an economic populist. He can win in places like North Carolina,
Florida, Colorado, Virginia and Oklahoma. Edwards might even win in
places like Texas. He can win without abandoning Democratic
traditional values. Edwards can carry rural communities and small
towns without going Republican-lite. Edwards will carry all the
traditional Democratic areas and much more because he truly represents
Main Street instead of Wall Street.
Although from a working class background instead
of coming from great inherited wealth, Edwards is much like our
greatest American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Edwards has
similar views with a Southern accent.
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Written by Stephen
Crockett (co-host of Democratic Talk Radio
http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ).
Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland
21919. Phone: 443-907-2367. Email:
midsouthcm@aol.com .
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