Reply #68: Slight Correction [View All]

[MrB]

Edwards' lifetime AFL-CIO voting record is 96%. The only other candidate for Prez with a higher lifetime AFL-CIO voting record is the "leftist" Dennis Kucinich, with a 98%. Among other candidates running, Gephardt, "labor's best friend in Congress" scores a somewhat unimpressive 88% lifetime from the AFL-CIO (Gephardt opposed a higher minimum wage and some labor law reforms and supported Reaganomics in his early years in Congress); Kerry scores a 90%; and Lieberman scores a 82%, only marginally worse than the 83% Carol Mosely Braun had when she left Congress in disgrace in 1998 (Braun was actually a big backer of big business in the U.S. Senate, thoroughly supporting NAFTA and other trade globalization themes, a fact which is unknown to many on the Left who assume she is as left-wing as Kucinich and Sharpton). In fact, Edawrds's liftime AFL-CIO voting record of 96% is actually higher than the 95% achieved by Sen. Paul Wellstone before his death in 2002. (AFL-CIO voting records can be found at: http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/votes/vr_rep.cfm ). And Edwards has accrued this voting record reprenting one of the most thoroughly anti-union, "right-to-work" states in the country, where public employees such as teachers and firefighters are specifically prohibited by state law from collectively bargaining. Sen. Edwards is arguably the most progressive Senator ever elected from the South, with the possible exceptions of Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma in the 1960s and 1970s or Sen. Claude Pepper of Florida in the 1940s.

Had the Iraq conflict not emerged as the central issue in the Democratic Presidential primary jockeying in 2003, it would have been interesting to see who populists and progressives would have rallied around and what issues would have emerged as exciting the Democratic base. Alas, the Dean phenomenon seems to be evidence of Rove's grand strategy; a governor who was known as a laissez faire backer of big business, arguably as conservative as Lieberman, during his governorship has emerged as the "soul of the Left" while a candidate like Edwards who could potentially reshape the way alienated working-class voters see the Democratic party for the better is thrown by the wayside or ignored by so many self-described progressives.