Former Senator John Edwards ventured onto Hillary Rodham Clinton’s home turf today with a speech that drove home the liberal themes that he has been using to distinguish himself from the New York Senator.
His remarks at Baruch College were part of a forum on the working poor sponsored by the Community Service Society, a nonprofit think tank, and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. While his speech was closed to the media, he took a handful of questions from reporters afterwards, outlining positions on immigration, health care and employment in measured tones.
And at the end of that question-and-answer session, he echoed his recent veiled criticisms of Mrs. Clinton, striking a much more diplomatic tone than others recently have on the issue of “truth.”
“It’s important to me personally to tell the truth about a critical vote that I cast,” he said. “If you ask me what the most important personal characteristics of the next president of the United States are, I would say honesty, openness and decency. We need to feel like we can trust the president of the United States.”
Win or lose, John Edwards has already done America a great service by running for President and putting the issue of poverty where it belongs: front and center.
And the more he talks about it, the more political ground he will snatch from his leading Democratic rivals, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Which is as it should be.
Edwards did a star turn in Manhattan this week, talking with me for nearly an hour before an audience of city leaders who wage a daily fight on behalf of low-income New Yorkers. The panel, co-sponsored by the Community Service Society and SEIU Local 32B/32J, is designed to get presidential candidates on the record about what they will do to help the working poor.
It's a damn shame the forums are even necessary, and that candidates from the party of Al Smith, FDR and Lyndon Johnson have to be cajoled into mumbling a few words about the 37 million Americans who live in poverty. But that's where we are in 2007.
Edwards, the mill worker's son, is positively eloquent on the subject, announcing his bid for the White House from the ruins of News Orleans - a place that President Bush never mentioned in his recent State of the Union address - and calling poverty "the great moral issue of our time."
He has backed up that passion with one sound, compassionate plan after another to extend the hand of government to Americans in dire economic straits.
Edwards is, for instance, a fierce and unapologetic supporter of federal legislation that would make it easier to form unions, especially for the estimated 50 million Americans toiling in the service economy, many of whom work for poverty-level wages without health or retirement benefits.
He's also calling for the creation of 1 million new housing vouchers, based on the Section 8 program, that would provide working-poor families with a rent subsidy. The Edwards proposal, importantly, calls for the vouchers to be flexible and mobile to prevent segregated clusters of low-income housing from being formed.
Edwards also wants strong regulation of payday lenders that bury working people under mountains of debt. He also wants to create development accounts that provide matching funds for families that save money for education, downpayments on home ownership and other proven paths out of poverty.
He's proposing other measures, like an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit and a plan for universal health insurance, that will help low-income families.
In short, Edwards is doing what every Democratic presidential candidate ought to be doing - talking about ways to eliminate desperate poverty from our midst once and for all.
"I'm proposing we set a national goal of eliminating poverty in the next 30 years," he said in an address at the National Press Club. "Like JFK challenging America to land a man on the moon, a national goal of eradicating poverty will sharpen our focus, marshal our resources and at the end of the day, bring out our best."
The problem, of course, is that presidential contests tend to bring out our worst. For every news story about issues in the presidential campaign, there seem to be 10 about trivial matters like which candidate called his rival a liar.
Edwards is aiming for something higher and grander, and asking us to do the same. Exactly what a man running for President ought to do.
John Edwards at Leadership Forum on the Working Poor
By Zita Allen Special to the AmNews
Published March 1, 2007
Democratic presidential hopeful former Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) brought his campaign to New York Tuesday, February 27 and, taking a page out of another contender’s playbook, listened to what community, labor, religious and business leaders had to say about health care, education, jobs, employment and other issues affecting working families.
Held under the thematic umbrella, “Working Cities: A Leadership Forum on the Working Poor,” the meeting took place at Baruch College in midtown Manhattan under the joint sponsorship of the Community Service Society and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. The hour-long gathering was moderated by Daily News columnist Errol Louis.
At the press conference following the closed-door session, Edwards addressed reporters’ questions on some of the same issues insiders said had been tackled in the meeting: poverty, health care, immigration, the war in Iraq, and Iran.
Addressing the question of Iraq, Edwards responses seemed to be aimed at New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton or President Bush, or both. On his earlier vote in support of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Edwards said, “It’s important to me personally to tell the truth about a critical vote that I cast.” He added, “We need to feel like we can trust the president of the United States. There’s not a single voter in America who doesn’t understand that their president is human and their president will sometimes make mistakes.”
