Matt Stoller has never been the most cautious or thorough of bloggers, but his recent post, "What Bugs Me About John Edwards,"is shoddy even for him. He accuses both John and Elizabeth Edwards of racism.
The post has a comic effect. Stoller starts off by praising Edwards--his policy positions, his speaking ability, his focus on "power divisions." So Stoller is confused; why can't he bring himself to support Edwards? There's something he can't put his finger on. Well, he doesn't trust him; but no, that's not it. Stoller, ever probing, finds the answer: Edwards is...racist. If not for the minor matter of Edwards looking down on racial minorities, he'd be just swell. Funny stuff. But I'm not laughing.
Why doesn't Stoller trust Edwards? He doesn't say. He just has a "nebulous trust issue" with Edwards. Stoller is entitled to his own instincts, but it's an argument that can't be refuted, and a responsible blogger would offer reasons that Edwards shouldn't be trusted, this being a medium for argument and persuasion. He seems to think that his not trusting Edwards should be of value to people not named Matt Stoller.
I'll trust my own judgment, thank you very much, and if I need guidance, I'll look to people who've worked with Edwards (like the anti-poverty leaders at ACORN) or who at least have given me me reason to respect their judgment about politics and people. But Stoller is a recovering acolyte of no less a discredited menace than Tom Friedman:
Friedman holds a special place in my development. I took a class from him at college on 'globalization', and read most of his books. In 2002, he and Ken Pollack were the two people that I relied on for guidance with regards to Iraq. I trusted him. I believed in him.
Did he not realize or not care that Friedman was a notorious center-right slinger of conventional blather? Everybody makes mistakes oh yes they do--and Stoller deserves credit for making such a humiliating public admission--but his faith in Friedman should give everyone a "nebulous trust issue" with Stoller. The wonder is that Stoller doesn't have a "nebulous trust issue" with himself.
In the post in question, the former Friedmnanite claims that Edwards's approach to fighting poverty is racist. Or, as he puts it, presumably to cover himself, "a little racist." Stoller says Edwards is "talking as a college educated white guy to other college educated white guys."
He attempts to justify his charge by citing an interesting but ultimately superficial post by Mike Caulfield at Blue New Hampsire. Caulfield believes that JRE shouldn't speak in moral terms about poverty. More precisely, Caulfield believes that JRE shouldn't indentify the poor as a discete population or poverty as a problem. Rather, he should focus on the problems faced by 99 percent of the popuation.
You know who agrees, at least in part, with Caulfield? John Edwards.
The press is constantly saying, 'Well, what you mean by 'Two Americas' is you mean the rich and the poor.' No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is the very rich and multinational corporations and everybody else. Those are the 'Two Americas' that still exist in this country.
The is one of his refrains. For reasons both moral and political, he wants to link the plight of the poor with that of the working and middle class. He knows that the GOP tries to drive a wedge between the poor and the working class, and Edwards doesn't want to let that happen.
But yes, it's true that he talks about the poor and indentifies poverty as a problem, different in degree if not in category from the struggles of the middle class, and this gets at the crux of Caulfield's and Stoller's complaint. Caulfield mentions that his friend has economic problems but doesn't consider herself poor:
So why pull all these problems under a poverty umbrella? It's pretty simple really. The "poverty problem" is a middle class construction with Christian overtones -- by pulling these together in a poverty platform Edwards gains the right to talk about these in moral terms. It's difficult to talk about the skyrocketing price of milk as a moral issue, but tied to poverty, you can do that. Same with health care, education, childcare, and labor.
Poverty is a middle class construct? Really? Caulfield wants us to believe that there are no differences between the problems of the poor and those of the middle class, a claim he takes to absurd lengths:
[E]very middle class family is one medical procedure away from sinking permanently into the underclass
This is...how I should put it? Bullshit. Caulfield and Stoller think poor people are just like you and I. But they're not: they have less money. Stoller says Edwards is "condescending," but what could be more condescending that the middle class believing that they're as bad off as the destitute? Poverty is an elusive but real problem. That's why William Julius Wilson studies poverty and not, say, economic struggles. That's why David Shipler wrote a book about the poor, not middle class people whose problems are the same as those of people formerly known as poor. That's why Lyndon Johnson, RFK, and Barack Obama have called on the country to help the poor. According to Stoller's "logic," all these leaders would be racist.
