Presidential Auction 2004: The danger of Edwards

JUDGING BY the testy back-and-forth between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry the day after Kerry announced Sen. John Edwards as his running mate, this is going to be one of the meanest campaigns in history.

  SF Gate article

Well, we've gotten there steadily and surely, and it doesn't look like we'll be changing course any time soon.

Since they have to tread lightly on the inexperience issue, considering Bush's great lack of experience in 2000, it appears they are going to rip at the fact that Edwards is a trial lawyer. If they didn't mind being so two-faced with such huge double-standards, they might want to be careful - an awful lot of politicians are lawyers.

The head of the National Association of Manufacturers, representing 14,000 companies, said Edwards "demonstrates conspicuous hostility to manufacturing and business" that drives companies into bankruptcy and puts thousands of Americans out of work.

"As a trial lawyer, Edwards brings to his job an inherent bias against innovation and the American entrepreneurial spirit that is essential to compete and create jobs," said Jerry Jasinowski, the group's president.

  article

I have lawyers and judges in my family. I worked with lawyers in San Francisco for eight years. I got sick of the b.s. - it all too often comes down to a game, with justice not even in the back seat, but having to get there on her own, walking. I don't like the legal business myself. But I can't for the life of me imagine how John Edwards' status as a personal injury attorney should be a negative issue when running for political office. Now, if he were a lobbyist or a corporate lawyer, I might see the point.

I think the suggestion in Mr. Jasinowski's statement is that by representing individuals and winning judgments against businesses, Edwards is throwing up obstacles to complete corporate rule. It's the same argument against minimum wages. You can't work for human rights at the expense of business profit or you'll destroy the very fiber of America. I will never understand how these people think businesses will make profits and sales when the humans producing for them are crushed. I guess there is a never-ending supply of wage slaves on the planet.

Perhaps if businesses were careful to stay away from practices that create conditions where they might be sued enough to bankrupt them, they wouldn't have the problem. I wonder what percentage of laid off workers comes from a bankrupted company due to some unreasonable lawsuit versus ones from a company that closed down and moved its operation offshore to avoid paying decent wages or to scrape out one more penney of profit.

So, anyway, here are my concerns about Edwards (to date): He's for staying in Iraq and essentially continuing America's foreign policy of dominance, and more subtly, but not altogether separate, his own personal history of "raising himself up by his bootstraps" from a poor boy to a multi-millionaire is going to be latched onto by people who refuse to acknowledge the causes of inequity in our society. People refusing to tell the truth about the system's need for wage slaves. As though it could exist without the very poor.

I used to read on an arborist forum comments about the poor being inherently lazy, or unworthy, from men who worked for themselves as arborists or small business owners, a great source of self-pride. That kind of talk seems to be such a common claim and such an ignorant one. As though the economic system we have could possibly permit everyone to be self-employed. So many people never seem to see the whole picture and understand that for the few to be independently wealthy, and for there to be any market for self-employment and small businesses, there must be a large supply of hourly wage workers. For that self-employed arborist, there has to be a seller of arborist supplies he needs to do his job. For the guy who owns that arborist supply store, there has to be factory workers making the goods he sells. And for that factory owner, there has to be a large supply of people poor enough, uneducated enough, and otherwise unskilled enough to accept factory wages. They could be overseas, however. How many people are self-employed that do something which doesn't involve using something that uses hourly wage workers? Where would the proud self-employed person or small business owner be if everybody were self-employed? It can't happen. Free market capitalism owes its life to the poor. The big capitalists know it. I guess it behooves them to let the small capitalists think otherwise.

And to let them strike out at each other, rather than catch on to what's really happening. Wars are good for that. All you anti-war people who don't support the troops because you're agitating against our war policy? Shut up or move to France.

Bullshit. It's the government and the contractors that are supposed to be providing the troops what they need that don't support the troops. What the hell do they care? A dead soldier doesn't lose them the profit that providing the services to keep that soldier alive would. Dead soldiers? Injured soldiers? Disabled soldiers? No problem. The taxpayers will take that burden.

All you anti-war people who spit on returning Viet Nam vets? What? Nobody really did that? Oh, okay. Well, anyway, you disparaged them and showed them no respect, no honor for their service.

Bullshit. It was the government and the business owners who showed their disdain for the returning troops, because they didn't provide jobs for thousands of them. They'd done the only job they were ever needed for, and there were plenty of wage slaves to fill any jobs the business owners had. And there always will be. We have to keep a steady supply of poor to fill hourly wage jobs and the ranks of the military, or the whole system crashes.

So, okay, back to Edwards...



....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.



Update 1:50 pm: Archpundit has a post on this topic of whether being a trial lawyer will hurt John Edwards.

An interesting question running around blogs is how will John Edwards background as a trial lawyer affect people. It'll certainly harden the views of some doctors and the Chamber of Commerce, but one has to remember that people like trial lawyers individually and dislike the idea of lawyers in general.

Time has some polling data they are releasing today. Only 28.4% say being a trial lawyer negatively affects their opinion of Edwards. 54.8% says that background makes them think he fights for the average person.

Check it out. There are some interesting comments as well.