Despite Focus on Poverty, Edwards Trails Among the Poor

As Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards ramps up his anti-poverty initiative this weekend, he will be confronting a deep popularity deficit among his party's poorest voters.

In the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, the former senator from North Carolina was trounced by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents with household incomes below $20,000. Clinton had the support of 55 percent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) drew 20 percent and Edwards 10 percent.

Meanwhile, a new poll focusing on political independents, conducted by The Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, shows this muted support among low-income voters carrying over to the general election.

Despite Edwards's devotion to discussing poverty issues, 40 percent of independents from households earning less than $20,000 said there is no chance that they would back him in November 2008 if he were the Democratic nominee. Among these low-income independents, Obama had the lowest "reject rate": 22 percent said they definitely would not vote for him if he were the nominee.

Edwards also encounters trouble among those independents who said that they and their families are falling behind financially. In this group, 9 percent said they would definitely support him as the nominee. Obama and Clinton had nearly twice that level of certain support.

Voters with empty bank accounts are not the only ones Edwards will need to attract, according to these polls -- he faces similar deficits among wealthy voters -- but his lack of support among the poor stands in stark contrast to his emphasis on economic parity.

Silky Pony is not campaigning on poverty in order to actually do anything about poverty. Even the poorest and least educated voters are able to see this. Silky Pony is trying to appeal to middle-class guilt by promising to deal with residual poverty in this country so the middle class won't have to.

You have to start from the premise that all of the 'Rat candidates are fundamentally disingenuous about their core positions, because they are primarily compensating for weaknesses. Hillary! pretends to be strong on the war to compensate for her manifest desire for American defeat. Silky Pony pretends to crusade for the poor to compensate for the fact that he is a filthy rich attorney who just helps the rich get richer. Obama pretendes to be a serious Senator to counteract the fact that he is a penny ante corrupt local pol.

In 1992, Bill Clintoned championed Health Care to obscure the reality that he presided over a state with the highest infant and child mortality rates in the nation. In 2000, Algore pretended to be intelligent to mask the obvious truth that he is a moron. In 2004, John F. Kerry famously "Reported for Duty", when truly his military record should have brought him nothing but shame.

The most important thing to a 'Rat candidate is to neutralilze the negative. So the most closely held and widely advocated position is always the exact opposite of their true essence.

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