The Perils of Claiming to Be a Populist

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The Perils of Claiming to Be a Populist
By ROBIN TONER
Published: July 18, 2007

....At the moment, many analysts agree, it is an especially ripe time to launch an economic populist campaign. Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center said his surveys showed the highest level of concern over income inequality since the late 1980s, when he started examining the issue. Stagnant wages for much of middle America, big gains for the very rich and growing strains from rising gas prices and the like all set the stage for the debate, Mr. Kohut says. “This is an issue that’s going to get a hearing in this campaign,” he says. “It will resonate.”

But those who claim to stand with the people inevitably face a counterattack, which some Democrats are also rediscovering.

Even as former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina began his tour this week to highlight American poverty, the Republican National Committee was weighing in with a series of questions and attacks. It essentially boiled down to this: Can a multi-millionaire former trial lawyer with a high-flying lifestyle really understand or care about poverty or middle class America? Can he both profit under the current system through hedge funds and the like and vow to change it?

Some liberal bloggers fumed that this critique presumed that it would somehow be better — more authentic — for a rich man to stand up for his own class interests than to speak up for working America. They were especially irritated at the news media’s coverage of the issue....

***

Drew Westen, author of the new book “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,” said there is a straightforward narrative for Mr. Edwards and others similarly situated: “No one says Ted Kennedy has to sell his compound in Hyannis Port in order to talk about poverty.”

In fact, when Mr. Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1962, he was attacked by his opponent as being privileged, unaccomplished, and for having “never worked for a living.” A burly worker approached him one day and said, “Ted, me boy, I understand you’ve never worked a day in your life.”

He paused, then added, “You haven’t missed a thing.”

Champions of the working class, in short, are often made, not born.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/us/politics/18web-toner.html

[Strawman]

1. Three letters: F-D-R

nuff said

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Indeed!

"Historians, like Mr. Kazin of Georgetown University, note that being rich in and of itself has not kept other Democrats from successfully railing against what Franklin Roosevelt (a rich man) described as the 'economic royalists.'"

[Strawman]

3. Yep, and even if you buy their argument, Edwards grew up in a working class family

By the time he got rich, I think he had his share of authentic working class worries and anxieties.

They can't kill the message so they wanna kill one of the messengers. Simple as that.

I will concede this: there is a certain phoniness about Edwards, a certain over-craftedness to his rhetoric and mannerisms that rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but his authenticity or inauthenticity has nothing to do with his background.

That's not to mention that FDR could be kind of a phony too (read: Jonathan Alter's biography of FDR, "The Defining Moment" for anecdotal evidence of this). Ultimately that doesn't matter a whole lot either. I don't think old people give two shits about that when they're cashing their Social Security checks every month.

[OHdem10]

4. If we can get away from absolutist thinking, and logically

reason---Who are in a position to really do anything about
poverty, or assisting the vulnerable?

Reality is and always has been historically. Either rich or
above average in income can get the attention. Only people
with enough money can run for election. The most conservative
GOPer who beilieves government has no role in poverty alleviation
has to have money to run for office. Why do we get Celebrities
(Rich people) to represent charities? First they have enough
money they can afford to donate money and TIME working for the
charity.

Taking a fundamentalist absolutist position that Rich People
cannot be populists defies logic and history.

We should not be envous of those who have money and wealth.
There is a world of difference between a rich person who is
conceerned for his fellow man and Corporations who exploit
their fellow main for the gain of a few.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. "Only people with enough money can run for election."

Simply stated, and true, OHdem!