Caulfield is lurching toward an important topic: the challenge of talking about poverty without further stigmatizing poor people, without turning them into "the other." Not easy. But in the end, it seems to me, the only thing worse than talking about poor people is not talking about them. How do you help the poor without talking about them? How do you fight poverty without promoting programs--welfare programs and the EITC and Medicaid--that reduce poverty? Neither Caulfield nor Stoller offers any suggestions.
And once you accept that we need to talk about poverty to help poor people, what message is better than a morality-based one? A plea to people's self interest? Well, Edwards tries that too.
Maybe you've heard the phrase "it's expensive to be poor." Well, it's also expensive for America to have so many poor. We all pay a price when young people who could someday find the cure for AIDS or make a fuel cell work are sitting on a stoop because they didn't get the education they need.
We all pay a price when our people turn to crime because they have no other hope. Harvard's Richard Freeman estimates that growing incarceration costs and unemployment of ex-offenders costs 4 percent of our economy, each and every year.
There's much more to refute in Caulfield's post, but because I want to focus on Stoller, let me touch on just one more point. Caulfield claims that Edwards is "moralizing." Is it moralizing to oppose war or government corruption on moral grounds? By Caulfield's perverse definition, to talk about the immorality of anything would be to moralize. Caulfield compounds his dishonesty by claiming that Edwards talks about poverty precisely so that he can speak in moral terms (or "moralize.") But Edwards routinely talks about the immorality not just of poverty but of a system that's stacked against everyone but the super-rich.
Somebody needs to express the outrage about what's happening in this country. It's not right and it's not fair and I intend to express it and express it strongly and I'm going to do something about it as president of the United States.
Edwards is attempting something difficult: he's trying to be both Harry Truman righteously railing against the moneyed interests on behalf of the middle class and RFK calling on our better angels to help the poor. The effort may be awkward at times, and it may not work, but to blast it is unfair. To call it racist is shameful.
Let's linger for a moment on the charge of racism. Stoller thinks it's racist to appeal to morality to help the poor. But who said the poor people Edwards wants to help are black or brown? Not Edwards; he frequently points out that most poor people are white and that poverty isn't a problem unique to cities. It's Stoller who assumes that poor people are black or brown--an interesting assumption for someone accusing someone else of racism.
To buttress his charge of racism, Stoller cites the remark made by Elizabeth Edwards.
"We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman," said Edwards, referring to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton during an interview with Ziff Davis Media about the Internet's role in the 2008 presidential election. "Those things get you a certain amount of fundraising dollars."
The comment made me cringe. Though factually defensible, it's stupid politically and in poor taste. But Stoller goes much farther. He says it's racist. No, actually, he says it's "a little racist." Does Stoller know what the word means? Does he really believe that the comment tells us that Elizabeth Edwards thinks poorly of black people? That she thinks they're inferior? It's no small thing, to accuse someone of racism, but Stoller, careless or clueless or both, throws the accusation around with abandon.
As an Edwards supporter, I understand that this will look like a reflexive defense of my candidate. But it's not. Or, it's not just that: it's also an attempt to hold a smearmeister accountable. Stoller smears politicians with whom he has "nebulous trust issues," candidates like Barack Obama. Stoller was, for example, recently caught on camera describing the Obama campaign as a, "A narcissistic festival of self-love."
Much is made in the sphere about the lack of accountability for mainstream journalists. But what kind of accountability is there for a blogger who hurts the progressive movement by smearing its leaders? Only the wisdom and good will of all of you. We need to hold him accountable.
And you can begin by rec-ing this diary.