Edwards Hits Obama For Reagan CommentBy Greg Sargent
On the campaign trail today, John Edwards offered an interesting take on Barack Obama's comment yesterday that Ronald Reagan changed America in a way Bill Clinton didn't. It's worth quoting Edwards extensively:
“I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change...
"He was openly -- openly -- intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment...
"I can promise you this: This president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."
"He was openly -- openly -- intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment...
"I can promise you this: This president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."
As Ben Smith notes, Obama wasn't praising Reagan in terms of policy specifics. At the same time, though, Obama did talk in neutral terms about Reagan's reversals of the "excesses" of the 1960s and 1970s, whereas the changes wrought by Reagan are more customarily understood by Dems as the depredations that Edwards starkly described here.
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