John Edwards For Labor Secretary

Jonathan Tasini
Posted November 24, 2008 | 09:23 AM (EST)
Huffington Post

Hear me out: this is an argument as much about the place of workers' issues in the future Administration, as it is an argument for making John Edwards the next Labor Secretary.

When it comes to tackling the economic crisis, the president-elect has been pre-occupied, personnel-wise, with the question of who will be Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary. I'm not going to argue that those positions aren't important. We are, obviously, in a severe economic crisis: the credit crisis is real and financial institutions are dragging the rest of the economy down. But, traditionally, Treasury and Commerce have been outposts for advocates for capital, not for labor. And looking at the crisis through the lens of Treasury and Commerce misses the problem by a mile.

Our crisis, as I have argued, is a long-term crisis generated largely because of a decades-long wage depression and assault on basic living standards that lead people to prop up their incomes by sinking deeply into debt. If wages had tracked productivity from the mid-1970s to now, the minimum wage would be over $19-an-hour, not the current $6.55 an hour. President-elect Obama's campaign promise to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011 will still leave that wage at a poverty level, not a living wage.

Without any real increase in wages, consumers in the past 20 years have piled up debt upon debt. According to Demos, a non-partisan organization, Americans overall credit card debt grew from $211 billion to $876 billion between 1989 and 2006. When credit cards were maxed out, they turned to their sole remaining economic lifeline: home equity. Demos estimates that homeowners sucked out $1.2 trillion in home equity, not for mansions and yachts, but for basic living expenses.

~Snip~

Which brings me to John Edwards. I'm not going to argue that he was the perfect candidate on policy (but, admittedly, I'm demanding: if you're not Paul Wellstone, you don't make the cut). But, Edwards dictated the Democratic Party debate, as even the business press acknowledged. It is almost a certainty he would have been in the Obama Administration but for one lapse (we'll come to that in a moment). Let me remind us why:

Edwards decided to make poverty the central element of his run for president. You had to be crazy to do that--every political expert, pundit and operative would tell you that "ending poverty" would be a no-win plank because the poor don't vote. Poverty---the reality that millions of Americans cannot afford to put food on the table or clothe their families or send their kids to college and that we live with the scandal of a poverty-level minimum wage---is a stain on our country.

But, Edwards considered it the cause of his life. You can take a cynical view, as some have, and say it was all made up and he didn't really believe it. But, facts are facts: Edwards staked his political future on the issue.

~Snip~

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