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August 17, 2007
Friday
I'm out for the weekend. Catch me at the Tenement Museum or the New York Historical Society, posting up & learning. Yo!
1. A new Iowa poll of likely caucus goers shows Edwards opening up an eight point lead over Hillary. Sounds like news, right? I mean, the media's been hovering like hungry vultures for the past couple of weeks, waiting to see if they'd managed to kill off the man's campaign, and yet here comes a poll from a respected Democratic polling firm showing him newly resurgent - that's a story, right?
Well, apparently not. Instead, the Wall Street Journal and every two-bit wingnut blog hack would rather have us focus on the WSJ's A1 story today about Edwards' relationship with Fortress Investment Group. Seems Fortress, who employed Edwards in an advisory capacity part-time in 2005-2006, bought companies involved in subprime lending during Edwards' time there - and these companies are now foreclosing on houses in New Orleans, a subject to which Edwards has devoted much well-needed attention. Now, Edwards didn't know about the relationship, and since he's concerned about predatory lending and engaged in the highly scrutinized business of running for President, we can be pretty sure that if he had known, he would have taken care of this before it wound up on the front page.
When informed of the connection by the WSJ, Edwards immediately pledged to divest his funds and committed himself to using his own money to help the people so affected, telling the reporter that he "will not have my family's money invested in these firms." Sounds fair enough: told that something was wrong, he vows to correct. But because Edwards wasn't aware of Fortress' ownership in these companies, the WSJ concludes, he is somehow wrong to point out that foreclosing on the homes of poor people trying to deal with a natural disaster of epic proportions is un-American. Somehow, the implication is that this tangential connection serves to nullify all of the necessary points Edwards has made about predatory lending.
As Brian Beutler puts it:
[T]he implicit takeaway from the article is that investing in companies that engage in predatory lending is perfectly OK as long as you happen not to have strong feelings about predatory lending... Some blogger out there should do a quick count of all the stories that have been written about John Edwards' hair, his house, and his hedge funds (all of which have intended to imply some sort of hypocrisy) and compare that number to the number of stories that have been written about Romney and Bain, Obama and Sudan investments, and Giuliani and Venezuela. I think the results of that count would be... enlightening.
Taylor Marsh sees a link between the favorable Iowa poll numbers and the WSJ's timing:
Everyone following the primary race knows how important this state is to his campaign. So it's not all that shocking that the WSJ goes after him today. As the Times put it, the WSJ "pursues another piece" of the Edwards campaign platform. Digging for dirt is more like it... Sorry, but I'm underwhelmed. The story also appears on A1 complete with a picture of Edwards in a little box that has the heading: On Predatory Lending. These guys won't give up, especially during a time when Edwards is seen by some to be picking up ground in Iowa. There are several reasons why.
I'm disappointed with the coverage, and disappointed, as Edwards surely must be, to have investments bite him like this, but unsurprised. I guess having the Wall Street Journal come at you with both barrels is what one can expect when raising a ruckus talking about what's wrong with Wall Street - and picking up steam doing so. I trust Edwards will fix what he has to, keep talking and let the voters decide what's important, as they're doing in Iowa.
UPDATE: Here's the AP's take. Key quotes:
"I will not have my family's money involved in these firms that are foreclosing on people in New Orleans," he told the Associated Press.
[...]
"My reaction is I'm going to help these people," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "I just learned about this. I don't know the details, I will find out and I will find a way to help them."
As someone who supports Edwards - and, more specifically, his progressive agenda, all I can do is hope that he takes care of what he has to as quickly (and publicly) as possible. Confronted with a problem, he must now fix it.
***
Elsewhere - and this one was a surprise - David Brooks writes a gushing Op-Ed profile of Edwards in The New York Times today. Brooks writes:
Every presidential candidate tells a certain sort of story. Some talk about being part of a great movement. Some talk about surviving an ordeal with a band of brothers. John Edwards's stories begin with family, continue with work and solitary struggle and conclude with triumph over privilege.
He may begin, for example, by describing an incident from his boyhood. He came down from his room one morning before dawn. The house was dark, except for the blue glow of the TV. He found his father in front of the television, watching educational programming on PBS so he could get promoted at the mill.
Edwards clawed his way to college but felt like a hick and an outsider. Everybody seemed smarter. But gradually he realized they had just grown up with social and cultural advantages, and he could still outwork them.
The tales culminate with his great underdog victories. He defeated the insurance companies in the courtroom. "I beat them," he says, "And I beat them again!" He got rich. He now has a chance to turn around and help those who grew up the way he did.
I don't like Brooks, so I find myself somewhat wary (though not as wary as some) of this praise. Suspicious, but interesting. Matthew Yglesias parses it out in useful ways over here, and elicits comments that are, as ever, worth sticking around for.
2. And then you've got Rudy, who is dogged today by a much more significant story that is unsurprisingly getting a lot less play on the conservative side of the blog-o-dome than the six-degrees-of-John-Edwards game the WSJ is riding. Following up on Rudy's comments last week about being at Ground Zero "as often, if not more" than the triage teams from the FDNY, the Times does a little ol' fashioned reporting and look what they've found:
But an exhaustively detailed account from his mayoral archive, revised after the events to account for last-minute changes on scheduled stops, does exist for the period of Sept. 17 to Dec. 16, 2001. It shows he was there for a total of 29 hours in those three months, often for short periods or to visit locations adjacent to the rubble. In that same period, many rescue and recovery workers put in daily 12-hour shifts.
Speaks for itself, huh? Greg Sargent says all that needs to be said.
3. Bills - Falcons tonight at 8. Got my DVR set. Marshawn's starting.
4. Dems debate in front of your bleary eyes Sunday morning at 10 on ABC. I know just what you're thinking: oooo, more presidential primary politics! Right? Insert eye-roll emoticon here.
See yall on Monday.
Posted by caps at August 17, 2007 01:09 PM