According to Time
It [Poverty] is certainly something most politicians don't talk about and most voters don't ask about. Democrats with national aspirations have been avoiding the issue for the last quarter century or so, since Ronald Reagan cast them as the party of welfare-queen-coddling big gubment. But with economic anxiety, inequality and private equity billionaires grabbing national attention, [Jonh] Edwards believes all that might be changing. Barack Obama gives a speech on poverty this week. Hillary Clinton has assailed trickle-down economics without the trickle. But no other candidate is talking about poverty the way Edwards does — at length and to the exclusion of all other subjects for three long days. From time to time he tries to link the problems of the poor to the vulnerability of the middle class at large, touting, for instance, his plan for universal health care. ("It's not just about the poor," he says in one speech during the tour. "Everybody's at risk. Everybody's vulnerable.") But mostly — remarkably — he avoids that broader argument and focuses on costly programs to help the truly impoverished: one million WPA-style "stepping-stone" jobs, guaranteed paid sick leave for everyone, a minimum wage that isn't just raised to $9.50 but indexed so it goes up automatically. More
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