Here’s something interesting about the John Edwards coverage: there’s virtually no media focus on his role as leader of the “Half in Ten” campaign…even though he was apparently in the middle of a national tour to highlight a plan to cut poverty in half over the next decade when he started getting questions about Rielle Hunter again.
There’s a fair amount of analysis about the impact Edward’s admission might have had if he’d gotten the nomination and that it will have on his prospects for a political future or in an Obama administration. But, there’s no almost no mainstream media analysis of the effect it could have on his ability to serve as national chairman of the Half in Ten campaign.
What do you suppose the coverage would have been like if he’d been chairing a campaign on another topic, one of more interest to the public, say the future of social security or reforming the tax code? Wanna bet he’d have resigned that chairmanship already?
The Edwards story is a good reminder that it’s a bad strategy to put our policy proposals under the poverty banner. “Poverty” policy just isn’t a high priority for the media or the public.