John Edwards: Still Caring About Poverty

One thing I hate about the media generally is that they constantly attribute policy concerns to some political motive. Nobody can have a particular interest in, say, Constitutional issues when it comes to Russ Feingold, or FISA when it comes to Chris Dodd. They always are doing it with some political motive. And I think we all can admit that's SOMETIMES true, but there's actually a way to determine if it's true in each particular case. For example, when the candidate in question is still pushing his signature issue long after any political benefit can be gathered, then I think you can say he means it.

Former Sen. John Edwards ended his Democratic presidential campaign nearly four months ago, but he was back on the stump today in the Tioga section of North Philadelphia, calling poverty "a moral cause facing every single one of us" in the United States.

"What we do for each other says something about who we are," Edwards said, speaking at the Thankful Baptist Church as he kicked off Half in Ten, a new effort to reduce the poverty rate by 50 percent during the next decade. "It says something about what our character is . . . the kind of country we want to live in."

The campaign is a joint project of the Center for American Progress Foundation; ACORN, which organizes activists in low-income communities; the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Coalition on Human Needs. Its aim is to advocate federal and state policies that will help people get out of poverty, including expansion of earned-income tax credits and increases in the minimum wage.

The hard-bitten reporters are keen to suspect ulterior motives, but if they just extended their reporting they could discern the difference between "pander" and "cause." It's not that hard to do. I'm proud to have supported John Edwards through the primary season until he left the race, because he actually believes in causes and is willing to advocate for them whether as a Presidential candidate or just a guy committed to lifting people out of poverty.