Is It True That “Angry Populism” Doesn’t Actually Work?
So John Edwards dropped out. This makes sense: he was getting no support and his influence was no longer needed. It’s obvious that his health care, global warming and poverty plans pushed Clinton and Obama to the left, but one way in which he didn’t really succeed was changing the tone. I know this is a much-derided MSM archetype, but he really was an angry, confrontational populist. While Clinton could excite people with wonky detail and Obama could uplift, Edwards speeches were a dreary, endless catalogue of horrors perpetrated by insurance companies, greedy corporations and their political pawns. It was, in many ways, the type of manichean , take no prisoners message that many progressive activists wanted to hear, but it’s not clear if anyone else did. It turns out that no one has ever won the White House, with the possible exception of FDR, by running a pure populist campaign. There was no good reason to think Edwards would be able to do so.
I still maintain that if there wasn’t a total media embargo on the Edwards campaign through Iowa, he could very well be the frontrunner right now. His message resonated with both a lot of people from both the progressive, well-educated wing of the Democratic party and the rural, working-class wing. The big problem for his campaign is that the message wasn’t something that the networks wanted to hear – it didn’t exactly make for television and disseminating it doesn’t exactly endear one to corporate sponsors. So what you get is a situation where everyone on a large enough soapbox just sort of mutually agrees that no matter how well he performs early on, Edwards can never, ever be a “serious” candidate.
Ned
January 30, 2008 at 3:50 pm