John Edwards: 'Poverty Is Personal'

In a walnut-paneled conference room in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, John Edwards sat in the same chair at a small round table for two days taking copious notes, as panels of policy wonks expounded on new approaches to fight poverty.

In the age of George W., Wal-Mart, and free market ideology, few public officials or candidates for office have much to say about the persistence of poverty in the world's wealthiest nation. Yet here was the 52-year-old Edwards, calculating whether and how to run for president, at a two-day seminar on poverty that, while attracting 200 people, really had only one student.

The March conference was sponsored by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, a research institute Edwards founded last year after his defeat as the Democratic vice presidential candidate in November 2004.

Edwards told the conferees, "When I spoke on the campaign trail about the two Americas, people called it a downer." The former Senator from North Carolina had anchored his 2004 presidential campaign with the "two Americas" theme about the nation's widening economic divide. Once Kerry invited him to join his ticket as his running mate, Edwards had to downplay what some pundits called his "class war" rhetoric, but which he insisted was more about reconciliation and reform.

Now Edwards has not only resurrected the rhetoric, but has pinned his hopes for the White House on a strategy of connecting to the nation's grassroots activists. Since January 2005, he has visited 34 states and three foreign countries talking about the two Americas. In key swing states like Ohio, Iowa, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, Edwards has joined Maud Hurd, president of the activist group ACORN, to promote grassroots campaigns to raise the minimum wage. At each stop Edwards said, "I am strongly committed to moving people out of poverty and into the middle class," and "One of most important things we can do is help families earn more money at work."

He has fired up crowds at union rallies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston as part of a campaign to raise wages and benefits for hotel workers. At a union rally in Chicago, he said, "The best anti-poverty strategy is a strong labor movement."

He has joined a campaign by Unite Here, the union of hotel, restaurant and apparel workers, to pressure hotels around the nation to improve wages for not just 90,000 unionized hotel workers, but also for more than a million nonunion hotel workers. "Can we still really call America the land of opportunity when hotel workers who work full time for profitable hotel companies cannot afford to make ends meet?" Edwards said. "This is not just unjust. It is immoral, and we need to do something about it."

In a speech in Baton Rouge, La., he said Hurricane Katrina made the poor "impossible to ignore."

Rebuilding Society

As Edward honed his stump speech, a main theme has become, "We must keep America's promise of opportunity for all. We must build a working society -- an America where everyone who works hard finally has the rewards to show for it."

Edwards' riff echoes Bill Clinton's campaign theme that, "Any American willing to work hard and play by the rules should have a chance to get ahead." But Edwards' willingness to work alongside unions and groups like ACORN puts him closer to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It also connects him to the kind of politics that Bobby Kennedy embraced when he built a campaign coalition that included civil rights groups, labor unions, and the poor, and would have catapulted him to the White House, had he not been killed in 1968.

Work is at the core of Edwards' vision. Work should lead to personal and tangible assets including home ownership, savings for retirement, and a college education for one's children. Work must pay fairly. And it should strengthen families, a proposition that Edwards' hopes will make it harder to label him a knee-jerk liberal.