By now most people not living under under a boulder know that John Edwards is considered an "economic populist."  Unfortunately, the term is often ill defined, other than a sense of being on the side of working people and vague recollections about a Cross of Gold speech. For Edwards substantively "economic populism" means that he is committed to universal health care, to effectively eliminate poverty in thirty years, and supports Smart trade agreements that benefit workers here and with our trading partners instead of just corporations.  

Beyond the specific policies John Edwards's value system is one that comes unapologetically from his small town working class background.  But, mill working fathers and passionate speeches aside, what is too often missed about the John Edwards brand of populism, is his insistence on the marriage of economic and political empowerment.

The way Edwards combines promoting a fair economic shake for everyone with de-rigging the political system has appealed to me since he started doing it during his last run.  Now, after eight years of top down politics and top down economics from the Bush administration, John Edwards's brand of small "d" democratic Populism is exactly what is needed.

His democratic Populism takes shape in a number of proposals, most famous is his career long refusal to take PAC or lobbyist money and his call for the entire Democratic Party to join him.  More devilishly, there is his plan to force Congress to justify their own government funded health care if they refuse to enact universal health care for the rest of the nation.  A plan Jake Tapper, with no apparent sense of irony, called cruel because it may deny coverage to Congresspeople with health problems in their families (Note to Tapper:millions of Americans face that 'cruel' reality everyday, something that, strangely, never seemed to concern Tapper a wink before).  If the plan can make a card carrying member of the MSM care about some one's health care, it must have merit, even if it is just for the beltway elites. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

One of Edwards's more exciting democratic Populism proposals is his One Democracy initiative and its Citizen's Congress proposal praised here by Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Government Professor Tina Nabatchi:

Most of us have no formal way to participate in decision making about the issues of highest public concern Iraq, taxes, health care, jobs, global warming, the environment, education, Social Security; the list can go on and on. No wonder the CBS News/New York Times poll found that only 10 percent of Americans believe they have a say in what the government does a "good deal" of the time!

Finally, however, one of the presidential candidates is taking on this problem. Last month, John Edwards unveiled a government reform proposal that seeks to re-engage Americans with politics and government. His One Democracy initiative calls for the participation of ordinary Americans in politics through a Citizen Congress a program in which millions of Americans nationwide would participate in deliberations about critical policy issues, identify the challenges and trade- offs facing our country, and offer advisory opinions to leaders.

Edwards' plan has the potential to strengthen our national democracy and reverse the trend of disengagement among American citizens by offering them a new voice. It could help the public identify common priorities (not the priorities of special interests and business), foster common ground and consensus, and develop solutions for the common good. In doing so, it could create a broad public constituency to stand behind and support our leaders' political actions, however difficult they might be. Mobilizing and engaging citizens in this way could help build the political will we so desperately need to act on serious matters of public policy.

(Emphasis Added)

The Citizens Congress is the flip side of campaign finance reform and public financing, which Edwards also supports. While the finance schemes are badly needed to limit the power and influence of corporations and special interests, the Citizens Congress is designed to increase the power and influence of ordinary citizens.

Beyond the specific reform proposals, this spirit of empowering people politically and economically infuses almost all of John Edwards policies, take his answer to TechCrunch on Net Neutrality:

In May, I - like thousands of citizens - wrote a letter to the FCC urging them to guarantee net neutrality. I believe that if we do not guarantee net neutrality, the Internet could go the way of network television and commercial radio - with just a few loud corporate voices and no room for the grassroots and small entrepreneurs. Our country is already divided enough between the haves and have-nots. Where we go to school, where (and if) we get health care, whether we can retire with dignity - we have big divides in all of these areas in this country.

While we work to create One America, we should not allow the Internet to be divided or corporate censorship to take root. That would make the other important work we have to do that much harder.

(Emphasis Added)

In a way that no other politician seems to, Edwards gets that the unfairness of our political system is linked to the unfairness of our economic system.  In a way that no other politician seems to, Edwards is committed and prepared to change both. And it is that combination of economic Populism with democratic Populism is what makes Edwards such a potentially transformational leader.

-AJ

It seems, according to Matt Yglesias, via a NY Times article, that Barack Obama has better team of foreign policy insiders than Hillary Clinton. Obama has picked up, basically younger and somewhat more liberal insiders than Hillary Clinton's.

The point about better inside advisers is interesting, if you're a DC insider or wanna be insider, but for voters and activists concerned about US foreign policy, it's interesting only as far as it goes. And it doesn't go that far at all.  

A White House foreign policy team is more than the sum of its parts, the work they produce can be improved or hampered by the internal personality dynamics, leadership cues from the top, or group think. Luckily, we don't have to rely on individual reputations. We get to the teams in action during the campaign. Each team produces real policy proposals and is forced to react to events. These reactions, of course, are not a perfect window into how a team will act in office.  But, it shouldn't be dismissed just because they are tainted by politics, politics in foreign policy doesn't go away once you reach the White House.

Ezra Klein is wavering under the influence of his friend and fellow blogger  Yglesias.

