What's John Edwards Up to These Days?

Posted by Jeff Fecke, Shakesville at 2:15 PM on February 29, 2008.

After he left the presidential race, one could have forgiven John Edwards if he just wanted to go back home to enjoy a period of semi-retirement. Spend time with his wife and kids, kick back, relax after running for president for pretty much seven years straight.

Fortunately for the rest of us, that's not what John Edwards is doing:

A coalition announced Monday and called Iraq Campaign 2008 seeks to tie anxiety over the faltering economy to anxiety over the duration of the war. Part of its agenda is targeting what it calls "obstructionist" members of Congress--Democrats as well as Republicans--that don't seek a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. The campaign has an attention-getting front-man: former presidential candidate John Edwards. The effort, however, is not without problems--not least of which is the conundrum of whether antiwar activism turns out to be counterproductive to ending a war.

"People don't understand why we're spending $500 billion and counting in Iraq," Edwards said in a Monday conference call, "when at the same time we've got 40-plus million Americans with no health care coverage, 37 million-plus living in poverty. It doesn't make sense to them."

The effort is the brainchild of a group of liberal organizations: MoveOn.org, the Service Employees International Union, the VoteVets progressive veterans network, USAction and the Center for American Progress.

Good for him. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: John Edwards is a talented man, and he deserves a place in whatever Democratic administration comes next. In the meantime, it's nice to see him working to raise awareness of the fact that our economic woes are in no small part tied to the bottomless pit of blood and treasure that we continue to feed.

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Jeff Fecke is a regular blogger for Shakesville.