Great piece on class warfare in today's Boston Globe by American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner - a must-read if you're trying to understand how each of the two big political parties deals with the aspirational nature of American class self-identification. It also gets to the some of the "why" of John Edwards' amazing rise to national political popularity.
"Paradoxically, Republicans bump up against this reality when they try to damn John Edwards as a rich trial lawyer. In fact, Edwards was a poor boy who made good and then used his legal skills to help a lot of ordinary plaintiffs collect their due. Were he a corporate attorney rather than a personal injury lawyer, he'd be a Republican rags-to-riches poster boy."
And while John Kerry takes the safe "middle class" road - after all, 90-plus percent of all Americans claim middle classhood - Edwards extends Fernando Ferrer's "two New Yorks" metaphor to the nation, rather bravely, in my view. As Kuttner points out, he risks the classic GOP class warfare cry to do so, and because "nearly everyone identifies upward [so] you don't gain traction in American progressive politics by baiting the rich."
But see, the pay of ordinary workers has lagged behind inflation under Bush and the tax cuts haven't benefited them. And Edwards may be uniquely qualified to smoke out the existing class/economic differences that have become even more pronounced under Bush - because unlike Bush or Kerry, he doesn't have to pretend he's just folks and not born of the elite.
