Mark Winston Griffith

In the face of an Obama victory in Iowa, the audacity of John Edwards

All Obama, all the time. Now that the audaciously hopeful candidate has rocked Iowa, that's what you're going to see and hear over the next few weeks. And rightfully so.

But there is another story buried deeper in the Iowa results that is just as worthy of attention. It's John Edwards's second place, 30% showing and his populist "let's put corporate power in check " message that is building momentum.

Forget his haircut. If you listen enough to the men and average white bands on the Sunday morning talk shows, you would think there is nothing more to Edwards than his pompadour. Furthermore, the mainstream press has dismissed him as apoplectic. David Brooks wrote in today's New York Times that Obama has "made John Edwards, with his angry cries that 'corporate greed is killing your children’s future,' seem old-fashioned. Edwards's political career is probably over. "

Well, with Brooks and his colleagues reducing the Democratic presidential race to a dual axis, Obama-Clinton, affair there may in fact be no political oxygen left for Edwards as the primary season advances. Dodd and Biden have already dropped out.

But with foreclosures, fueled by Wall Street greed and recklessness, wiping out homeownership America with Katrina-like force, and with regulators and politicians offering up consumers to corporations like lambs to slaughter, Edwards's indignation is the appropriate political tone to strike. Even the Wall Street Journal recently acknowledged that the pissed-off populism that Edwards and Mike Huckabee represent is apparently resonating with voters

Hope is indeed audacious. But no more so than a presidential candidate giving voice to economic justice.

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Posted at 4:40 AM, Jan 04, 2008 in Politics
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