Blumenthal: The battle for the south has begun

[kskiska]

Edwards's roots are key to Kerry winning the presidential election

(snip)

Bush's supra-southern strategy involves exploiting patriotism, resentment and fear. The threat, real enough, is external, and it is brandished to maintain the status quo. His compassionate conservatism is an updating of planter paternalism. But his agenda is deregulation, low taxes and hydrocarbons. His politics in the south fundamentally rests on a division between godless them and God-fearing us. Beneath that, he requires a near unanimous white vote to compensate for the near unanimous African-American vote. If more than one-quarter to one-third of the white vote goes into the Democratic coalition, depending on the state, the Republicans lose.

The solid Republican south must have a solid white vote in every southern and border state to maintain a Republican in the White House. A single crack topples the entire edifice. That fragility accounts for the ferocious struggle in Florida.

The instant Kerry announced Edwards, the Republicans opened an attack on him as a trial lawyer. Yet, in 1998, when Edwards first ran for the Senate in North Carolina, his Republican opponent, Lauch Faircloth, spent $2m on advertising depicting Edwards and Clinton as "two tobacco-taxing liberal lawyers who are well known for stretching the truth". The ads backfired, Edwards won handily.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1256553,00.html

[NWHarkness]

1. Great article. Thanks for sharing

It's a great historical perspective.

[saracat]

2. WOW!

Go , Sidney!I wonder if this is in any American papers?

[Dudley_DUright]

3. I don't know

but I do know that his column is also published in Salon.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/07/08/john_edwards/index.html