Reply #52: Not only that, but I think a lot of upper middle class white people...

[AP]

....look at Edwards and like to think that they're just like him.

They see a guy who got everything he earned by working hard and doing the right thing, and they say, yeah, that's me.

If you're not in the top .5% of income earners and if you make most of your money from earned income (and not dividends and cap gains), you're not high on the list of Republican priorities. However, many people between about the top 40% and top .5% vote for Republicans nonetheless. I thik Edwards breaks down that coalition of Republican voters really effecitively because he shows how the route to upper middle class security runs through having a middle class, which is what Democrats care about.

Edwards did well with the core democratic constituencies, however, quite interestingly, he did better as you moved farther into the suburbs. The wealthier and whiter, and more conservative the voter, the MORE they liked Edwards, and this was despite the fact that his policies were as liberal as Kucinich's. The difference, I think, is that those wealthy white suburbanites look at Edwards and identify with him, and if he tells them that they wouldn't exist but for progressive taxation, good public schools, good jobs, protecting the value of work, transparency in the debt and equity markets, protecting people from predatory lenders, etc., then those people are going to get on board.