Edwards Presidency "A Disaster For Big Bizness!" But A A Boon To Middle America

[DaLittle Kitty]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011108T.shtml

US Corporate Elite Fear Candidate Edwards
By Kevin Drawbaugh
Reuters

Friday 11 January 2008

Washington - Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same -- Democrat John Edwards.

The former North Carolina senator's chosen profession alone raises the hackles of business people. Before entering politics, he made a fortune as a trial lawyer.

In litigious America, trial lawyers bring lawsuits against companies on behalf of aggrieved individuals and sometimes win multimillion-dollar settlements. Edwards won several.

But beyond his profession, Edwards' tone and language on the campaign trail have increased business antipathy toward him. His stump speeches are peppered with attacks on "corporate greed" and warnings of "the destruction of the middle class."

He accuses lobbyists of "corrupting the government" and says Americans lack universal health care because of "drug companies, insurance companies and their lobbyists."

Despite not winning the two state nominating contests completed so far, with 48 to go, Edwards insists he is in the race to stay. An Edwards campaign spokesman said on Thursday that inside-the-Beltway operatives who fight to defend the powerful and the privileged should be afraid.

"The lobbyists and special interests who abuse the system in Washington have good reason to fear John Edwards.

"Once he is president, the interests of middle class families will never again take a back seat to corporate greed in Washington," said campaign spokesman Eric Schultz.

Open attacks on the business elite are seldom heard from mainstream White House candidates in America, despite skyrocketing CEO pay, rising income inequality, and a torrent of scandals in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street.

But this year Edwards is not alone. Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, sometimes also rails against corporate power and influence, tapping a populist current that lies just below the surface of U.S. politics.

One business lobbyist, who asked not to be named, said Edwards "has gone to this angry populist, anti-business rhetoric that borders on class warfare ... He focuses dislike of special interests, which is out there, on business."

Another lobbyist said an Edwards presidency would be "a disaster" for his well-heeled industrialist clients.

After this week's New Hampshire primaries, where he placed a distant third behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Edwards might not seem so scary. He ran second in the Iowa Democratic caucuses last week, trailing Obama and just ahead of Clinton.

Edwards suffered a blow on Thursday when Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry snubbed him and endorsed Obama. Edwards was Kerry's vice-presidential running mate in Kerry's failed Democratic bid for the White House in 2004.

Business's Favorite Unclear

Asked which candidate their clients most support, corporate lobbyists were unsure. Clinton has cautious backing within the corporate jet set, as do Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, they said.

These candidates represent stability to executives who have much to lose if November's election brings about the sweeping change some candidates are promising.

Obama and Huckabee register largely as unknown quantities among business owners, both large and small, say lobbyists.

"My sense is that Obama would govern as a reasonably pragmatic Democrat ... I think Hillary is approachable. She knows where a lot of her funding has come from, to be blunt," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Stanford Group Co., a market and policy analysis group.

But Edwards, Valliere said, is seen as "an anti-business populist" and "a trade protectionist who is quite unabashed about raising taxes."

"I think his regulatory policies, as well as his tax policies, would be viewed as a threat to business," he said.

"The next scariest for business would be Huckabee because of his rhetoric and because he's an unknown."

Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh; editing by John Wallace.

[ursi]

1. I'm tired of just being a wallet for corporate America! Go John Edwards!

[OhioChick]

2. #3 Rec! n/t

[L0oniX]

3. He won't be able to do anything unless congress goes along with him...

and congress is in the back pockets of corporations. We are the only ones who can or will do something and we do it by using our pocket books and working together as a group to hurt these big fucking asscarrot corporations; the ones who send our jobs to the slave owners and use our taxes for war and profit from our deaths.

[Hieronymus]

4. He has the power to veto. Why on earth would you be so ...

willing to admit defeat to the status quo?

[Two Americas]

11. ripples in the pond

We have to start somewhere. Each person speaking out encourages another to speak out. People's hearts and minds are changed. As Edwards becomes more successful, candidates around the country are encouraged, and as the people hear Edwards' message, they bring pressure on their reps. As Edwards gains strength, the enemy comes out of hiding and shows his true colors, as we just saw with the president of the US Chamber of Commerce. That reveals the truth to more people, and more momentum builds.

Yes, everything has to change top to bottom. Yes, the people need to change. Yes, Congress needs to change. Yes, no one person can do it alone. Yes, Edwards is not our savior. Yes, we can imagine better candidates than Edwards, and there are other politicians who are better than he is in various ways.

But Edwards is doing one powerful thing that makes everything else trivial in comparison. He is recognizing and speaking out about the most important and fundamental problem we face, and advocating a traditional set of Democratic party principles and ideals in opposition to it. One percent of the population, the wealthiest and most powerful people, have seized our government, our economy and are gaining ever-increasing control over every facet of our lives. Maybe 10% is prospering and hanging on, although they are even at risk, while 90% of the people in the country are in a long slow and sickening slide to the bottom.

Hear that, make it your own, fight for it - this is so much bigger than a little personal choice as to which personality you prefer in the horse race, or even each of our "personal values" and how some candidate for office does or does not match up in our minds.

The Republicans know that this is the battle, and they are fighting as hard as they can for the 1% who are their employers. The entire Republican party, and half of the Democratic party has been bought and paid for, corrupted and perverted to do the will of 1% of the population at the terrible expense of 90% of the population. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our families, to our neighbors and to generations yet to come to take up the call to defend the 90% with at least as much determination and courage and focus as the Republicans and half of the Democrats are fighting for that upper 1%.

Never mind what you think about Edwards. It is so much bigger and more important than that.

Within the context of fighting for the have-nots versus the haves—defending ourselves in a war that they started and have had all their own way—all of the causes will succeed: equal rights, healthcare, and end to imperialistic wars, environmental destruction. Edwards isn't going to do all that—we are. He is merely creating the broad and powerful context within which we can succeed at everything we have been fighting for and failing at.

[Yuugal]

5. Oh my, class warfare

"One business lobbyist, who asked not to be named, said Edwards "has gone to this angry populist, anti-business rhetoric that borders on class warfare ... He focuses dislike of special interests, which is out there, on business.""

Ever notice how its always class warfare when we talk about evening the playing field?

[drm604]

6. If it is class warfare...

we're not the ones who started it.

[stravu9]

7. That's right!

Class warfare is being waged from the top down!

[ladjf]

9. It means our class fights back rather than rolling over dead.

[HughBeaumont]

14. Nor are we the ones who are winning it.

That needs to be stressed by someone other than Warren Buffet.

[AntiFascist]

13. Media corporatists would prefer to turn it into other type of warfare...

race warfare, feminist warfare, religious warfare...anything but business!

[Yael]

8. If it wasn't for the UK, we here in the US would have no clue as to what goes on in our country

[DavidDvorkin]

10. Which is why he's being disappeared by the corporate-controlled media

[redqueen]

16. Yup!

They'd reeeeally rather he NOT be the candidate they have to deal with in the GE. :D

[DemDogs]

12. Edwards is the only one who stands up to them. No surprise here.

Obama is not unknown. He took the cash and submitted amendments to help insurance companies. HRC is clearly not an unknown. She feeds at their table.

What they don't like is that they know Edwards won't be swayed by their money. He is not a protectionist in the way they use it, but they cringe when he says the first question for trade agreements is not the Clinton question of whether business likes it but the Edwards question of whether it is good for America's workers. So business screams class warfare. Good for Edwards.

[redqueen]

15. Well... at least it made it as far as Truthout!

:)

[onehandle]

17. kick! nt