Big day in Iowa

When the DesMoines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton a while back they expressed fear that Edwards' "harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change." On the contrary, it is only because John Edwards is willing to stand up to big money interests that he may be able to forge change.

Workers with unions behind them gain better treatment than workers who take whatever the boss feels like giving. That's because the unions force companies to negotiate. Well-meaning folks have been asking the big-money interests to voluntarily do the right thing for many decades. Occasionally, some of them surprise us, and listen to the voices of outrage enough to be moved to real change. More often, it takes a lot of struggle to get big-money interests to budge even an inch in the right direction. Companies like FraudEx and WalMart deserve to hear more than harsh rhetoric-- they deserve to be held to account for their crimes. John Edwards stared down corporate malefactors as a trial attorney, and that is a good thing. His adversarial response, to the most greedy and abusive excesses of corporate bullies, is both more reasonable and more conducive to pushing real change than a naive belief in the good will of the "business community." John Edwards in 2008!!