Pearl River Jason DeParle, who covers the poverty beat for the New York Times, says the Harris-Trump contest “presents the sharpest clash in antipoverty policy in at least a generation, and its outcome could shape the economic security of millions of low-income Americans.”
In noting the differences, he reports that Harris “…would seek to sustain or expand many of them [the pandemic programs], including subsidies for food, health care and housing, and revive a change to the child tax credit that essentially created a guaranteed income for families with children.” She also wants to raise the minimum wage – finally. Trump on the other hand “…touts his 2017 tax cuts, which he credits for boosting the economy and reducing poverty to a prepandemic low, and he has vowed to extend them when they expire next year. Most of the direct benefit from those cuts went to corporations and the wealthy.” Simply put, Trump runs from his pandemic support, while Harris embraces her role in the Biden administration’s expansion of the support, which cumulatively reduced poverty by almost half during the crisis.
Indeed, the contrast is night and day. I don’t want to quibble, but is it the “sharpest clash in antipoverty policy in a generation” really? Maybe, but a tacky, smart-alecky piece that also ran in the Times reminded me when a candidate for president was bold enough to make reducing poverty the centerpiece of his campaign, not just one of the planks. I’m talking about former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, a vice-presidential candidate with John Kerry in 2004 and a presidential aspirant in 2008. The reporter tried to zing Edwards as “the most curious” around the “circus” of the Chicago Democratic convention, but you wouldn’t have known it from Edwards’ quotes in the story which were about his career, Harris, North Carolina, and his old team and were mature, disciplined and spot-on. Too bad the punk reporter wanted to paint him as scandalized and a loser and didn’t ask him about his advocacy for the poor, but that wouldn’t have been funny or earned a byline.
From 2004 to 2008, Edwards was a friend and partner to ACORN. He didn’t just talk; he walked the walk with us. He showed up in our state campaigns for minimum wage increases. If we asked him for help, we got help. Our leaders from the ACORN President Maude Hurd on down loved the man. Better than any politician or candidate in ACORN’s history, he was with us on the issues, when it came to advancing the interests of low-and-moderate income families. In the 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination, one of the reasons it took the ACORN board three votes before they eventually endorsed Barack Obama, was that on the first ballots Edwards polled head to head with Obama and miles past Hillary Clinton. He had narrowly lost to Obama in the first contest in Iowa. Many ACORN leaders felt he had earned our support. New York held out for their Senator Clinton, and Illinois for their Senator Obama. No candidate won the 75%. Poverty was his platform and was unmatched by McCain or any of the other Democratic contenders.
Personal issues unraveled his campaign, and the media frenzy and legal threats around use of his campaign funds, where he was later exonerated, undid his efforts. Those were different times. Edwards so-called “scandal” seems mild compared to the daily personal sleaze that Trump brought to presidential politics in 2016. Given Trump’s documented record in court and from his own comments, the bar has been lowered so far on what might count as a disqualifying personal sex scandal now, that it’s almost subterranean. There’s not a double standard now. There’s virtually no standard at all. Edwards situation seems quaint in comparison.
Even in a time when the gap between the rich and poor is so mammoth, where a candidate like Trump can claim that tax breaks for the rich are an antipoverty program, where the government can allow millions to be pushed back into poverty almost minutes after they got above the line, where the lack of equity has put America’s inequality near the top of the list for all the world’s countries, as necessary as it would seem for a candidate to run on ending poverty and achieving equality in the United States, it is almost unimaginable that someone today would try what Edwards did. It’s too bad.
What he gets for it is an attempted cheap shot in the Times, which fell off of him like water on a duck’s back. Edwards explains his presence simply. The Democratic National Committee invited him, so he came. He felt, correctly, it “was really nice, very respectful.” When any of us remember Edwards fighting hand to hand with ACORN around the country for living wages and improving the lives of lower income families, we regret the loss of his voice on these issues nationally. What I feel when I think about Edwards is not curiosity, but regret. And, of course, respect.