Perhaps it was his effective demonstration of the term “class warfare.”
Edwards was so effective at pitting class against class that William Safire’s Political Dictionary starts its definition of “class warfare” this way:
A charge of seeking power by dividing economic groups into predatory rich and oppressed poor.
Senator John Edwards, Democrat of North Carolina, made “two Americas” his central theme in campaigning as John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. President Bush noted that “Angry talk, and class warfare rhetoric, and economic isolationism won’t get anybody hired.” When Edwards in 2007 began his campaign for the top spot in 2008, he was quickly attacked by conservative commentators as pitting the rich (of which there are few) against the poor (of which there are many, though a lower percentage vote). David Limbaugh in The Washington Times wrote that liberals “loudly profess their allegiance to capitalism, but resent the inequitable monetary results it produces. Isn’t that what John Edwards’ ‘two Americas’ theme is all about?” Columnist Robert Novak quoted an unnamed “party insider” saying that Edwards “came to Washington as a ‘New Democrat,’ but he’s not that kind of Democrat anymore. He’s into class warfare.”