There was no doubt who he was talking about when he said, “We’ve had six-plus years now of a president who’s been completely unwilling to do that, and it’s been a huge price for America and the rest of the world.” Edwards went on to call for a withdrawal of American troops and the engagement with Iran, Syria and the other countries in the region to help stabilize the situation there.
Turning to more domestic issues, Edwards said America had three basic choices when it came to resolving the immigration issue. Deportation was unrealistic, he said. Securing the southern border and comprehensive immigration reform were more doable. Pointing to the millions of undocumented immigrants living in America, Edwards said, “I think these 11 or 12 million people who live in this country should be able to earn American citizenship.”
The high cost of health care was another item on his agenda, Edwards said, declaring the he is the first presidential candidate to “have a detailed substantive universal health care plan.” His solution includes a mix of private insurance and a government single-payer program. Citing a personal situation that brought home the need for universal health care, Edwards recalled how his mother “had to give up her small business and go back to work in the post office so she and my dad could have health coverage ‘cause he had a long-term heart condition,” He added, “I want to do something about that.”
In response to a question from The Amsterdam News about a recent Community Service Society report noting the high rates of unemployment in New York and around the country among Black and Hispanic males, Edwards described several proposals that included entry-level jobs for unemployed youth and other programs to help transition the chronically unemployed into the workplace. “What we want to do is use all the tools that we have available,” said Edwards, whose theme of “two Americas” has resonated in speeches in which he has declared, “The most important anti-poverty movement is the organized labor movement.”
David Jones of the Community Service Society and SEIU 32BJ head Mike Fishman said the meeting with Edwards was the first in a series of forums with both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. The architects of the forum, which brought together some 90 people from a cross-section of New York non-profits and businesses added, “Basically, we wanted to have a discussion about the working poor, particularly the urban working poor. I think we were trying to make sure we had people at least on record as to where their positions were on this issue.”
Edwards, on Clinton’s turf, says he’s proud of apology for Iraq vote
By GLENN BLAIN
Published: February 28, 2007
NEW YORK - Democrat John Edwards visited the home state of one of his biggest rivals for president yesterday and didn't pass up an opportunity to tout a major issue separating him from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - the Iraq vote.
Edwards, in response to a reporter's question, said he was proud of his decision to apologize for voting, as a member of the Senate, to authorize the use of force in Iraq. He said Americans want a president who will "tell the truth" when they've made a mistake.
"You asked me what I think the most important personal characteristics of the next president are - I would say honesty, openness and decency," he said. "We need to feel like we can trust the president of the United States."
Edwards did not mention Clinton's name during his brief session with reporters, but his comments could have been interpreted as an attack on the New York Democrat, who has steadfastly refused to apologize for her vote in favor of the war.
"They want you to be willing to change course when something's not working," he said. "We've had six-plus years now of a president who is completely unwilling to do that, and it's been a huge price for America and the rest of the world."
Clinton spokesman Blake Zeff, responding to Edwards' comments, said: "Senator Clinton hopes that Democrats will stand together to stop the president's efforts to escalate the war and bring it to a close."
Edwards spoke with reporters after meeting privately with officials from the Community Service Society of New York and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union as part of their "Working Cities" discussion forum on poverty and the working poor in urban America.
During his news conference, the former senator from North Carolina was asked about former Vice President Al Gore's appearance at the Academy Awards and whether he expected Gore to enter the race.
"I thought he was terrific," Edwards said, before adding: "I think at this moment, I take him at his word. He said that he was not planning to run for president."
Presidential candidate John Edwards is in
the city this morning for the first in a series of
closed-door conversations on poverty and the
working poor. The topics are a centerpiece of
his campaign. The event—as well as the series,
called Working Cities—is being hosted by
Local 32BJ and the Community Service Society.
Former Mayor David Dinkins is expected
to attend, and former Gov. Mario Cuomo may
also be there. An organizer hopes to have all
the major presidential candidates explain
their plans to combat poverty.
Edwards To Attend Poverty Forum
Published: February 27, 2007
Senator Edwards is scheduled to be inNew York today talking about poverty, of his bread and butter campaign issues. Mr. Edwards — who is competing against Senators Clinton and Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination — will be meeting with labor leaders from Local 32BJ and with members of the Community Service Society.
The groups are holding a forum on poverty and the working poor. The appearance comes a day after the Community Service Society, a non-profit that works on poverty issues, released a report showing that while New York is enjoying its lowest unemployment rate in recent memory, that not everyone is reaping the benefits. It found the unemployment was particularly troublesome among young black and Hispanic men.
Mr. Edwards, who ran a poverty center at the University of North Carolinaafter leaving the senate in 2004, is counting on labor support nationwide to buoy his candidacy
