John Edwards And The Myth of Liberal Populism
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (07/15/04)
DEMOCRATS fancy themselves the working man’s representation, crusading against corporate greed and fighting for unions, a higher minimum wage, and redistributionism. But the self-proclaimed Party of the People is really just the Party of Lobbyists, Bullies, and Snobs. Populism is no longer their métier.
Liberal populist aspirant Jim Hightower, the former Texas agriculture commissioner, believes that he’s just an average American, working toward what every other American wants. He calls himself “America’s #1 Populist,” and spends his days traipsing through the country wailing about the ugly oppressiveness of capitalism and democracy. The Houston Chronicle called him “one of the dynamic populist voices of his era.”
But what exactly has Hightower accomplished? What achievements can liberals attribute to him? On the tundra of American politicking, where is Hightower’s footprint?
He isn’t “dynamic,” and—to draw upon his trademark Texas lingo—he ain’t no populist. He appeals not to an angry sect of Americans fed up with their plight in life, but to a few thousand ideologues scattered throughout America who hate George Bush.
Democrats don’t understand that. They think Hightower and his lowly ilk have a respectable following. They think there’s a sizeable group of Americans silently praying for the day that John Kerry “takes back America.” Kerry’s selection of John Edwards, another supposed “populist,” is a testament to that.
The man who would like to replace Dick Cheney won kudos from the love struck press during the Democratic primaries when he spoke about our allegedly divided country. He grimly reported that there are “two Americas,” one for the swine with money, and one for the rest of us.
He said there’s “[o]ne America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward; one America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks; one America that will do anything to leave its children a better life, another America that never has to do a thing because its children are already set for life."
Figuring out what Edwards meant by that speech is a process similar to watching Gone With the Wind in one sitting. Though it doesn’t physically hurt, it does make you pine for the more exciting things in life, such as reading books about weed removal.
One could spend his life searching for truth behind Edwards’ diatribe and never come up with anything even loosely coherent, principally because the premise of his speech is a lie. Americans who work always reap the reward of their efforts. That’s why they work. If American workers weren’t reaping what they sewed, they’d quit sewing and take up canasta.
The people who work are also the ones paying the taxes, because they’re the only people who can afford them. In fact, here in this America—I’m not sure which America it is—making more money means paying more taxes. This is further evidence that work provides profit.
And how did Edwards’ “two Americas” drivel lead to all this talk about Democrats’ keen optimism? Do Kerry and Edwards really represent hopefulness? President Bush gets teary-eyed when he talks about bringing democracy to the Middle-East. He speaks around the country about the importance of faith and family. But Edwards and Kerry are the optimists?
Instead of joining a youthful populist with an experienced legislator, the Kerry campaign joined a rich snob from the south with a richer snob from New England.
In Colorado the Kerry-Edwards campaign is still without an office. The “communications director” for that state, 26-year-old Steve Haro, was just hired several days ago, and he’d visited the state only once when he got the job. You’d think they could have found a Democrat in Denver or Boulder or Colorado Springs, but, alas, Haro is from LA.
This is a perfect illustration of the myth of liberal populism. Liberals don’t care what they stand for, and they certainly don’t know what they’ll do if elected. They don’t care about the “little people,” and they’re not populists. They’re power-hungry fear-mongers, out to hoodwink Americans into supporting them.
Jim Hightower once called the radio “a very democratic little box.” The ballot box is also democratic, and if it turns out to be as good to Mr. Edwards as the radio was to Mr. Hightower, we can anticipate four more years of George W. Bush.
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