Edwards Emphasizes Mill-Worker Background

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040223/ap_on_el_pr/edwards&cid=694&ncid=2043

NEW YORK - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards (news - web sites) emphasized his Southern mill-worker background before a New York labor audience Monday, telling garment workers who have lost their jobs to overseas factories that "I take this personally."


"Your country needs to be there for you. It's no more complicated than that," Edwards told a laid-off worker at the Unite union's New York headquarters. The North Carolina senator cited his own family's hard times when the North Carolina textile mill where his father worked was shut down.


Edwards promoted an economic program he has said would help restore lost American jobs. He also sought to pick up former supporters of Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (news - web sites) and would-be supporters of Ralph Nader (news - web sites).


Edwards told reporters that those who supported Nader four years ago should vote for Edwards now. "A lot of those voters would find me appealing," he said.



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[jmoss]

1. This worked well in WI--needs to work the lawyer "thing"-.

.....though, in NYC. He would have success, I hope.

[GreenArrow]

2. Nader voters

as a Nader voter 4 years ago, who won't be voting Nader this time around, I can assure John Edwards that I find him about as appealing a dish of vanilla ice milk. Which might be one of his strengths.

[THUNDER HANDS]

3. wait.....he's the son of a Mill worker?

I never knew that?!?!?

Gee, I wish he'd mention it more often.

[disenfranchised]

4. You know what I just read this morning?

Kerry fought in Vietnam. I never knew that.

[THUNDER HANDS]

5. tushy

or too shay...or however you spell what you know I'm trying to say. :D

[Jai4WKC08]

6. Yeah, he's mentioned it a time or two...

But it's not really accurate.

“The Edwardses were solidly middle class” when Johnny was growing up, according to a four-part profile of the North Carolina senator in his home state’s most prestigious daily, the Raleigh News and Observer. It’s true that for a few years as a young man Edwards’ father worked on the floor of a Roger Milliken textile mill. But Edwards père (a lifelong Republican, like his reactionary boss) quickly climbed upward, becoming a monitor of worker productivity as a “time-study” man — which any labor organizer in the South will tell you is a polite term for a stoolie who spies on the proletarian mill hands to get them to speed up production for the same low wages. Daddy Edwards’ grassing got him promoted to supervisor, then to plant manager — and he finally resigned to start his own business as a consultant to the textile industry. As a Boston Globe profile of Edwards put it last year, the senator never “notes that his father was part of management . . . ‘John was more middle class than most of us,’” says Bill Garner, a high school friend and college roommate.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Ireland0129.htm

[AP]

7. By retirement age he was a 'suprevisor.' He would have been

promoted into management when he was 30 had he had a college degree. He trained college graudates to do his job so that they could go into executive track jobs.

Class, in many respects, is relative, and Edwards was from a poor rural town. If one of his classmates says he was more middle class than most of us, what does that signify?

How rich do you think the Edwards family was?

[AP]

8. A story Edwards tells: "we were never poor," but he remembers the family

driving through the south on a vacation and stopping at a restaurant. The five of them sat at the table, the father looked at the menu and told the family they'd have to eat somewhere else. Edwards said he never wanted anything ever growing up and felt that he was wealthy, but he never forgot that moment.

I know that feeling. I don't think Kerry or Bush could relate to that feeling. I think having that experience does influence your feelings about how the world works.

[Leilani]

9. I think most of us can relate to

not having enough money to eat in a particular restaurant.

But what the heck does that have to do with electing him President?

I do not understand the logic of having been poor, makes him the best person to be President.

[AP]

10. If you notice, his entire policy agenda, his persona and his biography are

a coherent whole.

Running for president is much more than submitting your resume and a job application. Your entire narrative -- persona, policy and biography -- has to make sense to people.

Here's Lemann's on why Gore's narrative did NOT click with people:

American populism operates more by a logic of culture and background than by a logic of present-day circumstances. In the 2000 campaign, in which two sons of prominent officeholders, educated at prep schools and Ivy League colleges, were pitted against each other, Bush succeeded in putting himself across as the populist and Gore as the élitist. (Though it seems counterintuitive, in recent years Republicans and conservatives have resorted more freely to populism than Democrats and liberals have.) Edwards is better off financially than either Bush or Gore, but somehow, because of a combination of background and presentation skills, against him either of them would look like the country-club guy.

http://blog.johnedwards2004.com/comments.pl?sid=2432&op=&newsid=04/02/22/2258208&threshold=0&commentsort=1&mode=nested&cid=100444

Do you think Kerry's entire persona makes as much sense as Edwards's? Do you think it might create the same problems Gore's created?

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

21. and you never will

"I do not understand the logic of having been poor, makes him the best person to be President."

:hi:

[Jai4WKC08]

15. You're missing the point

The point is not how much money his family had. As you mention, it was a poor region. Still is. And "poor" is always relative.

The point is his father was a stoolie for management, but Edwards continues to hawk him as a simple mill-worker. It's hypocritical, false advertising.

[AP]

16. That makes no sense. His father worked hard and was promoted as high

as he could go, considering that he didn't have a college degree, by the time he retired.

Edwards has never pretended that his father was running the machines at age 65.

And it's funny that nobody is criticizing the things Edwards has said about his financial situation, like that his father had to take out a loan to get him out of the hospital when he was born and that they had to struggle financially to put him through college and law school (and that he couldn't go to the best schools to which he was accepted because of money).

Regardless of whether Edwards's father was a supervisor or a laborer for the last part of his career, the fact is that the environment Edwards grew up in was one where he appreciated the value (or cost) of a loan, and that people worked hard to get all the money they made.

This experience is very far from every presidential candidate since Dole v. Clinton in '96 (and Sharpton and Kucinich this year).

[Jai4WKC08]

17. Spinning like a top

The article I quoted talks about Edwards' dad being management's stoolie LONG before he was age 65. I seem to recall hearing he moved up from simple "mill worker" after only a very few years. If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means post it.

As for your statement "This experience is very far from every presidential candidate since Dole v. Clinton in '96 (and Sharpton and Kucinich this year)," am I to assume you're not only considering those candidates still in the race this year? Because that's not what your statement says. Wes Clark was raised on a bank-teller's salary afterall. By a single mom for a number of years, and then with a perenially out-of-work step-dad. Just for the record. Might be important to remember in the future.

[AP]

22. Sure. Add Clark to the list. Don't you think that Clark's background

gave him unique insight into how Americans really experience life?

And that article is sick. Last weeks LA Weekly had a fawning article about Edwards, and I bet they put it in becuase they were embarrassed by the hysterics in that one that you cite.

Where in that article is their any concrete evidence of the family's economic situation. They took a title and imported a ton of meaning on the TITLE without any proof of what it meant.

[mmonk]

11. ssssshhhhhhh!

[maxanne]

12. gee, too bad

he doesn't mention his humble roots more often.

[littlejoe]

13. His mill worker lines are getting old. He needs a new schtick.

[AP]

14. Evidence? That he surges in the polls when people hear his story?

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

18. What a difference from the Trust-Funded Skull & Bones Yalie

sounds like a Real American to me!

[mmonk]

19. my

wife laughs every time she hears it or hears he's used it again.

[jpgpenn]

20. More like "the son of a mill worker manager stoolie"!