An Edwards Op-Ed, and Other Iowa News
John Edwards lays out his “Middle Class Rising” agenda in an op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe. The piece is essentially a condensed version of the stump speech Edwards has been delivering lately on the campaign trail, minus the fist pumps and the iconic story about a childhood brawl.
In the op-ed, Edwards says his parents taught him “that somebody from a little town in North Carolina could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules.“ But hammering on his favorite theme, he continues:
[T]oday, the promise of America is being threatened by lobbyists and their corporate clients who have taken over our government and sold out the middle class. Middle-class incomes have stagnated for the past seven years, and families across the country are working harder than ever but are still struggling to cover the rising costs of healthcare, education, and transportation. The truth is that our economy is only growing at the top.
With just six days to go before the Iowa caucuses, it is crunch time for Edwards and all the other candidates. Yesterday’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto immediately intervened in the daily campaigning; while all of the candidates addressed the situation in Pakistan, Edwards went a step further than any other candidate. He actually called Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and spoke with him about Bhutto’s assassination. You can read about their conversation here.
And in polling updates, the most recent Iowa poll shows the race to be laughably close. Obama: 30 percent. Clinton: 29 percent. Edwards: 28 percent. Margin of error: 4.5 percentage points. Who said this wouldn’t go down to the wire?
