(cross-posted at Daily Kos)

Don’t take it from me that the agenda of John Edwards is ‘progressive’ – that’s what the mainstream media is stating. On the heels of the news that Edwards is will officially enter the 2008 presidential race, the media’s decided to take a closer look at what his agenda may be. Not surprisingly, here’s their first impression:

The 2004 vice presidential nominee already has a retooled campaign agenda that is unabashedly progressive.

Edwards tosses around phrases such as “universal health care” and “public campaign financing.” He criticizes the Bush administration’s “convergence of stupidity” on education and demands the immediate withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from Iraq.

So being ‘unabashedly progressive’ means believing in universal health care, public campaign financing, and that Iraq is a mistake? It sounds good to me, but you can tell that the AP writer of this article, Mike Baker, is simply using the word as a substitution for ‘liberal’, whose connotative meaning has become political poison in the U.S. Gone are the days where presidential candidates boasted of their liberalism; instead, as I wrote more than 6 months ago, it’s used by everyone, including the media, to scare people away from Democratic politicians. As one reads later on in the article:

He has taken his renewed liberal message to 39 states since Election Day 2004

I’m perfectly fine with liberalism, but once the media starts painting someone as a liberal, radical left-winger, or anything of the sort, it’s very difficult to remove that perception. Howard Dean was initially labeled a liberal during the 2004 presidential campaign solely because of his position on Iraq (along with his tendency to speak truth to power, among other things), and he was never able to shed the label, even though he was seen as a moderate by those who had worked with him during his tenure as governor of Vermont. Unless Al Gore joins the presidential race, the initial signals seem to be that Edwards will be painted as the ‘leftist’ candidate of the 2008 race.

This leads me to my next point – namely, that Baker simply writes that Edwards ‘tosses’ around phrases such as universal health care. First, even before the 2004 election was decided, Edwards had several ideas about how we could improve the current state of our health care system. Furthermore, his ideas about the issue are incorporated into his general anti-poverty platform. This is from a speech almost 6 months ago:

On the America we want to achieve in the next twenty years, I don’t think the picture is hard to draw. It is an America where we are well on our way to ending poverty. It is an America where every American has health care coverage – not access to health insurance or other wiggle-word ways we try to describe something less than health coverage for every American.

The other thing to make note of is that the three positions that Baker cites as ‘unabashedly progressive’ – well, it’s not just a bunch of liberals who like his ideas. In fact, the general public seems to agree with much of what he has to say. In a recent Bloomberg/LA Times poll, 62% of the public disapproves of Bush’s policy in Iraq. That’s a pretty solid majority of people who, to put it in Edwards’ words, think Iraq was stupid. Additionally, universal health care – something that has been unfairly demonized since the Clinton plan fell through in 1994 – isn’t just one of many other issues:

The public’s second-highest priority for Congress, after arranging for troop drawdowns in Iraq, is to work on providing universal health care coverage in the U.S.

If that’s the second-highest priority that people want Congress to have after Iraq, that says something about the rehabilitation of the public perception of universal health care in the past 12 years. Edwards has played no small role in this effort, going around the country in support of such a policy.

As for public financing of campaigns, an issue that is a little more esoteric in the public forum of political issues, it’s clear that the general public supports this as well. In a bipartisan poll commissioned this summer, the results are nothing short of astounding:

  • Three out of four voters support a voluntary system of publicly funded campaigns. (2) Seventy-four percent of voters support a proposal for voluntary public funding of federal elections (57% strongly) with only 16% opposed.
  • Support for public financing of Congressional elections cross all party lines. Eighty percent of Democrats, 78% of Independents, and 65% of Republicans support this reform.
  • Support of this reform is strong across demographic and regional groups. This reform enjoys strong support across gender lines, age groups, and regionally–garnering no less than 60% support and in most cases around three-quarters support.

[…]

Fully 82% of voters believe it is likely, as a result of publicly financed elections, that candidates will win on their ideas, not because of the money they raise, and 81% believe it is likely politicians will be more accountable to voters instead of large contributors.

This is the problem with the media as it exists today: it portrays common sense ideas that some politicians have as being wildly out of the mainstream. Being a liberal or a progressive or whatever the media would like to call it – it’s a strawman that doesn’t hold up to even the most basic of analysis. People want the troops to start coming home. They believe Iraq was a big mistake. And after we take care of that pressing matter, universal health care is next on the list. Public campaign financing is overwhelmingly supported. If someone advocates ideas that will restore faith in the government by making it work for the people, why is it seemingly portrayed as something radical?

Being a progressive is what being in the mainstream is about. John Edwards recognizes this, and that’s probably a good explanation as to why he’s been outpacing the competition to date. As this article demonstrates, there’s going to be a concerted effort to tear down the progressive efforts of Edwards and others around the country. It’s up to us to point out the truth – that the naysayers are the ones who are in the extreme.