I am, at this point, a genuinely undecided voter. I have no clue who I'll pull the lever for in 2008 (though I'm comforted by the fact that my lever-pulling will have absolutely no effect on my party's nominee). But if I were going to decide on Obama, this is exactly why. Insofar as there's a real hope for a new foreign policy, I think it lies with Obama. That's not to say Edwards' policies on this are bad, but what moves him is, as far as I can tell, economic injustice at home, so I think his foreign policy would be a bit secondary. And Hillary Clinton's policies would, as far as I can tell, be bad, at least as compared to the other two.

But, the problem is that isn't really true.  Yglesias and Klein are relying on the inside the beltway reputations of some of the Obama advisers.  Leaving aside the questions of their motives for hitching their wagons to Obama in the first place (careerism is always motive), if one looks at the results coming out of the respective Obama and Edwards teams, the results from Edwards have been far more innovative and far better from a progressive point of view.

Here are the ways Edwards foreign policy positions have actually been much more forward thinking and innovative than Obama's:

• Edwards has rejected the Global War On Terror frame, Obama has accepted it.
• Edwards has rejected the training farce in Iraq, Obama has not.
• Edwards has lead on Iran, Obama co-sponsored a bill to declare a part of a foreign government a terrorist organization (the Revolutionary Guard) for the first time in US history and knowingly missed Kyl-Lieberman.
• Edwards also proposed a formal multi-lateral organization to Counter-terrorism Intelligance Treaty Organization, CITO, Obama has no similarly innovative counter terror proposals.

As a part of this strategy, I will ask my National Security Advisor to remove President Bush's explicit endorsement of a preventive war doctrine from my National Security Strategies. And I will ask our Joint Chiefs of Staff to form military plans in accordance with proven national security strategies that we know can keep us and our allies safe -- not discredited and dangerous ideological fancies.

This strategy will keep America and our allies safe -- while showing the world we are once again a strong country that can always win war, but that prefers peace over war. Most importantly, it will restore our legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Everyone knows we're powerful. The question is what we use our power for -- and whether the rest of the world will once again see us as a force for good, rather than the bully we've become under Bush.

No doubt Obama has been marginally better than Clinton in this campaign, he voted against Iraq funding for the first time this spring moments before Clinton, for example. And Obama adds more equivocations to his support for continued training missions in Iraq than Clinton. Edwards, however, has been the leader. His CITO proposal, for example, helps re-frame the fight against terrorism into multi-lateral effort focused on the activities, such as intelligence that will actually help combat terrorism. Edwards is the only one of the top three to pledge to remove all combat troops from Iraq in a year.

The real test is what is produced by that team and that campaign.   And by that test Edwards has been the clear choice for progressives.  

Over at OpenLeft, there's a front paged post by former NARAL President Kate Michelman, on Hillary Clinton's use of gender in the 2008 Presidential campaign.  I was happy to see that Michelman's take largely echo my own, especially since she has so much more credibility on the subject than I do.

Michelman's post revolves around the state of the women's movement, how far it has come, how far it has to go and the best way to advance it.

Yesterday John Edwards dropped a good sized bombshell on the campaign announcing he'll accept public financing.  At first, I was a bit taken aback, and somewhat skeptical.  But further thought and research I began to change my mind and wonder why other candidates weren't doing this.

One thing that particularly got my attention was how Public Finance will enable John Edwards to counteract the influence of Big Contributors.  Because both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have big leads in money from maxed out donors

The following chart is the dollar amounts from Maxed Out Donors, who have given the maximum $2,300, for each candidate taken from OpenSecrets.org:

After the defeat of "Hillary Care" in the 1996 election Bill Clinton ran for reelection on an tempered and incremental health care plan plan. In 2000 Al Gore had a tempered and incremental health care plan.  In 2004 most of the major Democratic candidates including the eventual nominee, John Kerry, ran on tempered and incremental health care plans.  

Such was the state of timidity around health care in the wake of "Hillary Care" that for three election cycles in a row the Democratic nominee did not offer anything approaching universal health care.  As Paul Krugman reports in the New York Times this morning at first it looked like Hillary Clinton was set to follow the same timid course as she tried for the nomination this year.

John Edwards made a major speech on counter-terrorism today, and I use counter-terrorism not the "War on Terror," because that is the language that Edwards uses in rejecting Bush's failed traditional militarist approach.

The major initiative in the speech is a new global alliance, the Counter-terrorism Intelligence Treaty Organization (CITO), which will allow for a new era true cooperation in fighting terrorism.  This organization, as Edwards says, will not be a panecea, but it will aloow for a whole new level of policy and security cooperation with our allies.  A key difference is that the formal structure will allow our smaller partners more inluence and buy in to counter terrorism policies

CNN, un-characteristically, did a nice contrast between Edwards's polices and the leading Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani.  Video after the break.

John Edwards just formally accepted the endorsement of two big industrial unions, the United Steelworkers (USW) and the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) at a labor day rally in Pittsburgh PA.  The USW is a BIG one with 1.2 million members and is the largest private industrial union, and the UMWA is a good size one too, with over 100,000 members.

Edwards statement and my analysis over the break.

There are a growing number of grassroots blogs around the country by Edwards supporters dedicated to generating support for and connecting supporters of John Edwards.  I happen to partcipate in one, along with a number of other Democrats in Boston.

I know I probably am not even aware of many of them but I took a sampling of the ones I found (made easy thanks to Google reader) After the break here's some of the best stuff I found from the last week.