Monday, June 11, 2007

A Strategy for John Edwards

I spent some time yesterday with The New York Times Magazine issue on economics, especially the piece on John Edwards, my candidate for President in 2008. He wants to fight poverty. The conclusion was that he has the personal passion , some good policies that will work, but he hasn't found a strategy to make it a winnable issue. I am a moralist who writes books on ethic, but I agree that appeals to conscience won't work very well here.

My suggestion is that he make his appeal to strengthening families, especially middle and lower-income families. This is a theme that can capture the imagination of large numbers of people because they have a personal interest in strengthening their families and need help.

He can organize a variety of proposals around this central focus, many of them designed to promote the incomes of average and low-income workers whose wages have been mainly stagnant in recent years, with some exceptions. For further elaboration of this, see my contribution dated Saturday, November 11, 2006.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You're right. But it doesn't indicate Edwards is 'against' something- a seeming requisite for any campaign to rally the common denominator of the american electorate.