Recently in John Edwards Category

John Edwards is dropping out of the presidential race today.On CNN, Jessica Yellin is reporting that Edwards phoned Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama yesterday to urge them to make fighting poverty, his signature issue, and important part of their campaigns. Edwards never had the kind of intense religious outreach operation of the Obama or Clinton campaigns, but he did consistently campaign on the moral issue of ending poverty. For that, God-o-Meter is goosing his rating until Edwards makes it official this afternoon at 1.

John Edwards told a crowd in Iowa yesterday that Democratic candidates could win Christian voters if they're genuine, The Des Monies Register reports:

Committed Christians can be attracted to the Democratic side if the party's presidential nominee projects an honest interest in tackling moral issues, candidate John Edwards said here Sunday.

Edwards pointed specifically to poverty and the fact that millions of people have no health care coverage.

"Those are things that Christians care about, that people of faith in general care about," he said. "I think that Iowa caucusgoers and the faith community can spot a phony a mile away. They can tell, when they look at you and when they listen to you talk, whether you say what you really believe, whether it comes from within."

The former North Carolina senator was answering a question from Debra Koenig, an undecided Algona Democrat who said she is worried that Republicans will continue to draw many Christian voters.

Could Edwards's line about Iowans being able to "smell a phony a mile away" be a dig at one of his Democratic rivals, perhaps one that he's suggested has been co-opted by a corrupt political system? Coming on the heels of his appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network, God-o-Meter was tempted to read this comment as part of a new Edwards faith offensive, but it came in response to a very targeted question about Democrats winning over Christians. Still, GOM will keep its eyes peeled.

John Edwards is the latest White House aspirant to appear on the Christian Broadcasting Network, prompting God-o-Meter to wonder if CBN has supplanted Air America as a popular venue for Democrats. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Christian ministers supporting Hillary Clinton have all granted recent interviews to CBN's David Brody.

Nothing groundbreaking in Brody's Edwards interview, but it reminds God-o-Meter that the former North Carolina senator is making little attempt to parlay his Southern Christian roots into a play for cultural conservative Democratic votes, as he promised to do as John Kerry's running mate in '04:

Brody: Here's the CBN question - the faith question. You've talked about your relationship with Jesus, and I'm wondering if you could expand a little bit on that and tell me how your faith really defines some of the stuff you do in your life - specifically as it relates to the campaign.

Edwards: Well, my faith is hugely important to every aspect of my life and it has been for a long time. I'm not going to lie to people. I was born and raised in the Southern Baptist church, baptized when I was young. I went to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. It was the center of our lives. My father was the deacon in the Baptist church.

And then I went away to college, law school and to some extinct strayed from my faith.

And like a lot of people, my faith came roaring back when I needed it the most, when tragedies began to strike.

I lost my son 1996 -- and then of course more recently Elizabeth's development of cancer and recurrence of her cancer. The truth is I don't know how I could have ever gotten through these struggles plus the day-to-day stresses of being a candidate for president without my relationship with the Lord. It's hugely important in every part of my life

Brody: I'm assuming some of those conversations with God, when you were going through that tragedy with your son must have been pretty heart wrenching.

Edwards: They were heart wrenching and painful because it was hard for me to understand, it was hard for Elizabeth to understand. But finally I just had to put my faith in him which is what I did.

In a speech delivered today from St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire, John Edwards laid into Hillary Clinton and claimed the moral high ground--literally. By refusing to decline corporate contributions like he has, Edwards said that Clinton as president would perpetuate the same culture of corruption that Democrats had been claiming was the special province of the GOP. Titled "The Moral Test of Our Generation," the speech lacked outright references to God or religion but decried such ungodly activities as soul-selling. The Edwards campaign emailed it to supporters. Excerpts:

I am not holier than thou. I am not perfect by any means. But there are events in life that you learn from, and which remind you what this is really all about. Maybe I have been freed from the system and the fear that holds back politicians because I have learned there are much more important things in life than winning elections at the cost of selling your soul....

Because Washington may not see it, but we are facing a moral crisis as great as any that has ever challenged us. And, it is this test -- this moral test -- that I have come to understand is at the heart of this campaign....

America lives because 20 generations have honored the one moral commandment that makes us Americans. To give our children a better future than we received....

I am not perfect -- far from it -- but I do understand that this is not a political issue -- it is the moral test of our generation.

On its face, the central argument of today’s Washington Post story on Edwards makes some sense: “he is the sole Southern Democrat and cultural conservative in the Democratic presidential field, making him the only top-tier candidate in his party who can appeal easily to white men.” And while Edwards is now a United Methodist, he was raised in the faith tradition that produced the only two Democratic presidents of the last 40 years: Southern Baptist. Still, God-o-Meter feels that the obvious trouble with playing up Edwards’s religious or culture conservative appeal, as this article does, is that he is about as culturally conservative as Rudy Giuliani. Edwards supports abortion rights—decrying the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act—and backs gay civil unions and opposes “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”. In the debates so far, he has more insistent than Clinton or Barack Obama that his faith has no place in shaping his policy stances (though he said otherwise during his Beliefnet interview). It may be true, as the Washington Post reports, that Edwards is attracting mostly white crowds in the New Hampshire countryside. But hey, the state is more than 95% white, so God-o-Meter warns against making too much of it.