Edwards preparing to beat a whole herd of dead horses

According to a Wall Street Journal story by Jackie Calmes, John Edwards is planning on running his presidential campaign on his “Two Americas” theme of Edwards’ failed 2004 campaign. It didn’t work for him then and it won’t work for him now. Claiming that there are 37 million Americans living below the completely arbitrary and artificial poverty line, Edwards propses to lift those 37 million out of poverty over the next 30 years, 1/3 every decade. Sounds like a real warm and fuzzy plan doesn’t it?

How many of those 37 million will be alive after thirty years? How many more people will have been born or lost jobs or otherwise fallen into poverty? Is that 37 million really a static number? And poverty is such an arbitrary expression. What is poor in Washington, DC isn’t all that poor in the rural areas so how can bureaucrats in Washington set a single number as a one-size-fits-all barometer for poverty?

But what’s really funny is his plan to raise the poor up;

His “Working Society” agenda would mean a higher federal minimum wage, reduced taxes for low-income workers, universal health care, and one million new housing vouchers for working families, to help them find homes in neighborhoods with better schools.

First, raising the minimum wage; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2005 only 1.8 million workers made minimum wage and less than 800,000 are over the age of 25. That seems to be a drop in the bucket out those 37 million poor people doesn’t it?

Reduce taxes on the poor; President Bush cut taxes on the poorest workers in 2001 when he lowered the lowest marginal tax bracket from 15% to 10% and he lowered the annual income requirements for people who have to pay taxes which moved thousands more off the tax rolls. But of course, Edwards is talking about raising the Earned Income Credit and paying poor back the money they pay into Social Security, but he doesn’t want to say that out loud where the labor unions could hear him.

Universal health care is a non-starter. We have universal healthcare already. Anybody been turned away from a hospital because they haven’t bought health insurance?

Housing vouchers so the poor can move to better neighborhoods? So who will live in those neighborhoods that the poor abandon? Is Edwards going to force the rich to move to those neighborhoods and send their kids to underperforming schools? Kind of like putting the cart before the horse isn’t it?

Actually, it’s all just populist drivel. Edwards thinks his time worn, bogus antecdotes about “Two Americas” can win him the election, when all it might do is win him his party’s nomination. Conservatives are too smart to buy into his “progressive” guilt trip policy.

Category: Politics