Edwards Looks to the Future
DUBUQUE, IOWA -- John Edwards is laying out his vision for America's future by taking a peek at the past.
At a speech in Dubuque billed by the campaign as defining "the type of change America needs," Edwards again stressed the need to "fight" for change as opposed to "negotiating." It's a consistent theme he's been pushing throughout the campaign, but today he framed it in an historical context.
"When America was founded, there were people who wanted to negotiate with King George," said Edwards. "Imagine what would've happened if we had followed that path."
Edwards, trying to position himself as the clear populist in this election, compared his strategy to fight wealthy interests to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
"[FDR] called on us ... to remember 'the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid,'" said Edwards. "And (he) told us we have a moral responsibility to look out for one another, to help the millions of Americans living in poverty lift themselves up, to bring the millions left in the shadows back into the light, to show all those who'd been forgotten by the government and left to fend for themselves that they are not alone."
Finally, he looked at Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle in the '60s, and how he "called on us to live up to the best that was within us, and the best within our nation."